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In 1958 Claude cockburn recalled meeting with three Ladino-speaking Jews in Sofia shortly after the Second World War. They explained that they were not Spaniards, but one of them added, Our family used to live in Spain before they moved to Turkey. Now we are moving to Bulgaria. When Cockburn asked him how long it had been since his family lived in Spain, he responded that it had been approximately five hundred years. The man spoke of these events as though they had occurred a couple of years ago.2 This famous incident has been cited frequently as an example of the relativity of historical memory. It also suggests the lengthy time over which individuals associate themselves with events which occurred generations earlier. By comparison to other cultures, for most Americans generational memory spans relatively brief period. The term generational memory is employed here broadly to encompass the memories which individuals have of their own fami lies' history, as well as more general collective memories about the past. Most people do not even remember, or never knew, their grandfathers' occupation or place of birth. For small proportion of the American population memory reaches back to the American Revolution, or to pre-Mayflower England or Eu rope. For descendants of later immigrations, memory extends mostly to the first generation in America, or, in fewer instances, to the last generation in the old country. A sense of history does not depend on the depth of generational mem ory, but identity and consciousness do, because they rest on the linkage of the individual's life history and family history with specific historical moments. Recently, efforts in American society to stretch generational memory, namely, the search for roots, through the tracing of genealogies and through oral history, have gained considerable popularity. A touch of magic has been at tached to the process since the Bicentennial, and, in the aftermath o? Roots,3 number of efforts to commercialize the search have emerged as well. More tradi tional scholars and foundations have also begun to encourage oral history, both as means of retrieving or salvaging vanishing historical information and as way to spark community identity. The success o? Roots has publically drama tized the symbolic significance of such efforts. Genealogies originally functioned to provide pedigrees and legitimization for status, claims for property, inheritance, or access to skills or political posi tions. Such real and symbolic functions of genealogies have survived in Ameri 137
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