Review: We Must Not Think of Ourselves, by Lauren Grodstein
Algonquin, 2023. 294 pp. $29

In November 1940, the German authorities in Poland decree that all Jews in Warsaw must live within a ghetto. Adam Paskow doesn’t understand what the Germans gain by this, and he’s never taken much interest in his Jewish heritage or adhered to rituals.

Before this, his background hardly mattered. He taught English at a prestigious high school and married Kasia, the daughter of an influential Polish official. Adam’s mother-in-law, when she spoke to him at all, always reminded him he was unwelcome to the family. But he always felt that Kasia accepted him completely.

Except that she died two years before the war, and he still grieves her. The wheelbarrow he loaded in their old neighborhood and brought to his new home in the ghetto contained many of her belongings, a circumstance that influences the story.

But though Adam thinks of himself as someone of no distinction in any sense, he discovers he now matters to the German overlords, if only as an object they may destroy at any time, without warning. If he stumbles and a guard takes exception, he risks a beating or a bullet. If he hesitates to follow an order, the same applies. But that’s true for everyone.

So it comes as a surprise when a group that innocuously calls itself Oneg Shabbat (“the joy of the Sabbath”) invites Adam to join them. Its purpose? To bear witness and record what happens in the ghetto, document the lives of people the conquerors have declared invisible. He wonders who’d care and why, but participating in the “archive” effort gives him something to do. He begins to interview the people around him and take down what they say.

Grodstein, a graceful writer with a keenly observant eye, conveys the ghetto in its physicality—the rank odors, screams and gunshots in the street, the facts of ten people living in a tiny apartment, as Adam does. She depicts the fear that pervades the air, the hope some people cling to, their ingenuity at making do, the backbiting, the sudden twists of fortune that bring unexpected bounty—a cookie, maybe—or death from a sadistic guard.

Consequently, people learn to take pleasures where they can—and somehow, Adam begins a love affair with Sala, a married woman sharing his apartment.

Throughout, lives narrow as rations get shorter, people barter their precious objects for necessities, and danger increases. Adam endures this shrinking process, as he surrenders Kasia’s clothes and jewelry for food for another day or two and hears through the Oneg Shabbat leadership—which has contact with the outside world—news that would shake the ghetto if it were generally known. He keeps it to himself, at least at first.

But even after a few weeks in the ghetto, the pressure takes its toll:

It occurred to me that I was so tired my very bones hurt. The muscles that braided their way up my back had tightened and hardened; my jaw had been clenched for so long I sometimes used my fingers to pry them apart. And all this had happened while I wasn’t even paying attention. I had been sleeping on the sofa cushions on the floor near a drafty window for weeks now.

Grodstein takes great care with her characters. I particularly like the uneasy relationship between Adam and Kasia’s father, which casts a shadow on the son-in-law’s life in the ghetto. But I could mention many instances of sharp characterization. Dozens of people have roles in the story, all portrayed with admirable economy.

The author pays special attention to the children, many of whom display more grit and resilience than the adults; they’re the most adept traders, the fearless risk-takers. Adam has more contact with them than the average male, because he teaches English to any child who wishes to learn it, and he interviews them all for the “archive” project.

Grodstein portrays a whole, heartbreaking world spanning just a few streets, most of it in three rooms. I like how she never succumbs to sentimentality or hero-worship, and she gives her characters flaws. They’re not saints, just people struggling to survive—and the reader knows what they don’t.

Given these lovingly crafted portraits, I’m startled to say that I don’t always believe Adam’s emotional reactions. (He’s annoyingly passive at times, but that’s not what I mean.) To me, he seems more American than Old World, and not because he teaches English or treasures Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn. Rather, he carries an air of informality, especially in the classroom, which strikes me odd for a European, particularly one who’s grown up in a highly stratified society.

Most significantly, though, Adam plays with possibilities and notions of individual freedom with little sense that he’s transgressing boundaries. That feels American too. I wanted him to struggle more with unwritten rules, to show more Polish-ness.

I also have my doubts about the ending, but rest assured there’s no celestial choir or uplifting redemption involved. We Must Not Think of Ourselves has a hard edge—appropriately, considering the subject matter—and stands head and shoulders above most Holocaust novels.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.