Year of Award
2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Degree Name
Creative Writing (Nonfiction)
Department or School/College
Department of English
Committee Chair
Judy Blunt
Commitee Members
David Gates, Phil Condon
Keywords
creative nonfiction, memoir, father-son, Germany, Canada
Publisher
University of Montana
Subject Categories
Nonfiction
Abstract
Fred Eduard Gailus was born on April 26, 1944, in Memelland, a place that no longer exists. It was a tiny sliver of Germandom on the far eastern edge of Hitler’s outsized German Reich. When the Soviet Red Army swept through on their way to Berlin, to end World War Two and the reign of terror perpetrated by the German people, the homeland of my father’s ancestors was wiped off the map forever. Thanks to the courage and tenacity of his mother, Fred survived the largest forced migration in human history to marry young and raise a family of four children in Canada. Close Call With Nonexistence is a piercing memoir by Fred’s oldest son, Jeff, who is wracked by grief when Fred dies suddenly of a heart attack. At once poignant and comical, Close Call explores their troubled father-son relationship as Jeff tries to come to terms with his paternal relatives’ participation in the Holocaust and how the war affected his father.
Recommended Citation
Gailus, Jeff, "Close Call With Nonexistence: A Memoir" (2016). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 10633.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/10633
Included in
© Copyright 2016 Jeff Gailus