In the last several months, I conducted two interviews of my father to learn more about my grandparents who immigrated to Canada from Turkey and Lithuania. As time passes and first generation children assimilate, family history becomes diluted, changed and lost.
My father looks through old family photographs from Turkey. He has no idea who most of these relatives are. 
This is a photograph of my great grandparents, great uncle, great aunts and grandmother in Turkey.
These are
photographs of a Torah dedication and celebration in Lithuania. My Great
Grandmother raised money in Canada for this Torah. 
I recently read something about the distinction between living memory and distant memory--that living memory are the current, and semi-current threads shared and retained by three to four generations (about 80 years). Once information moves past the 80-year mark, it loses even more specificity than it already has, and often becomes completely destabilized, forgotten, or turned into the stuff of legends and myth. Distant memory is anything which has gone past the point of retention in the minds of the living receivers.
ReplyDeleteBoth terms can also be referred to as "living history" and "distant history."
That's very interesting. I'd like to read more. Where did you read about this?
ReplyDelete