On Monday, April 13, author Esther Safron Foer visited Bay View High School. During her presentation, Foer spoke about several topics, including those that inspired the writing of her memoir “I Want You To Know We’re Still Here.”

In this work, she recounts her experiences as she learned her family’s connections to the horrors of the Holocaust. Esther’s family spent the first few years of her life in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Poland following World War II. Her father and mother were both the sole surviving members of their respective families, the rest of which had been murdered by Hitler’s Nazi regime. As she grew older, Foer learned more about her father’s family, including that he had a wife before her mother and that they had a daughter. This wife and child were both also victims of the Nazis. Esther’s memoir takes the reader through the tale of how she discovered these things and how she was able to track down the name of her half-sister as well as many more details about a family she never knew.

Her visit was coordinated through the Holocaust Education Research Center and the Bay View Social Studies Department.