Irena's Gift

If we seal off the past, how will we ever know the truth? In 1942, in Nazi-occupied Poland, a Jewish child was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That child was Karen Kirstens mother, but she knew nothing about this extraordinary event until one day a letter arrived from a stranger. After Karen eventually discovered the grandparents she loved dearly were in fact not her biological grandparents, she travelled the globe to uncover her familys past and to find the answers to baffling questions: why did her adoptive grandmother treat Karens mother so unkindly? Why did she hide the truth that she was her mothers aunt? And why, if she appeared to dislike Karens mother, did she risk her life to save her and bring her to Australia? Irenas Gift weaves together a mystery, history and memoir to tell the story of a family torn apart by war. From the glittering concert halls of interbellum Warsaw to the vermin-infested prison where a Jewish woman negotiates with an SS officer to save her sisters child, Irenas Gift is about the lies we tell to survive and what happens when those lies unravel. It is about the extraordinary resilience of three generations of women, and the sacrifices made for love.