ABOUT BOOK

For those of us growing up in families profoundly touched by the Holocaust, there seemed to be two situations: either our parents rarely to never said anything about their experiences, or they often or always spoke of their experiences. In the former situation, we knew something was wrong; grandparents, uncles, and cousins were missing from our lives and we didn’t know why. They weren’t spoken of: we didn’t know what had happened, and knew we weren’t supposed to know. Or, we knew about those grandparents, aunts, cousins: we knew about them and we knew exactly what happened to them; we knew about their murders at the hands of the Nazis and other European anti-Semites. My family’s secrets were hidden until 1994, when, at the Victoria Yom Ha’shoah service, I realized I needed to understand what happened to my mother. Rabbi Reinstein’s influence at that time was an important part of my journey to uncovering her history as a Dutch teenager in hiding. Hearing Victor’s talk in Victoria in January 2020, I realized I still had a large debt to him. This elaboration of his presentation, featuring images of the people he spoke about, is an offering of gratitude to him for all the gifts he’s given me and my entire family.