Briefe nach Breslau: Meine Geschichte über drei Generationen
Maya grows up in silence. The German past, the Holocaust that her mother survived as a cellist in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz – nobody talks about these things. And yet, Maya cannot escape the wounds of her parents, a stable life impossible she drifts through 1970s London. The nights too long, drugs, debts, the wrong guys, an escape to Jamaica where she almost dies …
In order to survive, she suddenly realizes that she needs to overcome the silence. She starts to write: letters to her grandparents who were murdered by the Nazis, a direct way of setting up a dialogue with her past. Piece by piece her words bring the family together and help her understand that her own future lies in returning to Germany.
This book is a unique exploration of the impact of the Holocaust on three generations of one family. The grandparents were murdered; the parents suffered but survived; Maya in the post-war generation experiences transgenerational trauma and her life unravels. Now she has put it back together she reveals how one’s own history always depends on what happened in the past.
Maya Lasker Wallfisch’s second book will be published by Suhrkamp Insel in Spring 2022.
Reviews
Focus
»A moving story about the lasting trauma of having survived the Shoah.«
Gabriele von Arnim, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»She describes her mother’s brusque manner straightforwardly but nonetheless does not accuse [her]. It is not a book of anger, of revenge, of rage but a story of desperation, of transferred grief, of tenderness. Only through writing, says 62-year-old Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, did she know who she was, only know was she able to see herself and be seen.«
Marta Kijowska, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»…an impressive book«
Alexandra Senfft, Der Freitag
»Maya‘s brave book has greatly enrichened the understanding of transgenerational transference, the focus on multiple generations in historical contexts. It brings to mind the dangeorus psychological and political legacies of the Nazi dictatorship and proves that the destructive ban on the past can be broken«
Manuel Brug, DIE WELT
»With Letter to Breslau Maya Lasker-Wallfisch has written a gripping family history – as well as a modern theory of memory.«
Isabel Lauer, Nürnberger Nachrichten
»Maya Lasker-Wallfisch has written a moving book about the burden of being a child of the survivors.«
Maria Ossowski, rbb radioeins April 2020
»Family traumas are inherited everywhere, by the children who survived the war and their grandchildren in Germany and elsewhere. That’s why this is an absolutely recommendable work for every person interested in the development of the souls traumatised by war.«