Four Letters to the Witnesses of My Childhood

Book excerpt: The evocation of memory is wrought with emotional and historical significance in this distinctive holocaust memoir. With lyrical prose and remarkable candor, Helena Ganor narrates her story through a series of recently penned letters to the significant people in her life during her wartime girlhood: her sister, mother, father, and stepmother. Both Ganor’s mother and sister perished during the war. The author’s letters reveal much about living in pre-war Lvov, Poland. Her descriptions of relationships between local Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and Gypsies in Lvov lend a broad historical context to the Holocaust. Ganor combines deeply personal reminiscences of trying to survive as a secular Jew under Nazi occupation with reflections on the varied ways that humans respond in the face of utter catastrophe. Punctuating her letters with poems, Ganor’s story is an inspiring contribution to Holocaust literature.