We Must Not Think of Ourselves: A Novel

Content Warning: This section discusses the Holocaust, antisemitism, gun violence, death, and suicide.

Emanuel Ringelblum visits Adam Paskow’s classroom in the Warsaw ghetto in December 1940 and invites Adam to be a part of the archival project “Oneg Shabbat.” He is to observe and write the truth of everything he witnesses. Ringelblum intends these observations to serve as a record of Jewish history. He warns that if Adam’s notebook is ever found, he will be killed. Nevertheless, Adam agrees and begins to write as soon as Ringelblum leaves.

Adam’s first entry is about himself: He was once a public school teacher of foreign languages. Now, he teaches English in a basement to a collection of six kids. Adam has no family here. He is a widower, and his brother and mother both moved to Palestine some years ago. Adam’s wife, Kasia, was Polish and the daughter of a government “bigwig,” Henryk Duda.

Adam and Kasia met at university while studying English literature and were married in 1930. Kasia’s mother, Anna, disowned her for marrying a Jew, while Adam’s own mother was too grief-stricken over his father’s recent death to care much that Adam had married a Catholic.