Four years ago, St. Louis poet and author Jason Sommer realized something terrifying was happening: the stories his Holocaust-survivor father had spent decades telling were beginning to disappear.
Now, as Sommer prepares to speak at the J’s “Books & Bagels” series later this month, the urgency behind his memoir, “Shmuel’s Bridge,” feels even more personal. What began as a son documenting his father’s memories has quietly become something else entirely: an act of preservation against time itself.
Sommer’s father, Jay, survived Nazi brutality, escaped a labor camp in Budapest and later built a life in America after World War II. But more than 70 years after arriving in New York from war-torn Europe, the memories that once defined his life began slipping away.
Observing that loss, Sommer revisited footage and memories from a 2001 trip the two took together across Eastern Europe. Father and son retraced the places that shaped Jay’s life: the town of his birth, the labor camp he escaped and Auschwitz, where much of his family was murdered.
“Along with my camera I brought a notebook, expecting to record things for myself,” Sommer said in a 2022 interview with the Jewish Light. “I hadn’t written a memoir before, beyond poems, and I had no expectation of writing a book. It was only years later when my father’s memories began disappearing that I felt the urgency to preserve his experiences, and my experiences with him.”
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That emotional urgency sits at the center of “Shmuel’s Bridge,” which blends Holocaust history with the deeply personal story of a son trying to hold onto memories his father can no longer fully carry himself.
Memory becoming communal
The stories Jay Sommer once carried alone now live in recordings, notebooks, poems and in the memories of the son who raced to preserve them before they disappeared.
At some point, children of survivors’ stop being listeners and become archivists.
For Jason Sommer, that moment came just in time.
Event details
What: Books & Bagels with Jason Sommer, author of “Shmuel’s Bridge”
When: Wednesday, May 27 | 10 a.m. brunch | 11 a.m. author presentation
Where: The J – Staenberg Family Complex, Arts & Education Building, 2 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis
The event is part of the J’s “Books & Bagels” literary brunch-and-learn series and includes brunch and a discussion with Sommer about memory, family and the lasting impact of Holocaust survival. Registration is $12.97 and includes brunch and fees.
