And her in her starring literary debut she recounts her remarkable journey to find the family that hit her father during the war, learn about the siblings she never met and shield the wounds of her past. We are joined by esther and her son awardwinning novelist Jonathan Safran foer author of everything is illuminated, incredibly loud and extremely close and feeding animals and we are the weather. Jonathans debut novel everything is illuminated was inspired by his journey in ukraine to find a family that hid esthers father. The success of the novel awakened worldwide interest that led to new roads for esther, armed with a map esther made the trip to ukraine herself and found more than she ever hoped she would. We are honored to have both esther and jonathan with us today for what is to be their first public dialogue about the book, a very exciting occasion indeed so before we begin a few quick things to note. Tonights conversation will follow withan audience q a and you can submit your questions into the chat box and we will do our best to get to as many as we can but bear with us because we have hundreds of viewers tonight and very many questions to get through. This program is being recorded live and will be available on youtube and that viewing will go out to all tonights registrars in the coming days so make sure to look out for it. Finally if you enjoy tonights program consider making a donation to the museum of jewish heritage for joining us as a member. We are dedicated to preserving survivors stories like those of the safran foers and your support is crucial to us to present programs like this one so thank you so much and now without further ado join me in giving a big virtual welcome to tonights speakers, esther and Jonathan Safran foer. Thank you. Thank you. That didnt sound very big but of course it didnt. The First Reading i ever did as a writer was atthe museum of jewish heritage. This is in the very beginning of 2002. And it was before my first book. Everything is illuminated had come out and in a way it was a low point for me as a public speaker i had the most interesting moment ive ever had as a public speaker which is intended to use the word repertoire and i got very nervous and as it was coming out of my mouth i started to doubt myself about the pronunciation and i said repertoire like that and it continues taught meevery time im about to do a public event. So i have to admit im a little bit nervous to do this. Me to. Ive done a lot of readings before and i dont really get nervous beforethen. Even when ive had knows how many conversations in the four decades that weve known each other and yet ive been stressing out about this for the last couple of days. I know that part its because i care a lot about it i want to show everybody how great your book is, participate in that but theres probably Something Else going on as well which is these subjects are very hard to talk about and theyre very hard to talk about directly. Jewish people are known for talking a lot in my experience both in terms of how i grew up in terms of what you told me about how you grew up and the Jewish Community that i know, my experience is that these people often have a hard time talkingabout difficult things, about sad things. Do you find that to be the case as well . Oh my gosh. Its always been the case. I spent most of the early part of my life not being able to talk about any of this. I dont know whether i was suppressing it. You know me really well, at last for the last four decades. Im an upbeat happy person but i have these folks that are with me all the time even in the happiest moments and of course growingup i couldnt talk about this. I had this amazing mother who had gone through the worst horrors that anybody could imagine losing her entire family and i knew i was supposed to bring her joy, i wasnt supposed to bring her hard questions that wouldmake her sad. And she didnt want to tell me those stories. But as your brother frank reminded me , i used child labor to get stories. When he had a project in high school i encouraged him to interview her, to do the thing i couldnt do and to get her the story she wouldnt give me and did a pretty great job putting it in the framework of her history together and then of course when you wanted to spend a summer in prague having fun and had a senior project to do i suggested that you go to ukraine and find these people. My father, your grandfather and in many ways i had you and frank doing what i couldnt do at that point. Somehow i couldnt ask those questions. I couldnt talk about these things to you guys, to your father. It was all in their and i didnt have the emotional wherewithal to undertake the journeys that you guys took for mefirst. It should be noted that you encouraged me to go seek this family history. You also told me not totell grandma that i was doing it. So we will get to that in a little bit but the challenges of layering communication and was okay to say to this person and not okay to say to that person all of the problems just to take we never really you, your book and i want you to know we are still here which i was thinking about a good way to summarize it, not any kind of literary critic which im not anyway not as a dispassionate reader im obviously not but as myself and what i thought it was, it treats our family tree like sheet music and place it so the central story tells his time continuously in the past and in the present also in the future. You tell the journey of youre going to learn about your parents and particularly your father who committed suicide when you were seven . Seven or eight depending on which birthday birthday you cant. Will get into that as well and does something amazing and what distinguishes it from nmr or from a work of history which is that it transcends the story based on and it becomes about the telling itself and engages with questions of how we talk about where we come from and how we talk