We Must Not Think of Ourselves Summary, Characters and Themes
We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein is a historical novel set during World War II, capturing the harrowing experiences of life in the Warsaw ghetto. The story follows Adam Paskow, a Jewish man who participates in a secret project led by Emanuel Ringelblum to document the lives of Jewish residents trapped in the ghetto.
As Adam navigates his own grief and the crumbling world around him, he faces unimaginable choices, explores complex relationships, and confronts the moral and emotional turmoil of survival. This novel vividly captures the resilience of the human spirit amidst unimaginable darkness.
Summary
The story is told from the perspective of Adam Paskow, a Jewish man relocated to the Warsaw ghetto in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. Before the war, Adam had been married to Kasia, a Catholic woman who tragically passed away from a brain injury.
Her influential father, Henryk Duda, arranges for Adam to secure a somewhat better place in the ghetto in exchange for the couple’s old apartment. Henryk also asks for Kasia’s wedding jewelry to help Adam flee Poland, but Adam decides to keep it as a safeguard for the future.
Upon reaching the ghetto, Adam discovers that Henryk has made empty promises: the same apartment has been offered to two other families—Emil and Sala Wiskoff, along with their two sons, and the Lescovecs, a family of five. With no other options, they are forced to share the small, cramped space.
Adam takes a job at the local Aid Society and soon reconnects with a former student, Szifra Joseph, who convinces him to start teaching English to some of the children in the ghetto.
Szifra, known for her striking appearance, is rumored to have dealings with Nazi guards, leading Adam to grow suspicious.
Adam is soon recruited by Emanuel Ringelblum to join the Oneg Shabbat Archive, a dangerous but vital project to document life in the ghetto.
As Adam conducts interviews and observes the daily struggles of the community, tensions rise in the ghetto.
One day, his suspicions about Szifra are confirmed when he accidentally sees her involved with a Nazi officer.
Despite this, Szifra insists that she is only doing what is necessary to provide for her family, particularly her two younger brothers. Soon after, her mother dies from illness, leaving Szifra as the sole caretaker of her siblings.
Life in the ghetto becomes more desperate as people struggle for survival. Smuggling becomes a lifeline, though it is fraught with danger, as demonstrated when one of the Lescovec boys is killed during a smuggling attempt.
In the midst of this chaos, Adam develops a romantic relationship with Sala Wiskoff, though their affair is fraught with guilt and secrecy.
As deportations and violence intensify, Henryk’s offer to smuggle Adam out of Poland resurfaces.
Though wary, Adam gives Henryk Kasia’s necklace in exchange for papers. However, he learns too late that Henryk has been killed for double-crossing both the Nazis and the Polish resistance.
With no other choice, Adam turns to a Polish guard named Nowak, giving him the necklace to secure his escape.
Before fleeing, Adam finds Szifra’s lifeless body in his classroom, along with identification papers meant for her brothers. Knowing that the Wiskoff boys’ survival is now his responsibility, Adam replaces the brothers’ photos with those of Sala’s sons.
Finally, Adam secures passage out of the ghetto, taking Sala’s children with him, leaving behind his work with the Oneg Shabbat Archive, and reflecting on the weight of responsibility for the lives now entrusted to him.
Characters
Adam Paskow
Adam Paskow is the novel’s central character and the first-person narrator, through whose perspective we witness the tragedies of the Warsaw ghetto. A Polish Jew, Adam is an emotionally complex figure who has endured the loss of his wife, Kasia, before the invasion.
This tragedy haunts him as he navigates the brutal and claustrophobic conditions of the ghetto. Adam’s sense of loss and isolation becomes even more pronounced as he is forced to give up his home and his memories of Kasia, trading them for a place in the ghetto and, later, for the promise of escape.
Adam is not a hero in the traditional sense, but a deeply human character—cynical, pragmatic, and at times morally ambiguous. His participation in Emanuel Ringelblum’s Oneg Shabbat Archive gives him a sense of purpose, a way to resist the dehumanization around him by recording the lives of his people.
Adam’s emotional arc moves through grief, duty, and love, especially as he grows close to Sala, leading to his eventual acceptance of responsibility for her children. Despite his feelings of love for Sala, Adam’s final act of escape with her children is not one of personal triumph but rather a survival borne of guilt and desperation.
Kasia Duda
Although Kasia is dead at the start of the novel, her presence and memory significantly influence Adam’s actions. A Polish Catholic woman, Kasia represents the world Adam lost, a life outside the ghetto.
The fact that Adam holds on to her wedding jewelry as a “safety net” signifies not only his attachment to her memory but also his struggle to reconcile his current reality with the happier life he once knew. Kasia’s death marks the beginning of Adam’s slow descent into the harsh realities of the war, and her absence drives his interactions with other characters, particularly her father, Henryk.
Her memory creates a subtle tension between Adam’s Jewish identity and his marriage to a Catholic woman, which has distanced him from both Polish society and his fellow Jews.
