WWII Research & Writing Center

Recent Articles

Article Archive

Article Categories

family secrets

Exploring Those ‘Tiny’ Military Service Details

by Leave a Comment

For all the years I have been doing genealogy and military research, I have heard from clients, friends, and family, ‘I wish I would have asked my dad or mom (or grandma or grandpa)……. about their military service.’ Even I have uttered those words. Time runs out, the individual dies, and the questions can not be asked. Sometimes we don’t even know we had a question until we dive deeper into the genealogy or military research or our personal and ancestral healing.

Perhaps the most common question I’ve heard clients and friends say is, ‘I would like to understand what he experienced so I know why he was the way he was….[insert angry, rageful, abandoned me, abused me, was depressed, an alcoholic, a drug abuser, anxious, etc.]’

There is a way we can better understand the experiences of our family member while in service or combat. We can explore those ‘tiny’ details we may have missed when we started researching.

SS Joshua Hendy – 1 June 1944

Last week I started looking again at the deck logs for the ships my grandfather was on and some new details stood out. This is an example of an entry on the deck log for the SS Joshua Hendy for 1 June 1944.

Pay attention to the event at 1039. While this event of striking a reef and the ship rolling and righting itself may not have been a combat event and may have been “not such a big deal” compared to what the men witnessed and experienced on other days, this event may have impacted the men on this ship.

Can you for a moment put yourself in the shoes of someone on that ship? Do you lose your balance unexpectedly? Hear noises that are out of context for a ship moving through clear waters? Wonder if you were hit and will you sink? Anxiety runs through you and you wonder if you must run to your battle station or prepare to abandon ship.

How might those thoughts and emotions affected the sailor in that moment, later that day or even weeks or months later if not addressed and processed? When we do not process events that affect us, it can become frozen in our body and a trigger later may unleash the old trauma which may have been forgotten. However, when in the course of war, event after event happens and is unprocessed, repressed and not processed when the veteran returns home, the accumulation can create a lot of issues for the veteran and his or her family for years to come.

Exploring the records with fresh eyes and paying attention to the smaller details can give us a better idea what shaped the person we are researching.

My Invitation To You

Write down the questions you have about your family member(s) that were never answered, or not answered when maybe they could have been.

Write down the issues your veteran or family member had that might have been related to war trauma. You can do the same for inherited trauma and family abuse.

Take your genealogy or military research papers out and look at them with fresh eyes. What do you notice?

Make notes about the ‘tiny’ details you find that might help explain why someone was the way they were or how that detail might answer a question.

What have you learned about your ancestor?

What have you learned about yourself?

Optional: Write a letter to the person you are researching and ask your questions or explain how you feel about how they behaved or treated you. Set the intention that your words and feelings reach their higher self. You can light a candle or set a circle of protection around yourself before you begin writing if you choose. When you are finished, burn the letter and send the energy of it to the universe for transformation.

This can be a very healing exercise. I have been writing letters to living people the last several months that I would like to share my feelings with, but know it will not be received by the person or I need to get it out of my system so I can heal. I have noticed that I always feel better and my healing goes a little deeper and the living person shifts after I do this exercise and they usually don’t know it. Everything works out for all our highest good when we take the time to process and release.

Be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch and receive news and discounts on classes.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

WWII Civilians, Veterans & Descendant Mental Health

by Leave a Comment

After World War II ended, civilians who lived through the war and veterans who fought, returned home and were told to rebuild and restart their lives. Tools were not made available to help the general public (anywhere in the world) or veterans, with all the psychological impact of what they had experienced. This resulted in civilians and veterans pushing down or ignoring what they had experienced.

When these individuals began having children, and those children had children, the energy and trauma of what they endured was passed down through the generations. This has resulted in countless people on the planet with inherited trauma that they may not realize they carry and are numb to until triggered. Or, they are triggered but do not understand what is happening. The trauma and energy is so decontextualized or never talked about by their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, that triggered individuals do not understand why they feel the overwhelming emotions they do. This may have resulted in anxiety, depression, addictions, and other physical and mental illnesses.

How many of you reading this article can relate to the overwhelming feelings? I can. These are carried feelings. For much of my life I thought I was depressed. Anxious. Too much. Too different. Too afraid of (insert so many things). However, most of what I was experiencing was not even mine. It belonged to my parents, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, great grandparents, and keep going back in the lineage.

