Children of the Holocaust

I found this book decades ago symbolically languishing on a remainders table in the back of Moe’s Bookstore in Berkeley. I nearly fainted when I read the title. Could this book be about me and others like me, members of a generation that wasn’t supposed to be born? This groundbreaking book, considered the Bible of children of Holocaust survivors, gives voice to the multigenerational impact of the Holocaust which we, the second generation, inherited directly from our parents who were the lucky few to survive while two-thirds of European Jewry was wiped out. As a psychotherapist, I have recommended this… show more.

This book was groundbreaking, as it was the first of its kind when it was published in 1979; it has become the icon of a generation and the author became our champion. The author-journalist opened the conversation and exposed an entire generation to the commonalities among us – it gave us all a voice and permission to “open the iron box deep inside all of us.”

After interviewing several hundred children of Jewish survivors of World War 2, it became abundantly clear that, while each of our parents had survived in different ways and in disparate locations, and came from… show more.

Epstein “secret quest” was to “find a group of people who, like me, were possessed by a history they had never lived.” When I read Epstein’s book in the late 90s, it was the first time I’d ever “met” other children of survivors. I’d never discussed what it meant to be the daughter and granddaughter of survivors with others who had grown up in similar circumstances. These interviews validated many of the issues I struggled with and helped me see how our voices are an important part of the expanding genre of Holocaust discourse.