The Unspeakable

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Researching family history means stepping into the unknown; Nicola discovered that after an old passport (issued in 1935) unexpectedly fell into her life in 2004. The passport owner was her grandfather's sister, and it marked the start of a journey into the tragic past. The Unspeakable is a thoughtfully constructed and moving Holocaust memoir, vividly blending the author's first-person experiences during her research. The truth gradually emerged about never-mentioned relatives who were German-speaking Czech Jews the Nazis had murdered.

The author shares her experiences of sudden shifts in consciousness and the bewildering sadness that overcame her as she drew lost family members out of history and they regained their identity. Compelling, unpublished writings of relatives who survived World War II surfaced and revealed the quiet side of the Holocaust: dispossession, involuntary emigration, identity issues, and suicide. The narrative tells how intergenerational trauma can evolve and explores reasons for the older generation not speaking about the past with younger family members. The Unspeakable shows how present generations may discover how little they know of their forebears' background struggles and losses. These issues are chillingly relevant to the present day.