Prisoners of Memory

Book excerpt: Growing up in a family of Holocaust survivors, Joan Haahr was aware from an early age of the devastation wrought by the Nazis and their sympathizers on Europe's Jewish population during the Holocaust. She also witnessed firsthand the dysfunctions that plagued many of those who had made it out alive. In Prisoners of Memory, Haahr realizes her lifelong ambition to uncover the stories behind the statistics in the Nazi records and learn as much as possible about the pre-war lives, deportations, and deaths of her grandparents and other close family members. Devoting herself fully to this project after retiring from her academic career, Haahr delves into troves of family letters, takes part in numerous conversations with those directly and indirectly affected by World War II, and gathers information from contacts in Germany, archives, and other historical research. In doing so, she seeks to understand the enduring legacy of tragedy as well as of perseverance and hope in the generations that followed the Holocaust in the United States and elsewhere.