about painful things and how we talk about who we are and how talking will determine who we come. Its a really wonderful book and its not uncomplicated for me to say that because the child is always a child, no matter how old you get and ive always been used to thinking of, that i was the story you were to your life and then confronting all your other stories. Your parents story, your struggles, your hopes is something that was frankly a little bit scary that i was grateful to have. You had written this book, i dont know that i ever would have seen you in quite that way asan individual in the world. So lets kinda start at the beginning of your process. Theres an old joke that once upon a time there was a person whose life was so good theres no story to tell about it so theres really profound problems that are at the heart of your book. The holocaust is the most obvious one. The murder of your half sister. Suicide of your father. The recent death of your mother. The secrecy shrouded those losses and also the holes in your life story. Did you feel there was something in particular that you wanted to solve or to resolve by telling yourstory . I think when you talk about the whole, thats an accurate way todescribe. After you wrote everything is illuminated thought wow, you helped me fill the hole in my life. Even though it was a workof fiction. And how it seemed to fill a hole for a while and then i realize that wasnt enough. What was the whole . I dont know what the hole was. There were so many holes and so many holes that i couldnt tell people them. The writing of the book became a really profound experience for me, not just the journey. The journey was amazing. I found things i never find but the process of sitting down and writing and story never changed. I had written an outline and the art was there getting into the emotion of the story , im getting into it now as you can tell. That took time. And one thing was really interesting for me is that your grandmother, my mother died december 18 2018. And i knew my book was due in february so i really made sure that i had done because i didnt know how long she would live and what would happen and what the situation wouldbe. But after she died i went back to look at it and i found that i was able to. I didnt change the story but i was able to put details and emotions into it that i couldnt while she wasalive. That sounds kind of strange. She was almost 99 years old. She was in the last months, even getting out of bed which was upstairs in her house so im writing this book and shes upstairs in her mind was good until the end that we really didnt talkabout the book. She knew i was writing but her family, like ours, youre writing a book, okay and she didnt ask me a lot of questions. I think she knew what i was writing about what it was not until she died and i was somehow able to letgo of things. I was able to put words to feelings that i wasnt able to say while she was alive. Maybe because i felt like she was always looking over me and those were the stories she didnt want totalk about. To return to what we were talking about in the beginning that when i went to the ukraine and it was entirely your idea and i do that, its later that frank keeps talking about. It was a great idea, it was an interesting idea but not one that i would have had time. What came out of it. It was interesting because what came out of it was a response to what wasnt there rather than what was there and thats the real difference between my book and yours is i didnt know how to look and that i made was too young to look and there was so much secrecy about this journey from grandma that my Research Expedition was really like a 2 day jaunt around the ukraine. There was no hope i was going to find anything so i had to imagine whereas you if you can tell a little bit about what your research waslike. Whats really unusual i think about this story and about jonathan and me is that he created this workof fiction. He didnt know much, i didnt know much. I couldnt give him a lot of guidance. And we couldnt tell my mother he was going, that her precious grandson was going to ukraine where the worst things in the world had happened to her and her family so i didnt knowwhat to tell you. But it was when you wrote that book and i guess when i thought that you were helping me fill my whole that people started to call me. First, people went to you and you would say so and so called me or passed me a card or a note and say i have information that im moving on. And at first i wasnt even ready to pursue it but slowly i would pick up some of these pieces of paper. Id make a call or two when we traveled. I would meet people. Actually, its a large thing because of your book. I went to the israeli Literary Festival and people came there and they started to tell me the stories. They said first of all people were outraged about your book , i want to tell you that right now. How could he have done that to our beautiful shtetl, how could he have told these magical realism crazy stories about our beautiful shtetl so those are the first thoughts i was getting andthose were the ones i didnt want to return. People who were telling me youve got it all wrong. But then people started to say well, but you know i know thereal story. And on these trips it wasnt like it was a systematic hunting that i went on a trip and i had people i was going to see. But i kind of seized every opportunity i was there. For example in brazil my mother suggested i meet with someone who owns one of the big jewelry chains in brazil and i thought im in brazil, i dont want to bother with this but i went into one of his stores and i said i want to wait on account with notes and they call the name office and said i know you are, im going to send a card to pick you up and it turns out im a guy and his brother, first of all i have photographic memories and also they grew up in the same dental as my father. Their cousin married