Children
of Holocaust survivors carry a heavy burden!
Dina is living in Haifa, Israel, with her husband. She’s expecting a child but wonders how her
looming fear regarding the warning of an expected terrorist attack by
Palestinians will affect her child.
She’s originally from Australia but came to Israel when she visited and
found that she felt at home in a way she never had before. But time has passed and terrorism is a
constant nemesis which allows no one to relax – ever!
Add
to the mix that her dead mother visits Dina all the time, correcting her
behavior, throwing out Jewish maxims, leaking her melancholy mood into the very
fiber of Dina’s being. At first Dina is
silent, since she knows that her mother’s memories are never absent, a
condition normal for survivors of those awful camps at Auschwitz and
Bergen-Belsen. Dina’s father was silent
but by the end of the novel he too will come to share his story.
The
result? Dina is constantly exhausted and
not just from her pregnancy. Her
practice as a doctor is filled with severely and moderately sick people,
hypochondriacs needing attention (more survivor guilt), and occasional
outbursts of hatred toward Arabs, children, etc. Dina’s focus lately is an overwhelming need
to get away – anywhere, anytime, anyplace!
She and her husband are becoming more and more estranged every day and
the only reason she doesn’t return to Australia is she doesn’t believe she can
take her child away from its father.
Despite
all the doom and gloom above, Dina’s got a feisty sense of humor which
manifests in almost every situation she finds herself. However, it usually never passes the thinking
stage. The remainder of the story involves the individual stories of her
parents, a secret about their family that Dina never imagined, and Dina’s
reconciliation with the past and present.
It’s a long, dark, funny, and beautiful journey!
So
many novels have been crafted about the Holocaust and its survivors, but Leah
Kaminsky has created a unique story about growing from survival which hits the
reader as endearingly realistic! This is
a fine, fine work of historical fiction that should be must reading not only
for adults but also young adults and/or high school students.
It
is said that history is repeated if one does not learn from it – Leah Kaminsky
has given us a character who travels a long journey toward ending a destructive
cycle and reentering life. L’Chaim!
