Writing requires thousands of decisions — everything from whether to use a comma or a dash to what’s in the next chapter. Voices in my head chatter incessantly and sometimes scream out:

“Do this. Don’t do that.”

“Speed it up”

“Turn right here.”

“I mean, left.”

“Here!”

Screeeeeeeeeeech.

E. L Doctorow has said, “Writing a novel is like driving across country at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

If so, the voices are my backseat driver.

Other writers seem to travel with the same companion. One novelist told me that if it weren’t for writing, she’d be certifiably crazy. Where else can you hear voices and be called “creative”? For me, writing is metabolic — interrupting my sleep, inserting itself into my daily drives and showers, invading my most intimate conversations.

But I don’t always have paper and pen handy. Then, when the voices clamor loudly, I find a quiet corner, dial my home phone on my cell phone, and leave myself a voicemail to record the lines swimming in my head. I just hope no one picks up the messages before I get to them.

Not a good profession for the inhibited, the indecisive, or those who don’t like backseat drivers.

The Erfelden Museum's exhibit of the old dry goods store

The museum of local history in Erfelden, Germany boasts a strange exhibit — the cabinetry and wall hangings from the dry goods store that once served the town.

“The store belonged to the Jewish family named Stein,” explained Katarina Kluck, a lifelong resident of the town who organized the display.

“When the whole family fled in the late 1930s, the Steins sold everything. The new owners didn’t pay much for the store and they ran it until 1982. But in all those years, they didn’t change anything. The store is old and typical of the village. It has the drawers for flour and the old scale to weigh the sugar.”

The posters hanging in the exhibit

Even the poster ads from the 1930s for milk and marmalade hang in the exhibit.

“Some people in the town wanted to throw away the old store,” said Kluck. “But I felt if we throw it away, we forget.

“Others don’t want to remember,” adds Kluck. “They don’t want to see the history of our town.”

“But I won’t close my eyes.”

My German friend, Gert Krell, and I are launching a new blog called “Shadows of the Holocaust: An American and a German discuss the legacies of the Nazi era.“ The blog will be an ongoing conversation between an American and a German that explores how the Holocaust has defined the lives of a generation removed.

Here’s a brief bio of my German correspondent:

Dr. Gert Krell is a retired professor of international relations from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. Previously, he was a director of research and also the executive director at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). He briefly served as the assistant director for regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Gert writes scholarly articles and is working on a book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Born in Darmstadt in 1945, Gert studied English, history and political science at Marburg and Frankfurt/Main, received his Ph.D. from Frankfurt University in 1976 and his Venia Legendi (authorization to teach at a university) in International Relations from Giessen University in 1984.

You can learn more about Gert and his thinking at our new blog. I will post a link to the new blog at this website or you can visit the blog directly at shadowsoftheholocaust.com. Our first exchange called, “The Sting of the Wasp,” will appear within the next few weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Irving Berlin wrote the best-selling record of all time – the yuletide ballad, “White Christmas.”

Irving Berlin? Christmas? That’s right, Irving Berlin, a self-taught Jewish immigrant who chose to name himself after an English actor and a German city. His original name was Israel Baline.

In 54 melancholy words, Berlin captured the World War II yearning for happier times, hearth and home, the mythic New England past. Amazingly, the sales of the 1940 secular hymn have exceeded 125 million worldwide and the song has been translated into Dutch, Yiddish, Japanese, and even Swahili.

Some say Berlin was mulling over a song satirizing America’s sentimentality about Christmas when he found the inspiration for “White Christmas.” Others, like Jody Rosen, author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, claim that the song expressed the desire of Jewish immigrants to assimilate, like the kid pressing his nose against the candy store window.

“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know.”

Ironically, they were “the ones” Berlin never knew. “White Christmas” was the Jewish composer’s longing for a holiday that didn’t belong to him.

Holidays are an odd roll call for families. Yet, ours comes up sadly short. The Holocaust continues to take its toll — through death and dysfunction — seventy years after the event.

In Motherland, I wrote: “At each holiday dinner table, she (my mother) must have looked around for the relatives who should have been there, accounting for the missing. Any occasion was a reminder to her of who was gone.”

We live with a presence of absence.

But we are not alone. Wars, genocides, even natural deaths produce palpable, empty chairs at the holiday table. America’s most popular Civil War composer George Root captured the anguish of loss in the chorus of his song, “The Vacant Chair.”

We shall meet, but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our ev'ning prayer.

How can writers capture an unfathomable historical event? How can they give readers a grasp of the dimensions of genocide? How can they portray the legacy of the Holocaust?

“The death of one man is a tragedy,” Joseph Stalin once said. “The death of a million is a statistic.”

Statistical historians try to quantify the truth through numbers; writers attempt to assign meaning and context to those numbers.

Writers know the power of one.

Statistics are a lot like a woman wearing a bikini, Cal State, East Bay history professor Jerry Henig once said. “What the bikini reveals is interesting; what it hides is essential.”

Memoirists and novelists don’t have much use for the bikini.

This week, Chicago was blanketed in snow. That put an end to my daily bike rides. I fear my blogging is at risk.

Most writing ideas strike me while I’m riding. That’s not surprising, given the research that exercise enhances creative thought. For me, biking is a way to stoke my brain. I’m often asked, why not use a stationary bike? Not the same. The combination of exercise and nature feeds me.

Ideas also strike me while I’m driving, walking, even showering, but not with the same frequency or intensity. That’s why I am the last biker off the path in December and the first one out in March…maybe even February.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping all my birds don’t fly south. (See “Birding and Blogging” below.)