I have just finished "Irena's Gift" and must highly recommend it. It is the story of a daughter's search for the true identity of her mother, a mother who miraculously survived the Shoah as a baby, and how unspoken secrets and even lies affected members of their family of all generations. Not just a very moving account of survival in horror, it is also a very poignant uncompromising account of how trauma can be passed on through generations. It will concern also people from families affected by other unmentioned traumas. Thank you, Karen for sharing this valuable tale of hardship, accusation and forgiveness, as well as its clarificatin of the mechanisms behind what seems to be incomprehensibly awful behaviour following a trauma.
