Daughter of Silence

Silence is a tradition among the women of Ritas family, so it is no wonder that she must interpret for herself what her mother has left unsaid about the horrors of the Terezin concentration camp. But Rita faces a silence of her own: a Peronist militant in 1980s Argentina, she has been incarcerated and abused in Buenos Airess infamous Escuela de Mecnica de la Armada (ESMA) detention center. In an imagined dialogue between mother and daughter, Rita recreates Tinkelehs unarticulated story, interweaving it with memories of her own childhood. Breaking with the tradition of women as silent observers, Rita speaks not only for the nameless victims who have disappeared under Argentinas military dictatorship but those of the Holocaust. Finguerets trenchant novel of survival transforms silence into a cry for justice that cannot be stifled.