Erik G. LeMoullec pens an exceptional memoir in, Remember Your Name. Stuck in traffic on the way to celebrate his grandfather’s birthday, Erik’s daughter, Hayden, asks him a question about her great-grandfather. A question he had asked many years ago. “Why does Saba talk like that?” Erik had spent a lot of time with Saba when he was younger. During their time together, Saba shared stories of his life. Growing up wasn’t easy for Saba. Glancing into the rearview mirror at his daughter, Erik begins to tell the story of Teddy. Teddy was a young Jewish boy living in Lodz, Poland. Nine-year-old Teddy played with his friends, went to school, life was full and enjoyable. Then the Germans marched into Lodz. Suddenly, everything changed! Evicted from their home, forced to live in the ghetto, Teddy and his family endured unbearable anti-Semitic treatment. During deportation, Teddy is separated from his family and transported to Auschwitz. At thirteen, held captive in a brutal never-ending nightmare, Teddy lived every moment in the shadow of death. How does one survive such sorrow, such fear, such hatred? You “Remember Your Name.”

Remember Your Name by Erik G. LeMoullec is an emotionally gripping story of survival. LeMoullec powerfully shares the story of his grandfather growing from a boy to a man during the Holocaust. His words paint vivid scenes of terror and incomprehensible hardship. The revelations are hand-over-your-mouth, tearful images of cruelty. However, and most importantly, the memoir reveals the bravery and the sheer will to survive. I was unable to put it down; the narrative compels you to keep reading. Erik’s grandfather reached beyond his youth and personal tragedy and made it meaningful by helping others escape against all odds to freedom. His greatest desire was for his story to help prevent history from repeating itself. Therefore, the narrative is written with profound intention. Erik’s Remember Your Name takes on you a dark and horrendous journey through time, yet leaves you with reverberating, irrevocable hope.

In Remember Your Name, we are introduced to the narrator who is taking a trip to see his father with his wife and daughter. During this road trip, he tells his daughter the story of her great-grandfather. It was 1939 in Łódź, Poland, and Teddy’s life was about to change forever. Germany had just invaded Poland and immediately began imposing cruel laws on the Jewish people in the city. Teddy and his family are forced from their home and pushed into the closed ghetto where starvation and horrible living conditions killed off many Jewish families. Then the deportations began. After losing his mother and both his sisters, his father was taken, leaving him alone. Taken in by his neighbor Kwart, he and his family were all that Teddy had left. Two years later, he and Kwart’s family are taken to Auschwitz where it became very clear what was happening to his people. Struggling to survive, Teddy endures and somehow survives to tell the story which is then told to his great-granddaughter.

This memoir really touched my soul. You read in history books what happened during the Holocaust, but it’s from a historian's point of view. In Remember Your Name, we are given a personal account of what happened in Poland during that time and the true horrors that occurred. Erik G LeMoullec tells the real-life story of what his grandfather endured during World War II. Reading the book I had a feeling that it was based on a real person but didn’t know for sure until I read the about the author section at the end of the novel. LeMoullec has done such a wonderful job of telling his grandfather's story. It’s definitely stuck in my mind just like all the other first-hand accounts that I have read. I commend him for sharing his grandfather's story, especially now when there are so many people out there who don’t even know what the Holocaust was. It’s a vital part of history and stories like Remember Your Name help to keep that history fresh in our minds. I look forward to reading more of LeMoullec’s works.