Henryk Duda
Henryk, Kasia’s father, is a wealthy, well-connected Polish man who initially offers Adam some protection by securing him a place in the Warsaw ghetto. However, his character is marked by selfishness and betrayal.
He demands Kasia’s jewelry from Adam in exchange for papers that could help Adam escape the ghetto. Henryk is a morally ambiguous figure, someone who represents the compromises and corruption that many faced in order to survive.
His eventual downfall, being caught double-dealing between the Nazis and the Polish Army, signals the limits of his power and influence, as well as the inevitable collapse of those who try to manipulate both sides of the war for personal gain.
Emanuel Ringelblum
Emanuel Ringelblum is a historical figure and the driving force behind the Oneg Shabbat Archive project. In the novel, he recruits Adam to join his efforts in documenting the lives of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, a project that represents a form of intellectual and spiritual resistance against the Nazis.
Ringelblum is portrayed as a determined and principled man, committed to preserving the truth about the Jewish community under siege. His dedication to the archive serves as a contrast to Adam’s growing cynicism and is a reminder of the collective responsibility the ghetto’s inhabitants bear toward each other.
Ringelblum’s influence on Adam underscores the importance of memory and testimony, even in the face of overwhelming despair and destruction.
Szifra Joseph
Szifra is one of Adam’s former students and a young woman who becomes emblematic of the moral compromises individuals were forced to make under Nazi occupation. She initially appears to be a dedicated student, but as rumors of her fraternizing with Nazi guards spread, her character takes on a more tragic and complex dimension.
Szifra’s involvement with the Nazi guards, trading sex for food and protection, reflects the dire choices available to those trying to survive in the ghetto. Her final request to Adam—to teach her how to say “I am a virgin” in German—highlights her vulnerability and the desperation she feels in trying to protect her family.
Szifra’s murder is a devastating moment, not only because of the violence she endures but also because her death signals the ultimate failure of her efforts to escape the ghetto with her brothers. Adam’s discovery of the Polish kennkartes in her pocket symbolizes both the lost hope for her future and the harsh realities of survival.
Sala Wiskoff
Sala is the wife of Emil Wiskoff and becomes Adam’s love interest over the course of the novel. Her character represents resilience and pragmatism in the face of unbearable hardship.
Sharing the cramped apartment with Adam and her family, Sala endures the loss of her fellow tenants, her dwindling resources, and the constant fear of deportation. Her relationship with Adam grows out of shared suffering and proximity, though her primary concern remains her two sons.
Sala’s affair with Adam is not born of pure romantic passion but from a desperate need for comfort and human connection in the dehumanizing environment of the ghetto. Her willingness to let Adam take her sons to safety, even though it means staying behind herself, showcases her maternal sacrifice and underscores her emotional complexity as a character caught between love, duty, and survival.
Emil Wiskoff
Emil is Sala’s husband and the father of their two sons, yet he remains a somewhat passive figure in the novel, overshadowed by the more active roles of Adam and Sala. Emil’s emotional and physical deterioration as the ghetto’s conditions worsen reflects the broader collapse of families and social structures under Nazi oppression.
His inability to protect his family or improve their situation contrasts with Adam’s growing role as a protector for Sala and her children. Emil’s presence serves as a reminder of the countless men in the ghetto who, stripped of their roles as providers and protectors, succumbed to the overwhelming forces of starvation, disease, and despair.
Nowak
Nowak is a Polish guard who smuggles goods into the ghetto in exchange for valuable items, serving as a link between the ghetto inhabitants and the outside world. His role in the story represents the morally gray area of collaboration and exploitation.
Although he is helping Adam by facilitating his escape, Nowak’s motivations are purely mercenary. He does not care about Adam’s survival beyond what he can extract in return for his services.
His character underscores the transactional nature of survival in the ghetto, where even the most intimate human relationships are reduced to bargaining and exchange.
Themes
The Intersection of Survival, Morality, and Compromise in the Face of Inhumanity
One of the most complex themes in We Must Not Think of Ourselves revolves around the moral compromises people are forced to make in order to survive the horrors of the Holocaust.
Throughout the novel, Adam and many others in the Warsaw ghetto are placed in situations where survival requires them to act in ways that would have been unthinkable in peacetime.
Szifra, for instance, resorts to selling her body to Nazi guards, a choice that causes her immense shame but is driven by her need to protect and provide for her younger brothers. While Adam is initially horrified by her actions, he eventually understands that these moral transgressions are, for Szifra, acts of love and sacrifice.
Similarly, Adam’s decision to hand over Kasia’s wedding necklace, a symbol of his deep connection to his deceased wife, represents a profound moral dilemma. He surrenders a piece of his past in the hope of securing a future.
The title of the novel, We Must Not Think of Ourselves, speaks to this very conflict. It suggests that personal dignity and morality must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good of loved ones or the community, even at the cost of internal moral erosion.
Survival in the ghetto thus becomes not only a physical act but a profound moral and psychological balancing act.