my father sister and they were partners of his after the war and they were able to give me addresses and they gave me the address of the store i had in lutsch and it was supposedly like a deli or a bar but it was really money changing and he used these refugees changing currency from one country to another in their heads and making the exchange and that was the real business then when i israel and i met the brothers they said would you like to meet other people who may, who come from the village who may have known yourfamily . And i said sure and remember i was babysitting for sasha and he was maybe ayearold and it was the night before i was going to leave and i said can i get off of babysitting and he said of course. Could you see a 95yearold man, theres no point in waiting for the next trip. But i never brought you on a trip again. So he took me all over israel. And wed be with one person afteranother. It was like an onion. Every layer brought something new. A new piece of information. I met with this 95yearold man and just a terrific guy. Bonnie, he assisted before we left that our cousin gilly who was with me that both of us kiss him goodbye. And were talking and i said you must have known my father, you lived in this village and the mistake i was making is i was using his name. Lewis safran, that wasnt the way they were referred to. Crazy nicknames. Descriptive nicknames and i put some of them down, not even all of them in there. Just somebody who is described by their bellybutton and somebody who was described by his girlfriend but myfathers nickname, i finally said , it meant label my father who was living in another Little Village that became a breakthrough. He told me the village where he lived that i had actually said you on our first journey to the wrong place. Thank you mom. And then we started, i started making phone calls and saying did you know liesel and at the end of that morning i met a woman who knew my father who was able to tell mestories about him because ihad never heard before , so precious. And she asked me to come back and stay with her for a week. I never did, i requested that. But she told me my fathers wifes name. I said we had a child and she didnt remember the child and so many people i asked said there were so many babies that were killed and thats the story. There were somebody People Killed whose names we dont know. I scoured all the databases trying to find my analysts name i couldnt find it. Anyway i went back to dc and i was armed with all this information and i started returning some of those phone calls. I hired somebody in the ukraine who had worked with some friends of mine who knew trucking broad and asked her to do an advanced trip. And i sent her this picture of my father, your grandfather with his family that supposedly hit him and she went to the village whose name i now had because of that wonderful 95yearoldman. By the way a side story, i met this man and he looks at me and he says i was married to yourfathers cousin but nobody knows. So heres a guy whos 95 years old telling a total stranger the story that he hasnt told his children and so many cost stories like that, people who wanted to move on and build new lives and they just somehow bearing the past if they could. Anyway i hired this young woman. She went to the village and almost immediately an old woman looked up and said yes ladle and that study, he was hiding in the house and she said one of his grandchildren still lives with us. This young woman whose name was anna, when you read the book youll see most people who lived in the ukraine were named anna and most of themen were. But this anna , the young, anna was my translator and the old womans name is anna so the young anna went down to see the house. She met the grandson and i met him earlier, a lovely guy but unfortunately one month of the year he gets stone drunk and this was the month. She went in, asked him questions and he couldnt handle anything but she took pictures of the pictures on the wall and she was convinced that she made a match. And she sent me the pictures and i looked at them and i thought it was maybe but i wasnt prepared fully but i actually in this whole journey didnt expect to find anything. So at the advice of a friend of ours, who is a lawyer and investigator, i know some guys who are fbi forensic photography experts, why dont you talk to them . I call this guy who was involved in the silence of the lambs investigation. Really top forensic photography expert. Enough for us. And i went to see him and he said youre going to waste your money. 250 an hour and youre going to waste your money. 02 ukraine, another 250 and i met with him and we looked at my pictures, pictures the young anna had sent me and their measuring distance between features and he said you know, i cant tell you at which point i was just dejected and he said but i cant tell you its not them and he started to give me clues of what i could look for when i went to ukraine to look at pictures that were taken of the exact same and to measure all these features but also the book of the people there, these are not people with huge wardrobes and if theyve been photographed, they might be photographed in the same outfit and that became a critical quote. Should i go on . What i find so interesting in addition to the content of what youre saying and this is what i said earlier about your book is the story is so fascinating but the storytelling is also fascinating. Youre talking about hiring a forensic investigator when were also not talking about it with our parents. Like, with your parents. You talk about this guy who sends for a car, once you to come over and is desperate to tell you a story and gives you a piece of information that is absolutely fundamental to his own life that he didnt tell his own children. Its as if all these people have two shovels and with one there trying to uncover and with the otherthey are trying to bury. Why are we