Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

Elizabeth Rynecki on Chasing Portraits of pre-Holocaust Jewish Poland

Moshe Rynecki's paintings depicting Jewish life in Poland were scattered and presumed lost after he and most of his family were murdered in the Holocaust.

Today, three quarters of a century later, his great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Rynecki, has undertaken a quest to reconstruct his life's work and to reconnect with her family's past. Chasing Portraits is her moving first person account of her search for the artistic legacy that her great-grandfather hid in an attempt to save it before the Nazis came.

 A Talk with Elizabeth Rynecki on Chasing Portraits, a memoir at the intersection of art, history, family legacy and the Holocaust.

UPCOMING RELEASE: The Beginner's Cow: Memories of a Volga German from Kansas

 

American Midwest history told with humor and grace

Loren Schmidtberger waited three quarters of a century to tell his stories of rural life in Kansas during the Dust Bowl years.

Now, at the age of 88, Schmidtberger is making his literary debut. Hailed for its "wry humor and gentle grace," his The Beginner's Cow: Memories of a Volga German from Kansas will be published by Truman State University Press in December.

How to write about the past, in particular a now mythical event such as the Dust Bowl? What are the challenges to launching a book project in one's eighties? What is the role of a book group? (And what in the world is a "beginner's cow"?)

A talk with Loren Schmidtberger, Professor Emeritus of English at Saint Peter's University, on leaving a record, humor, grief, American history, and the importance of book groups.