Golden Pages Book Club: Elaine Culbertson, “Mamaleh”

Elaine Culbertson joins us in person to discuss her book “Mamaleh.”

Free, in-person, and open to the community, the Golden Pages Book Club is an opportunity for older adults to connect through reading and discussion. Lunch to follow. Made possible by a grant from the Grotta Fund.

In Mamaleh: A Legacy of Loss and Love, Culbertson has created a new kind of Holocaust survivor story. It is a memoir that combines her mother Dora Freilich’s personal recollections of her life as a survivor with Elaine’s reflections on growing up in a family that had experienced the trauma of the Holocaust. Dora’s survival of two full years in Auschwitz was indeed a miracle, but her beautifully expressed memory of that time, as well as the life that she and her husband built in America is a miracle as well.

Startling, sometimes funny, but always poignant, the book will immerse the reader in the challenges of survival, immigration, and assimilation as told by a mother and daughter who came from two different worlds, but who forged a relationship based on love and respect.

Elaine Culbertson served as program director of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers’ Program, founded by Vladka Meed, that provided professional development to more than 1,100 teachers in its 36-year existence. She currently collaborates with teachers and students to connect the events of the past and the present day.