Every family has many stories that could be told. Some stories are easy to write, and others are difficult. Sometimes, you may need to travel to the location and immerse yourself in the history and land. Such is the case with Kelly Rimmer’s The Things We Cannot Say.” Rimmer faced the same challenge that many descendants of family members who lived through World War II face – a lack of family stories.
Rimmer’s grandparents were Polish emigrants to the United States after World War II. Caught up in learning a new language and culture, they didn’t speak of their lives in Poland under the Nazi occupation. Both grandparents passed away in the 1980s, and years later, Rimmer went on a journey to visit their homeland and learn. She had already decided to write a book about a Polish family and a granddaughter tasked with discovering the story. Using her own experiences traveling in Poland, Rimmer wrote The Things We Cannot Say.
We’re reading The Things We Cannot Say as our spring selection for the Family Locket Book Club on Goodreads. Although our writing as family historians generally falls under nonfiction, we can learn from reading fictional accounts based on real events. Similar to Rimmer, we may have only a sliver of the story passed down, and research will need to fill in the gaps. Rimmer writes:
I was changed by the experience of connecting iwth distant roots and having the opportunity to see a little of the world my grandparents knew as their own. And while Alice’s family scenario is so much more difficult than my own, I have tired to writ her story in such a way that women of many different family situations can relate to her journey. Where it was possible, I drew on my own experienes inPoland to informat the way that Alice experienced hers.
The Things We Cannot Say weaves two stories together. The first centers on Alice, a young mother challenged by raising an incredibly bright daughter and an autistic son. Her grandmother has had a stroke and wants Alice to find some people from her past in Poland whom Alice has never heard of. The second story concerns Alina, a young Polish woman living through the Nazi occupation of her small village. As the story progresses, we find ourselves engrossed in the lives of both women. Not until the end do we discover the connection between Alice and Alina and see the healing that comes from discovering family stories.
Rimmer writes:
History’s most important lessons ccan be difficult to confront and even harder to share – but we are all richer when those lessons persist through generations. Perhaps more than ever, we need the wisdom our forebears gleaned through blood, sweat and more than their share of tears.
In researching the book, Rimmer traveled to Poland and stood on the land her grandmother’s family had farmed before the war. She read extensively about life in Poland under the Nazi occupation and learned from staff at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, the Warsaw Uprising Museum, and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
We can do a similar trip to the past, whether it is reading books about the era, visiting the location, or learning from staff at a local museum or historical society. Our research into our ancestor’s past will inform our perspective as we write a story based on the sparse facts we may be drawing upon.
Writing our ancestors’ stories will change us and give us the courage to face our own challenges.
Best of luck in all your genealogical endeavors!
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Thanks for the note!