Living History: The Millions Interviews Jason Sommer
Most readers know Jason Sommer from his poetry. But the author of five poetry collections—mostly recently Portulans—is publishing something a little different this March: Shmuel’s Bridge: Following the Tracks to Auschwitz with My Survivor Father, a memoir that documents Sommer’s relationship with his father while exploring his painful family history.
The book, which Sommer began, in part, due to his father’s failing memory, also documents a trip the father and son took to Eastern Europe in 2001: from the town where is father was born to the labor camp he escaped to Auschwitz. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly praised Shmuel’s Bridge, saying “This stunning tribute isn’t to be missed,” while Kirkus said, “The author provides an undeniably intriguing tale of travel and remembrance, filled with fascinating characters and places caught between the war-torn past and the post–Cold War future.”
The Millions caught up with Sommer to talk about the genesis of the book, the importance of preserving memories, fathers and sons, and a whole lot more.
The Millions: Can you tell us a little about the genesis of the book and your desire to preserve your father’s memories of the events that defined his life?
Jason Sommer: This book’s immediate beginning was in the imminent threat of loss. It wasn’t just my father’s mortality—he’s 98—or mine, but the mortality of memory. Dad had begun to forget, to confuse his personal history. What he had told me had changed perhaps in emphasis over years of telling, but never in substance, but now details were getting alarmingly muddled, and significant incidents were vanishing utterly, beyond anyone’s prompting. Besides his memories, I wanted to preserve the record of our experience together, our 2001 trip through Eastern Europe that had further illuminated the things he had spoken of for such a long time, reviving memories for him, and making me a better preserver and conduit for them.
But in a very real sense this book has been on its way much of my adult life, certainly since I began to write. The events of my father’s life, his memories of them, also did much to define my own life in