like that . Do you think we are all like that or is this just typical of Holocaust Survivors and their families . The stories that later in their mind i know that my mother, your grandmother to the end of her days still was upset she didnt say goodbye to her mother. So these stories are with them but bringing them forward, telling them, you want to put that behind you. You want to take that shovel and just shovel those stories in the ground and tryto let them go. Sometimes we just cant let them go. I tried and then i took this journey and was able to find my own peace with the story. What do you think grandmas reaction would have been if i had said im going on this trip i want to learn everything i can. Here are the reasons not to worry. That may be a part of this. I want to hear what you have to say or if you had gone to them and you express it as if it were kind of casual like youre in the basement writing the book and shes upstairs. Information travels quickly in the house and youre stuck with a couple other people. Its not that it just didnt come up, there was secrecy going on. So what is the alternative to that kind of secrecy or do you believe that there isnt an alternative . When you look back to you feel any regret . And i dont use that word lightly. I dont even mean to imply that people had a choice. The psychology might have been so fraught that there wasnt a choice. When you look back to you look back with any regret that things werent more open . Of course and having written the book i come out of it a different person. I come out of it a person that is more open in the rest of my life. I guess i was able to pull the plug out. I wouldnt even know how to describe it. But you wonder what grandma would have said if we had told her you were going, i tell you what she said when i told her i was going to imade all the arrangements. I was leaving this group of brothers, everything was planned. I had to find an airline that was would fly in. And the only airline i could find by the way whose name i knew it was lufthansa which was kind of ironic, i was flying to my ancestral homeland on a german carrier. But at least i knew it was safe. But the hardest part of this was pulling her up to tell her that i was gone. Because i knew what her reaction was. I didnt know what it would be as profound as it was. I called her up and i said mom, ive done all these work and these brothers are going to ukraine and im going to go with them. And she screamed into the phone how can you do this to me. Which i was leaving her. Everybody who had been in this place as letter and now i was leaving her. And i said well, its okay. Im taking frank, frank is coming with me our oldest son and she said youre taking your child who has babies, how can you do this. And then the next day, she understood what her response wasnt totally rational and he called me and she said try to understand where all my fear is comingfrom. Then i called her, to the final call was im ready to board the plane and i have to call her to say goodbye. And its time kind of interesting because one of the things that has haunted her most of her life is that she neversaid goodbye to her mother. When she escaped. And here, her one and only precious first daughter was going to go and say goodbye. To her. And she was very rational. She knew that she couldnt talkme out of it. Turns out we were both too strong women and when you put it up against each other, it was quite a scene. And she said well, okay. She said take a good look. Bring some granola bars. Dont eat anything they give you. And whatever you do, dont do anything stupid. Thats what she really knew me well. So she told me this after you had come back and she knew she had made it safely. That response of hers, try to understand where all my fear is coming from. Could almost have been atitle for your book as well. And maybe it gets at what we were talking about and the ease of a certain kind of medication and the difficulty of another. The one thing this desire to uncover one kind of thing and bury another kind of thing. Its a really deep fear that is inherited and i dont think its the fear of physical safety. I think its a fear of emotional safety. Life you know, we, and i dont think this isparticular to us. So many jewish friends have very similar situations. They dont do a whole lot of kissing. They dont do a whole lotof saying i love you. Its interesting, i thought about that recently and i havent discussed it with anybody. But i had in thinking about that recently. What did you think aboutit. I thought about, about my mother. I dont remember how many times she told me that she loved me. I know she did. But that wasnt something she was able to say. He gave me a birthday card. Mind to. Clearly inability to say that had nothing in the world to do with the feelings any. If anything its overwhelming desire to say it can sometimes make saying it difficult because it does expose you, it exposes you. And people who have been hurt dont like to be exposed. Was there anything that you didnt include in the book . We talked about the need to bury certain things, the need to keep certain things distant. Having different audiences for different ideas or different emotions and conversations. When grandma passed away we set a few of you up and you started to include things you wouldnt have included. You dont even have to get into what the actual material might be but were there any things you felt you could not putinto this book . Not so much that. And it was in everything that was already in the book, before she died and was able to dig deeper emotionally. It was able to talk about my father, to talk about how i felt as an eightyearold but how did i feel. It was Digging Deeper into myself. And if there was something i didnt include why would i tell everybody now . A little time has passed and things get strange onzoom. What is that you often said when you are working on the book when you are