In 1978, Jakub Slucki passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of seventy-seven. A Holocaust survivor whose first wife and two sons had been murdered at the Nazi death camp in Chelmno, Poland, Jakub had lived a turbulent life. Just over thirty-seven years later, his son Charles died of a heart attack. David Slucki’s Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons tells the story of his father and his grandfather, and the grave legacy that they each passed on to him. This is a story about the Holocaust and its aftermath, about absence and the scars that never heal, and about fathers and sons and what it means to raise young men. David will read excerpts from the book and discuss it with Simon Lewis, Professor of English at the College of Charleston.

David Slucki is an assistant professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston. He is the author of Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons, and The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History. He is co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation and the forthcoming Laughter After: Humor and the Holocaust.