Inheriting the Holocaust

Paula S. Fass is Margaret Byrne Professor of History at the University of California at Berkeley and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She has written many books and articles, including Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization, and Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America.

• Introduction: Inheriting Memory1 Going to Poland: May 20002 I Never Had Grandparents3 One Uncle4 The Complexity of Aunts5 First Families6 My Parents7 My Mother/MyselfAfterword: Poland, AgainAppendix: Family Tree

Paula Fass's moving memoir is written with quiet dignity and the most impressive moral lucidity. Her account of a family devastated by genocide is testimony both to human resilience and to the painful price of emotional fragility paid in the midst of the resilience. - Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley) In this moving and eloquent book, Paula Fass explores the legacies of love and loss that the children of Holocaust survivors inherit. - James Sheehan (Stanford University) The children of [holocaust] survivors face the burden of the unspoken past; relatives discuss the past in whispers and fragments of conversation. Fass' remarkable memoir pieces together these fragments to tell a poignant, honest account of her parents' lives and families-their endurance, suffering, and loss. Highly recommended. (Choice) Paula Fass combines her skills as an historian, writer, and researcher with her position as a child of survivors with memories imparted by her parents to create an unusual memoir of being part of the "second generation." Her exceptional skills as a writer make this book more than the usual random memoir of information. The result is a touching family story supported by historical fact. (Jewish Book World)