conceiving on it. And when you are working on it, to the point of what was about to be published youd say im doing it for my family. And to be honest i never quite fully believe that area because i bought old, maybe thats just a way to create less exposure. To make yourself less available to the kind of hurt , to expose yourself only to your family and not to a large reading world. But then something funny happened which was virus. And your book tour which was going to take you all over the states and the world was canceled. And you know, the sad sad reality is that bookstores are closed and literary marketplaces have been decimated and its been a very tough thing for your book. What surprised me is your reaction which is as far as i can tell you really dont seem to carevery much. You love talking to people. I have to say right now i talk to my agent this morning and i was telling him how much im enjoying these resume talks that it surprises me. I thought i would love the reaction of seeing people and i would have but the intimacy of these conversations like the one where having, i have to give a plug right now. He said to me is not about enjoying the talks, its about selling the book so he told me to urge everybody by the book. This is why nobody invites agents over for breakfast. How did i feel that denmark i think that since my mother set i have learned i have a lot of her strength. There are things you cant change. So you just go with it and you make the best of it. Why do i love these zoom talks . Would i have rather been at the dublin book festival where i was invited to be worked at the book festival . Yes but theres nothing i can do about it. And what i can do is make the best of this time and its what she did and i think its the story, the telling. Of what our family has been through that we draw strength from the red their life lessons. And theres nothing i can do. I mean, the book itself has humor in it, as he said about the past. Its about the present and about the future. I cant bring my family back. I cant undo what was done. But i can build for the future. I can look ahead. I can look at the amazing family that we have. At the grandchildren that were blessed with and look ahead. But try to preserve those stories so that they will always know where they came from. Does that answer your question . Beautifully so my last question and will open it up to everybody whos here has to do with the future. You were just alluding to the future. So the sort of mantra of my Jewish Education and maybe even my jewish identity was. The inadequacy of your Jewish Education. The mantra was never forget. Like if i had to boil down to a phrase that was the phrase i heard most often that was the phrase that was just presided over my experience as a young jewish person. Dont forget because its where you come from. Never forget because it can happen again. Which you do forget. And my sense is you never wholly despite being somebody whos so invested in memory you never only approved of that slogan or not as an identity so you can maybe and this part of the conversation by talking a bit about that idea of never forgetting as opposed to perhaps remembering or what never forgetting or remembering will look like for people , for like my kids who i can tell you right now are not going to have the same instant to go way back in the family tree, are not going to have the same instincts to travel the world and in view people to find out the nittygritty of their cultural jewish heritage. Theres not going to be that connection. So how do we, what do we make it. They wont have to openly because i dont implore them and it will be an long after nobody is buying this book. Long after the bookstores all open up. It will be i hope in the libraries. So my grandchildrens grandchildren, but in writing the book. I dont want my children or grandchildren to remember the holocaust, its an terrible thing that happened but i want them to find the joy in it which there is so muchof. In writing the book and reading about memory jewish memory and one of the things that i came across a talk about is that jews are not a people of history. We dont look at the torah, we do but theres no word in hebrew for history or there wasnt, they just adapted english. But were told over and over in the bible, in our holidays remember, remember. Its all about remembering egypt. And this remembering, passover was not too long ago. I cant remember how long ago it was, im tying this altogether but were supposed to see ourselves as it we came out of egypt. Were not talking about how this happened and how many people. Were talking about visualizing ourselves on this journey and its about remembering the journey but with a very personal point of view and i write in the book that when you think about it , history is about the end of something. Its about something that happened, its somebodys story that happened way back when memory is our story and its the beginning of something. Its not the reason to celebrate judaism but it is our story and we have to remember that story. And as i said, the book is certainly tells a very sad story but the story is being told so that it can be remembered. And toward the end of the book i come back to memory and i come back to the fact that the memory is going to live on. It lives on in your children or other grandchildren who are made from Holocaust Survivors. Im sorry, not survivors, members memories of the people who perished but thats not the memory i Carry Forward but i wanted to be a joyful jewish experience and i spent most of my professional life, personal and Public Relations and politics but then helping to build the mountain which was an institution designedto build a jewish future. Thats what its all about. We have to keep those memories but we have to keep them whole. Super. So i think were opening it up now. Right samantha . Thank you esther, jonathan, thank you so much for that and esther, i