My Goodreads and Amazon reviews of The Ones Who Remember: Second Generation Voices of the Holocaust edited by Rita Benn, Julie Goldstein Ellis, Joy Wolfe Ensor, & Ruth Finkel Wade (Rating 5) – Inescapable and Unforgettable. We are all admonished to “Never Forget” the Holocaust, but for the children of survivors, remembering has a special significance. It requires bearing witness to the horrors their parents suffered. It pits a burning desire to know against a paralyzing dread of the anguish that probing for details will unleash. Remembering also means confronting the multi-generational trauma that children of survivors carry within themselves. The heartbreakingly honest collection of essays in The Ones Who Remember delves deeply into the scars carved into survivors and, in a unique contribution to Holocaust literature, the emotional and physical stamp left on the next generation. It is an inheritance these sixteen writers bear with pain and pride: the pain born of anxiety, depression, and the fear that one can never live up to their parents’ expectations or replace their inconceivable losses; the pride that swells for ancestors with the strength, wits, and determination to survive and begin anew. As a fiction and memoir writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I’m in awe of the complex portraits these authors paint of their parents, whose behavior ranges from smothering love to emotional numbness to fits of rage, and of themselves, whose reactions range from childhood puzzlement and resentment to adult empathy and forgiveness. This richly populated book is a tribute to the past and a testament to the future. The Holocaust’s casualties exceed the 6 million Jews and 5 million others murdered by the Nazis. A full count also includes the offspring who carry the memory in their DNA, marked as indelibly as their parents’ tattooed forearms.
