The Holocaust remembered
One of Morey Kogul’s main goals in writing a book about his late father’s experiences during the Holocaust was to convince readers they were hearing from the survivor himself.
Kogul, a 43-year-old urban planner and River Hill resident, chose to write in the first person to establish an emotional connection between the audience for his debut novel, “Running Breathless: An Untold True Story of WWII and the Holocaust,” and Van Wolf Kogul, who died in 2014 at age 91.
The author will discuss his novel and sign books on Wednesday at the Miller Branch Library in Ellicott City, to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is being marked on Jan. 27 this year. Audience members will be invited to share their stories.
Between 1941 and 1945, 6 million European Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany at concentration camps, along with members of other persecuted groups.
Kogul’s father, a Polish Jew, survived by fleeing to the Soviet Union, where he was involuntarily enlisted to serve in the Soviet army, a process known as conscription.
How Jews survived on the Eastern Front of World War II is “a relatively little-known story,” Kogul said.
On a family trip from Denver 25 years ago to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other Washington landmarks, Kogul made a pledge to his father to tell his story. With his novel’s publication by Mascot Books in June, the author finally kept that promise.
“I was woefully underprepared as a teenager to conduct that first interview with my father, since he never talked about what he’d been through,” Kogul recalled of his dad, who was 53 when he was born.
Kogul crammed a binder with notes, placed it on a shelf along with the recording he’d made of the interview and went off to college a year later. Five years passed before he asked his father for a second session.
“Both conversations were very, very difficult,” sometimes driving both men to tears, Kogul said.
But father and son persevered. The result was a 40-page outline that Kogul reviewed with his father, and which later became the foundation for his novel.
Kogul wrote the book while on paternity See SURVIVOR, page 8
Kogul, a 43-year-old urban planner and River Hill resident, chose to write in the first person to establish an emotional connection between the audience for his debut novel, “Running Breathless: An Untold True Story of WWII and the Holocaust,” and Van Wolf Kogul, who died in 2014 at age 91.
The author will discuss his novel and sign books on Wednesday at the Miller Branch Library in Ellicott City, to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is being marked on Jan. 27 this year. Audience members will be invited to share their stories.
Between 1941 and 1945, 6 million European Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany at concentration camps, along with members of other persecuted groups.
Kogul’s father, a Polish Jew, survived by fleeing to the Soviet Union, where he was involuntarily enlisted to serve in the Soviet army, a process known as conscription.
How Jews survived on the Eastern Front of World War II is “a relatively little-known story,” Kogul said.
On a family trip from Denver 25 years ago to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other Washington landmarks, Kogul made a pledge to his father to tell his story. With his novel’s publication by Mascot Books in June, the author finally kept that promise.
“I was woefully underprepared as a teenager to conduct that first interview with my father, since he never talked about what he’d been through,” Kogul recalled of his dad, who was 53 when he was born.
Kogul crammed a binder with notes, placed it on a shelf along with the recording he’d made of the interview and went off to college a year later. Five years passed before he asked his father for a second session.
“Both conversations were very, very difficult,” sometimes driving both men to tears, Kogul said.
But father and son persevered. The result was a 40-page outline that Kogul reviewed with his father, and which later became the foundation for his novel.
Kogul wrote the book while on paternity See SURVIVOR, page 8
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