Remembrance and Erasure in the Post-Holocaust United States

Lee Topp, the author's father, abandoned his faith just after World War II and hid his Jewishness from his children. Lee's mother's first cousin Philip Friedman became one of the United States's first Holocaust scholars after evading the Nazis during the war. This essay juxtaposes Friedman's ardent efforts to document the Jewish catastrophe with Topp's attempts to erase his Jewishness. The author explains how his own life and academic career were shaped by his father's decisions, and thus as well by the long reach of the Holocaust.