Letters from the Lost
Author: Helen Waldstein Wilkes
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Published: 2010
Total Pages: 303
ISBN-13: 1897425538
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn March 15, 1939, as Hitler's army rolled into Prague, Helen Waldstein's father snatched the last exit visa from a distracted clerk and fled with wife and child. Only letters from the rest of their family could follow as the Nazis closed in. Through the war years, letters kept coming to the southern Ontario farm where Helen's small family learned to speak English, to be Canadian farmers, and to forget they were Jewish. Helen did not notice when the letters stopped coming, but they surfaced intermittently until she couldn't ignore them anymore. Reading the letters changed everything. As her past refused to keep silent, Helen followed the trail of letters back to Europe to find living witnesses of what the letters related. She has here interwoven their stories and her own in an engrossing narrative of suffering and rescue, survivor guilt and overcoming obstacles to intergenerational dialogue about a traumatic past.