The History of Love

While the Holocaust is rarely mentioned explicitly in The History of Love, the novel is a commentary on the legacy of World War II and the far-reaching consequences for the Jewish Diaspora. Having lived through the Holocaust and lost everything, Leo and Litvinoff are the two characters with the most direct experience, but the Holocaust’s events remain present in the minds of the younger generation, too. Alma notes, for example, that Bird was named after an uncle who was killed by the Nazis. All the characters in The History of Love are scattered and cut off from each other, physically but also emotionally. They struggle to form new connections in the face of their trauma. Instead, they attempt to cope by engaging in some kind of invention or act of creation, working to change truth or reality in order to make it livable.

As a boy, Leo learns he can “make [him]self see something that wasn’t there” (228). When he spots an elephant in the town square, he knows it isn’t real, but he says, “I wanted to believe. So I tried. And I found I could” (228). He employs this strategy throughout his life, describing truth as “the thing I invented so I could live” (167).