"My Father Always Said"

In Schwartz’s essay, she introduces us to the events that she found on the trip to her families original home in “Rindheim”. In the years past World War II, many Jewish families left Germany and other European countries. Schwartz is a first generation American in her family, and each of her experiences is a precedent in her family.

Segment One: We’re introduced to Schwartz’s family history, and how her family relates to the American style. This teenager who has grown up in America can not seem to grasp her family’s rules, as most teenagers do not. It is interesting that although there are extreme cultural differences between her father and herself she recognizes them as the same person. In the first segment, she states that her father fled with their family because everyone else did it. When Schwartz tries to use her fathers argument against him, it backfires. They are opposites, both culturally and maturely.

Segment Two: This is where we began to depart in the past of Schwartz’s father. Schwartz has grown up in Brooklyn, NY and even in the best areas it has always been a busy fast paced city. Once arriving in Rindheim, Schwartz realizes that her father was raised on a farm. Very shortly after she arrives at the house, she presumes her father to be a “hick.” That draws the cultural barrier straight in the middle. From her father’s adolescence, the word hick was probably never introduced. Upon meeting an old neighbor of her father, and spoke primarily in German. This separates the language barrier.

Segment Three: This is where we are introduced to the religious values that Schwartz’s family had to give up when they immigrated to America. This is before the history of the holocaust became public knowledge, as is evident by Schwartz’s ignorance of Kristallnacht. In many cases, this is where we can identify with Schwartz’s father. His heart, which was fulfilled with the joy of going to temple, is now empty and shattered just like his burned temple. The Jews who returned to Rindheim only return to visit graves of lost ones. I wouldn’t even just say that they had to be loved ones. Every life that was lost, whether they were known or unknown, is shattered like the glass in his temple. This is where Schwartz begins to understand her father.

Segment Four: This is where they visit Schwartz’s fathers’ school. They talk about the differences between Jewish schooling and Christian school. Even though they learned different things, and Christians went to school more than Jews, after class let out they were all just kids. There was no cultural barrier. This is the first parallel Schwartz can identify with her life in Queens. They also discuss how her parents met, but she didn’t seem to have too much of an opinion about it.

Segment Five: This segment is probably the most visual of the entire essay. It discusses Schwartz’s personal experience, not just her families history. She tries to relate her own life, her personality into the life that her father escaped from. This is where Schwartz visits her paternal grandparents grave. She tries to imagine them. What they’re life would have been, but all she could see was their graves with stones on them. She learns that putting stones on a loved ones grave is a tribute to those lost lives. “The dead souls need the weight of remembrance, and then they rise up to God more easily.

Segment Six: Schwartz recognizes that eighty-seven Jews had been deported to concentration camps from Rindheim. This is when Schwartz is introduced to remorse and pain because unlike losing a loved one that you had the chance to know, she never had the chance to meet these people. She has no idea who or what family she had lost during those years, and she may never know. This is where the cultural barrier is non- existent. She could relate to the people whose lives she never knew. She could relate to her father, and how he grew up. I believe that this trip was more for her father than for Schwartz. It was to help him reconnect with his past, and say goodbye to it.