For the spiritual readers, you may say, but couldn’t some of that also be past life experiences that are in need of healing? Yes. I have experienced that too, especially in Europe. Being empathic also means I have picked up the energy of people I love, friends and family, people I pass by, and even the dead.

So what do we do with this? How do we better understand ourselves and the trauma our ancestors pushed down or ignored?

Overwhelming Emotions and Energy

In studying with several teachers who help the collective heal WWII trauma and relationship trauma, one therapist’s work was recommended. Pia Mellody. In her book, Facing Codependency. What it is, Where it comes from, How it sabotages our lives, Pia explains these overwhelming emotions and the carried energy.

I highly recommend this book as most people walking around today have some level of codependency and may not even know it or will not admit it and release the hold it has on them. It can cripple you and your relationships and we learn it from our parents, grandparents, and so forth. It is how society has been programmed to be and carry dysfunctional habits and beliefs. Humanity is more easily controlled when we behave in dysfunctional ways and never question anything. We can see this after any war where things are not to be questioned and truths are hidden, kept secret, lied about, and changed in the history books.

Pia defines these overwhelming feelings in her chapter on “The Emotional Damage of Abuse”, as, ‘carried feelings are overwhelming while your own, even though they may be intense, are not. When we experience carried anger, we rage; when we experience carried fear, we have panic attacks and attacks of paranoia; when we experience carried pain, we move into hopelessness, profound feelings of depression, and perhaps even thoughts of suicide. Carried shame causes us to feel “worth less.”‘

Can you relate? Do you see these carried feelings in your family? Did you ever hear stories that now make more sense understanding this energy? I can see this in my ancestry.

What Do We Do With This Information?

When I looked at the patterns and traumas in my family tree, specifically related to my grandfather’s World War II service, and the energy my grandmother carried, I can trace some of this back to her grandfather, Josef Schubert.

Josef hung himself and my grandma Libbie found him when she was 24 years old. She was married with two children at home. While I knew the basics after reading Josef’s death certificate and talking to my uncle, no one ever thought to talk about how that affected Grandma.

What energies did she carry from that experience that she passed down to her sons and then those sons to their children? What energies did she hold on to that may have made it harder for her when her husband returned from war a changed man? Did she ever deal with any of those?

The deeper I dive into the genogram and patterns and beliefs of my ancestors and explore my own energies, feelings, and beliefs, along with the negative effects that have shown up throughout my life, I wonder if anyone had been brave enough to talk about this event, and what happened after the war, how would we all be different? Less dysfunctional? Less codependent? Less (insert whatever might be coming up)?

My Invitation To You

Most people will say, if a family member wanted a secret to be left in the dark – leave it there. If we feel shame, grief, guilt, anger, sadness, around things in our personal and family history, we should ignore it. Don’t bring it up with living family who may be able to shed light on it. The world has become so politically correct that it is not ok any longer to talk about the shadow sides of our families.

My point of view is we need to start bringing these shadows into the light. We need to be asking questions of the living. We can go about it in a way that is not rage filled but with curiosity. We can better understand the energies passed down to us that create dysfunction and physically illness in our lives.

We can listen and witness someone’s experience or pain. We can heal.

Through these discussions, we can Listen. Witness. Heal. Are you ready?

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

Be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch and receive news and discounts on classes.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Family Secrets & Patterns After World War II

by Leave a Comment

We are living through a period of years where many things are coming to the light that were previously hidden in the darkness. It will be up to each of us to choose whether or not to look at these things and process and heal them within ourselves or to push them down, deny, ignore, and create more suffering for ourselves. One of these themes coming to light are family secrets, lies, and patterns after World War II.

Within each family, it has been said, one person was born to step up and heal the ancestral lineage. Sometimes this person is not born into a family but marries or is adopted into the family. I have had experience being the one born into my lineage to step up, speak out, and heal, and also to marry into a seriously traumatized family where no one stepped up yet the in-law ancestors made their presence known to me. Sometimes this brought me to my knees in grief and pain and other times I told them to go away. Please know that when you marry into a family, you still have the choice of whether or not to take on the in-laws and your spouse’s family trauma and secrets.

The Returning Veteran

As I explored my own war-related family patterns and secrets, especially over the last year, my Navy grandpa (died 1964) said I needed to start looking into what the programming and manipulation was of the veteran and the public upon the return of veterans after the war. Grandpa keeps telling me the story I think I know, which changes with the additional information I receive periodically, is not the whole story. Not his whole story or the whole story of our family. There are still many layers for us to heal. This led me to ask several questions.