The Fluidity of Identity in Times of Catastrophic Collapse
The theme of identity permeates the novel as characters are forced to navigate their sense of self within the constantly shifting social, political, and physical landscapes of the Warsaw ghetto.
Adam’s Polish identity is fractured by his Jewish heritage, which relegates him to the ghetto, even though his marriage to Kasia tied him to a different world.
His former life as a foreign language teacher, and even as a husband, becomes increasingly distant as the war progresses. Szifra, similarly, embodies the fragility of identity in the Holocaust, particularly with her Aryan appearance.
Her blond hair and blue eyes give her a temporary shield from Nazi scrutiny, yet her Jewish identity remains ever-present, complicating her ability to pass fully into another world.
The falsified papers she acquires for herself and her brothers reflect the ultimate erasure and reinvention of identity.
Adam’s role in the Oneg Shabbat Archive—documenting the lives of people who are systematically being erased—further emphasizes this theme. He is tasked with recording the stories of individuals whose identities are being annihilated by the Nazi regime.
The archive itself becomes an attempt to preserve identity in the face of overwhelming forces determined to erase it.
Adam’s own evolving identity as both a lover and guardian to Sala’s children also illustrates how survival often demands the reconstruction of selfhood, an act that challenges the boundaries of personal identity under extreme circumstances.
The Collapse of Human Connections and the Reformation of Familial Bonds Amid Trauma
The novel intricately explores how human relationships, particularly familial bonds, are broken, reshaped, and even redefined under the extreme pressures of life in the Warsaw ghetto. Adam’s relationship with Sala exemplifies this theme.
His love for her emerges out of shared trauma, a response to the unrelenting pressures of ghetto life and the looming threat of extermination. What starts as a bond formed by mutual reliance in their shared living space gradually transforms into an intimate connection.
This relationship, however, is not one of traditional love, but rather one born out of necessity, grief, and survival.
Similarly, Adam’s decision to flee the ghetto with Sala’s sons instead of her underscores the novel’s complex portrayal of what constitutes a family in times of chaos.
The relationships between parents and children in the novel—whether biological or adoptive—are frequently subverted, highlighting the way trauma forces individuals to redefine familial roles. Szifra’s role as both sister and mother figure to her brothers, and her ultimate sacrifice to protect them, exemplifies this theme.
In a world where traditional bonds are violently severed, new relationships based on survival and mutual dependence take their place.
The reformation of familial bonds in this context is not just about love, but about the basic human need for connection and responsibility, even in the face of annihilation.
The Burden and Necessity of Bearing Witness in the Face of Obliteration
A profound and challenging theme in the novel is the role of bearing witness to unspeakable atrocities and the ethical imperative of preserving history in the face of genocide.
Adam’s involvement in the Oneg Shabbat Archive signifies this theme, as he risks his life to document the lives and experiences of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.
This act of recording is not simply about survival; it is about ensuring that the world does not forget the suffering and the lives lost. The Archive represents an effort to create a legacy for the Jewish people that transcends the Nazi’s attempts to erase their existence.
Adam’s participation in the project becomes a means of resisting the erasure of his community, even if he knows that many of the people he interviews will not live to see the end of the war.
The burden of this witnessing weighs heavily on him, as it does on all the members of the Oneg Shabbat Archive, forcing them to confront the unspeakable and to make sense of their impending doom.
The act of documenting and archiving in this context is both an act of defiance and an acknowledgment of their inevitable erasure.
By the end of the novel, Adam’s decision to hand over his notebook to the Ringelblums, even as he escapes the ghetto, underscores the significance of bearing witness, not only for the sake of history but for the sake of maintaining humanity in the face of unimaginable cruelty.
The theme also addresses the broader ethical question of how, in times of genocide, the responsibility of documenting atrocities becomes a means of preserving the truth for future generations.
The Commodification of Life and Morality in a Dystopian Environment
The theme of commodification is starkly apparent in We Must Not Think of Ourselves, where survival depends on the exchange of material goods, personal dignity, and even human lives. Throughout the novel, everything has a price, from smuggled food and essential goods to the very lives of people seeking escape from the ghetto.
Henryk’s offer to Adam—exchanging his late wife’s wedding jewelry for safe passage out of Poland—introduces this notion early in the novel, illustrating how human lives are constantly bartered in the face of Nazi oppression. The commodification of women’s bodies, particularly through Szifra’s sexual exploitation by Nazi guards, reveals the ways in which the ghetto’s inhabitants are forced to trade moral values for survival.
Szifra’s decision to prostitute herself is both a tragic consequence of the dystopian environment in which she lives and a profound critique of how war and totalitarian regimes reduce human beings to mere commodities.
Even Adam, who initially clings to a sense of moral righteousness, is eventually forced to barter away his wife’s jewelry to secure his own safety.
The novel thus raises difficult questions about the value of life in a world where even basic human rights have been stripped away, and where morality is constantly being recalibrated in the face of survival.
The ghetto becomes a microcosm of a dystopian world where all values—human, moral, material—are distorted by the pressing demands of survival.