A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
‘Esther Safran Foer has written of her family in a way that is both uniquely and heartbreakingly her story and a deeply important testament for Ashkenazi Jews. Her memories are our important history.’ Robert Peston, ITV Political Editor
A moving and powerful inter-generational memoir about story and memory.
Mine is a family of readers and writers. Our house is filled with books. There are contemporary design books on the coffee table in the living room, legal books in my husband’s home office, and piles of children’s books for when my grandchildren visit. However, the side table next to my bed is piled with books about the Holocaust. Framed maps of shtetls line my office walls and pictures of relatives killed in the Holocaust are displayed on our family gallery walls.
Sometimes I feel like I exist across two polarized realities, experiencing great fulfillment from family, friends, and a meaningful career, and, at the same time, finding the joy of my life tempered by its shadows. In the darker corners of my mind live ghosts and demons who visit me from the shtetls in Ukraine where my family came from. Some of the details that make these visions so vivid are imagined because I grew up in a family where memories were too terrible to speak of.
This is the true story of four generations who have been dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath. We are four generations, survivors and survivors of survivors, storytellers and memory keepers. And we’re still here.
Grace
2025-04-03
My greatest thanks to the author (*and team/see below) The book is fascinating and very versatile in its entirety. The book has It so many interesting components which I haven’t come across before as much as in this book, the author has also added a lot of extra details like important conversations and travels. The author appears at times in her life to have sensed that something was missing without her being able to pinpoint it - until later. I’ve tears in my eyes as I’m writing my review, and its tears of both sadness, sensation of happiness in what “they” managed to accomplish and I’d be really surprised if this phenomenal author has material for at least one more book, whether she chooses to write another book is another story. (No pun intended.) It’s a multifaceted book & the author's perspective is from the perspective of a 2nd generation Holocaust survivor. We now know that 2nd generation survivors often had difficulty learning, understanding what their parents had gone through. The unimaginable trauma all those who survived the Holocaust have to carry is of a magnitude I cannot compare with anything else! And the way i’ve interpreted it, is that most surviors/parents carry/carried this svere trauma their entire lives & not only that, after liberation, many liberated people had to stay for several months in so-called *MP camps (*⬇️) before they’re allowed to travel & move to another country outside Europe & when they arrived they’d to rebuilding their lives from scratch, which I imagine figuratively speaking as: "building uphill+with the heavy trauma. (Imagine you’ve a functioning life & a lovely home, until one day a person steps in, snatches you away from everything you knew & when it ends 6 years later you realize that you’re one of the few/the only one who survived in your entire family during these brutal years! And perhaps you’re thinking: “Why? How come I survived?” You might witnessed when parts of your family was executed & such memories “are burnt in!” So now when you’re about to start over & rebuild your life again, you also carry this heavy trauma + survivor's guilt + you probably have angry feelings about how everyone you loved was murderered by the Nazis & you’d do anything then, but now you want to live your life not only for yourself, but also live your life for everyone in your family that you loved & lost & who never got a chance experincing life!.) It's a heavy weight to carry around. (*if there’s a team behind the author will say.) (*Misplaced Person Camp) Regards, Grace
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