Dear Ron,
I wanted to send you a note letting you know how much the book about your parents’ lives, No Past Tense: Love and Survival in the Shadow of the Holocaust, has meant to my students and to me.
As you know, I use the book in two of my courses at Loyola Marymount University. In “Literature of Exile and Terror,” a first year seminar course, the book helps students understand the trajectory of exile that comes from terror. It helps them explore the motivations that determine such exile, and the reasons why exile, finally, becomes the only choice.
In my advanced English course, “American Jewish Literature,” the book helps students discover some of the ways in which Jews have come to the United States and become “American.” The story of your parents’ success and achievement as “American Jews,” also illuminates for students the multifarious ways that Jews helped build this country. Your father’s many patents and your mother’s intelligence, wisdom, grace, kindness and beauty represent a unique portrait of the refugee experience to all of my students.
The exceptional writing and the book’s innovative style and structure are so filmic that after reading the book students often talk about scenes as if they have “seen” them. Moreover, as my students are nearly the same ages as your parents, they relate to the story as your parents’ peers, universalizing the sadness, pain, loss and fear of young people as they are separated from their families, homes, schools, towns and forcibly sent away.
Ron, I just wanted to thank you and Donna for sharing your parents’ story in this powerful book. As a Holocaust scholar and teacher of Holocaust stories, No Past Tense has helped me increase understanding for the victims of Hitler’s genocidal rage and added an important and thrillingly-told narrative to our collection of Holocaust stories. Indeed, it stands above many of those stories for its ability to universalize the experience of terror, loss, exile and displacement, as well as how so many of the refugees from Europe contributed to the growth of 20th century America.
In gratitude,
Dr. Holli Levitsky
Professor of English/Director of Jewish Studies