want to echo what you said. Its definitely a difficult time that we are all experiencing and coping with but the Silver Lining is we were able to put this together and now have hundreds of people access this incredible talk and were just so honored to have you here. So ill start off with this discussion that ellen is in. Her question is what was your first reaction to finding out about your fathers former family . Did you share this knowledge with your other relatives and if so what was their response . I was just totally dazed, i didnt know what to say. Can you imagine . I was somewhere in my 40s as the mother of three and ive been living with all these other, living with my grandmothers and grandfathers. And my aunts and my cousins and suddenly there was this other ghost but this was the person who would have been biologically closest to me. I wasnt quite sure where to put it. I had to absorb it. It took the time to deal with it. Then i scoured databases trying to find something. Couldnt. And ultimately on the search, i found a lot. I found, i was really lucky for jonathan to have opened the door. Its really interesting. I thought i igave the other day in dallas , and in the book i thought about myself as being the hinge in this family thats the way i saw myself as the hinge between my mother who had lived this heroic life and little tiny woman was bigger than life to everybody. Some of her grandchildren called her a superhero and through some super storytellers. And i wasnt sure what my place was. In that story and this fellow who was interviewing me says you know, doors dontopen hinges. And so i was able to put my appropriate place into the story. Definitely and you mentioned about your research , delving into the online information. Can you expand on that . Tell us about your research methods, we have some questions here. Someone asked broken rod was wiped off the map, how are you able to go back and find the shtetl and the residents to interviewand when he found them how were you able to communicate with them. Brought doesnt exist. I collect dirt and rubble from places and i said what did you bring from trochenbrod, it doesnt exist. What i did was i met with survivors and other parts of the world. This shtetl was totally jewish except for the postmaster and it was wiped off the face of your. You cant even get there on a roadmap. But what was interesting is when i took this trip in 2009 , there were some survivors who were on the trip and i write about that journey in the book and it was hysterical. There were survivors who were walking down this lace where nothing existed where there was no mode saying you know, you live here and i lived there and soandso lived there and another survivor would come in and say i live here and you could visualize what this shtetl must of been like with these powerful, funny people telling the stories and arguing with each other so nothing is there. The people i met were other places and i did meet people who knew my mothers family in her village. This young woman, young anna versus the old anna and middleaged anna that i met, the young anna was my translator on the trip. And i was really lucky that she was so invested in it that she done all this research that she found the people forme to talk to so thats how i communicated with people. What is really interesting is the family that hit my father. Eight kept communication with them. And they write to me and they say this is your ukrainian family and id write to them , this is your ukrainian family which wouldnt exist if their grandfather hadnt taken the risk that he tookwhich was a risk to himself and his entire family. At incredible and theres so many stories. Some holocaust testimonies, its one persons decision was changing the course of family history. Its really incredible that you were able to discover that place. So we have a question here. From rebecca, she asks in one part of your memoir you talk about how you use jonathans novel to find elements of truth through fiction so how do you see this intersection between fiction and nonfiction inyour memoir and in johnsons novel for readers who might disparage the two . I should probably ask jonathan that question to. But let me say that he didnt find anything but he went to these places and he found i guess what could fill his whole. I was looking ultimately for Something Different but whats important it about this is the stories need to be told through fiction, through the real stories that jonathan was able to. A different generation and a different audience through that work of fiction and i think it inspiredpeople. Think about where they came from and fortunately because of his work and because of things i found i was able to write the true story but i didnt know another situation where fiction becomes the impetus to find reality and thats kind of interesting. Its very unique. Question from scott. Do you think its harder for children of survivors to deal with postholocaust trauma because maybe there, those stories are based off of secondhand information as opposed to their own memories and experiences. How are theydifferent . Theres been a lot of work done about the transmission of trauma through dna. I dont really, i havent read into that. Theres not much i know about it. I think so much dependson personality. I look at my father who clearly, i couldnt, he could not survive and my mother who feels as if she was a survivor andkept moving forward. Those thoughts are with me but im a natural optimist. And i think the trauma that the stories, i know my mother survived. I know my father survived. I can see strike. And your optimism definitely shines through. Can you tell us a little bit about the story behind the title . I want you to know we are still here, what does that mean . I wish jonathan had suggested that other title you i was struggling with the title and he and i bought talk so little about it but ultimately, when i went to