Experiment 1 - Historical Fiction

For my first experiment, I wrote a historical fiction piece. I composed a letter from the perspective of my great-grandmother Irma, conveying her and my grandfather's journey from Germany to New York on the Aquitania. They arrived at Ellis Island in 1938 with a painting and two wooden chests filled with all their belongings. While many excellent memoirs, oral histories, and secondary works surrounding the Holocaust exist, I believe historical fiction has a unique capacity for communication, representation, and understanding of the past. My aim with this project is to contribute a new layer to the collective knowledge of the Holocaust, utilizing the power of historical fiction to engage my audience in a deeper exploration of this pivotal historical period.