Piecing Scattered Souls: Maine, Germany, Mexico, China and Beyond

“This haunting autobiography is a major contribution to the newly growing body of Holocaust-survivor-children's memoirs. Its two-part title says much: Piecing Scattered Souls highlights the care in the centripetal organization of the three-generation narrative dealing with the author's survivor parents, his own generation of Holocaust-survivor children and their wives, and the next generation of his four children. The tome's subtitle, Maine, Germany, Mexico, China, and Beyond, highlights the macrocosmic venue in which the events unfold. David O. Solmitz's evocation of his professor-father, Walter Solmitz, a survivor of the post-Crystal-Night weeks-long incarceration in Germany's first concentration camp, Dachau, is comprehensive: In his analytical portrayal, Solmitz is sensitive to the all-pervasive survivor guilt that led to his father's suicide in his fifties. Employing Helen Epstein's path-breaking work, the author convincingly shows how that survivor guilt was projected onto Walter's only child — leading to David's lifelong activities as community organizer, teacher, and peace activist. The rich collection of firsthand documentary material throughout the memoir makes the narrative real and believable. Particularly compelling is the detailed, comprehensive report by Walter Solmitz that serves as the volume's first appendix: a rare account of the Jewish prisoners' daily lives in Dachau at the end of 1938. The words I would use to characterize this unique volume are: 'honest,' 'engaging,' 'self-probing,' and 'thoughtful.' Not only was Walter Solmitz a philosopher in the best sense of the word, his son, David, is one as well.” —Steven Cerf, George Lincoln Skolfield, Jr., Professor of German and Holocaust Studies, Bowdoin College