ukraine, i had prepared myself to find nothing. Other people who had taken these journeys tried to make sure that, i was managing my expectations that it would be enough to walk these dirt roads and breathe the air that my friendancestors had. Fortunately i found much more than i had ever hoped. But i also decided to do it the same way that i took these, took the dirt back and in ziploc bags. And thats dirt that now sits on, looks like an art installation in my living. I thought i also wanted to leave something of myself in this place and what can i leave and really who am i leaving it for . Im leaving it in mass graves that ultimately we take an annual picture read its very important to me that were all together and that i, youre my mother died 2018 there were 14 of us in the picture. And i sent them far and wide, im just so proud of the survival that came out of this terrible piece of history. So i decided to take those pictures and i bury them. The same time that i was picking up dirt from these mass graves i buried the picture. Actually frank did most of the hard work with our folks from the hotel and we dug in riyadh and who was i leaving this picture to . But in my mind i was saying to my grandmothers, to my ex, to my cousins, you dont know if its, were still here. If the ultimate message is themessage of optimism. And as i said earlier i cant change what happened to them. But i can talk about the future and the future is we arestill here. Sheila in the Comment Section of the chat she says she references the yiddish resistance song we are still here. Thats good. You can learn somethingfrom each of the thoughts. We have a question here for jonathan actually. Jonathan, how does reading your mothers book make you rethink or reconsider your own fiction . Your own journey back to the ukraine. The book that i wrote about it. Which is not at all. That book, i wrote that book i dont know, 20 yearsago. Ive changed so much. In my life has changed so much. And i havent reread the book since i published it. I would have a hard time remembering to be honest whats in it. There are a lot of ways i was changed by my mothers book. And im sure that it will influence how i write in the future. But for me, whats in thepast is in the past. And im glad that, im glad that wife brought me to where i am for the things that im proud of, the things im embarrassed about. And theres both of those in that book. But i dont have any desire to revisit it. I couldnt have done it without you. So many of us are so glad that you did it. Likewise. So were running out of time. We have time for just one more question. Im sorry that we wont get to so many Great Questions and comments in the chat session but we had so many hundreds of people watching that its just impossible for , but i will close with this one question that comes from andrea and andrea asks are you wondering if you think there are any larger lessons to be learned from reading this story over and above the importance of preserving the stories for the future, do you want your readers to take away from it overall. I think the message were still here. I want them to know what happened. I was able to put those memories down. And my grandchildren,unable to share with anybody else. And im delighted of that but among the things i found when i was in the ukraine is that life is life there. There were divorces, abortions, there were all sorts of things. That i didnt expect to learn about. And to look to the future. I took something a little different away from your book. Which is as it should be. Thats the nice thing about sending a book into the world is that everybody takes from what they take from it. For me, the moral, the book had a moral. Which was its better to talk. , its better to talk about things. We dont have an infinite amount of time with people. And our ability to know them and to have their help in knowing ourselves is limited. So we need to make the most of it and then its very scary. Our family has a lot of things that are really like every other family but i think that its, with you and grandma, with me and grandma, with me and you, with all of us in times of year, it expresses itself in silence. And to me, your book is an argument against that kind of silence. So anybody whos thinking about this, not even just going on these journeys on this search but to writeand tell their stories. So important. I now as a grandmother and a different person for having gone through theprocess of the writing. And if theres one lesson i think particularly right now is resilience. Were still here. We are resilient. Its an important lesson right now which is going through this crazy situation in this country and the world. That you can make it. Absolutely and i think that something that resonates with everybody watching tonight. Thank you once again esther and Jonathan Safran foer. 19 to all of our viewers who tuned in tonight. Make sure you go out and buy esthers book, i want you to know were still here. Its out now on amazon and also politics and prose, the bookstore. Theirwebsite is politics and prose. Com. So definitely go out and buy the book and if you want to learn more about trochenbrod, the area theyare from visit our partners , jewish again. Com. They have a discover your ancestral calendar feature, a Location Finder that esther encountered in your research and im sure that will reveal a lot of fascinating information about your own family history. As i mentioned this program was recorded and will be up on youtube most likely tomorrow and we will be sending outthat link. Look out for it finally if you enjoyed what you saw here , please donate to the museum. We are so grateful for any donations coming in, especially now its a critical time for us. Sign up to become a member and if youre interested in learning more about our upcoming programs , signup for our newsletter. Hello and welcome back to National Book festival presents how to buy the library of