This is a download repository for a book of my grandparents' memoirs.
Have a look
This is a download repository for a book of my grandparents' memoirs.
Have a look
Have a look
Have a look
My Grandparents Ruth Margot Frank Gelber (1910-2001) and Felix Gelber (1902-1977) left extensive hand-written memoirs of their young lives in Austria and Germany, their experiences during the first world war and the ascendancy of the Nazis, and their timely emigration to Los Angeles in 1939.
I have had photo-copies of these memoirs for as long as I can remember. While I have read through them several times, it has been hard to connect with my grandparents' stories because the handwriting is difficult to read and also because both memoirs are written as a linear stream of consciousness, full of details, digressions and distractions.
I also have several boxes of old photographs and documents from both of my grandparents. They are fun to look at but they are difficult to appreciate without context.
In 2016 I decided to try and bring my grandparents' stories together: transcribing them, editing them to bring out the heart of their stories, interlining them to see how the two stories approach the same moments differently, and illustrating them with both family photos and historical photos. I researched and added historical notes to illuminate how the choices my grandparents and their families made were influenced by the day-to day events of one of the most horrifying periods of human history.
Jonathan Felix Gelber, Atlanta 2018
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