Before the Voices Fall Silent

When I finished writing I Want This in Writing, I thought I had reached the end of a long journey. After years spent interviewing relatives, searching archives, and piecing together forgotten family histories, the book finally told the story I had set out to tell.

But one thought stayed with me.

The generation that witnessed these events is disappearing before our eyes. Every year, more voices fall silent.

A written page preserves memories. A human voice preserves something more.

The pauses. The smiles. The moments when emotion interrupts the narrative. The expressions that never make it into a transcript.

That realization led me to begin a new project: a series of recorded conversations with people whose lives were shaped by the Holocaust and its aftermath.

It seemed only natural to begin with my aunt Hava. Over many years, our conversations became one of the foundations of I Want This in Writing. She entrusted me with memories she had carried since childhood, and many of the stories I eventually told began with her voice. It is only fitting that this new journey should begin there as well.

The first episode, Part I: Early Years, follows Hava back to wartime Europe. Rather than recounting history as we know it from books, she remembers it as a child experienced it—one fragment at a time.

For years, I searched for the voices that history had nearly erased. This new project is an attempt to preserve the voices that are still with us—before they, too, become part of history.

I hope you’ll join me for this first conversation.

https://underothernames.com/part-i-early-years-video/

P.S. No, this does not make me Spielberg. But it has been an unexpected and rewarding new adventure.