  • What were families and veterans told?
  • What were they not told?
  • Where did this information appear?
  • Who had access?
  • How did families with parents who could not read or write (well or at all), obtain vital information?
  • How did the families process this information to help the veteran readjust to civilian life after the war?
  • Did my family know about this information? How did my grandma deal with her veteran husband’s return and war wounds? How did my dad and uncles deal with it?
  • How did their ability and inability to process what happened during and after the war affect me and my kids? How did the denial, shame, anger, and grief of what happened affect how I was raised? My beliefs? How I raised my kids?

What Was Available?

As I began my initial research, I discovered you can use online newspaper sites, choose your city or closest city, and dive into keywords to see what families and returning veterans were told.

Keywords like: returning veteran, returning soldier, veteran readjustment, GI bill, military readjustment, soldier to civilian, and other similar terms that relate to a veteran returning.

One thing to keep in mind as you read these articles, is they were written in the 1940s. Attitudes about men’s and women’s roles were very different. The programming at the time was for veterans to Come home, rebuild, get married, go to school, get a job, start a family, forget and shut up about your war experience.

For families the programming was a lot of wives be a good support to your husband, take care of his needs, be the perfect wife/mother, don’t ask questions, have more children, stay at home (especially if you were out in the workforce supporting the war effort).

These are a few examples of the cultural programming, not only in the U.S. but worldwide. However, this article focuses on the U.S.

To better understand the family patterns, lies, and secrets within each of our families after the war, we need to know what the programming and manipulation of people was, or propaganda if you like that term better. Once we better understand what the public was told, we can begin to dissect our family patterns, seeing them for what they are, not what we imagined them to be.

Resources to Start Your Exploration

Newspapers are a great resource because we can see exactly what was published for the public at the time veterans were returning and women had to leave the workforce, in many cases.

You can also read books that were written during and after the war for returning veterans and their families. I do question whether or not my grandmother would have known about the books I’ll list here and if she even had time to read them while raising a family, working, and taking care of her parents as needed. It feels she was more likely to read the newspaper or talk to the other wives at the butcher or baker.

Psychology for the Returning Serviceman. An Infantry Journal publication prepared by a Committee of the National Research Council. You can still get some of these as first editions. They are small books that cover a lot of information.

Soldier to Civilian. Problems of Readjustment by George K. Pratt, M.D. 1944.

Veteran Comes Back by Willard Waller. 1944.

All three of these books are also on Internet Archive if you like PDF files. I prefer to hold the books and was able to get first edition copies. They are extremely informative and have given me a new perspective on my grandparent’s lives after the war.

You can also read my article with journal prompts on Questions to Explore Your Family Patterns.

What books or articles have you read that helped you better understand how a veteran readjusted to civilian life? Please share in the comments.

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Safety, Fear, War, & Our Ancestral Lineage

by Leave a Comment

For the last decade I’ve studied the deeper layers of genealogy and family history. Explored the darker sides of family and ancestors. Looked at the grief, loss, war, fear they lived with, safety issues that existed, survival instincts, PTSD, inherited trauma and other related topics.

Exploring those topics has helped me do my own healing and today I’d like to talk about our current lives and forced isolation alongside our ancestors’ lives where the issues of fear and safety arise. I will provide just a little information around this topic with resources for you to explore.

Fear and Safety in Our Ancestors’ Lives

If you look back in your genealogy, you will find many instances where your ancestors were living in fear and were unsure of their personal safety perhaps due to war or famine, political conflicts, immigration, or natural disasters. Those situations may have been shorter term and affected the ancestors for a period of time. They may have learned to live with the new normal that came after. Some may have shoved their emotions and feelings about it all deep inside to carry the rest of their lives while others were able to heal.

In cases where abuse and rape occurred, those fear and safety issues may have lingered the rest of the ancestor’s life. It has only been in more recent times that we are allowed to talk about these things and start to heal.

In either case, we, the descendants of our ancestors, carry their pain, trauma, fear, and safety issues in our DNA.  It is stored in our bodies and within our energy system – the chakras. I can personally say that doing chakra energy healing can shift out a lot of things we carry that aren’t even ours and make a huge difference in how we live. I’ll save that for another article. It will shock you how much we carry that messes us up that isn’t even ours.

Differences between fear & safety then versus now

I think it’s important to acknowledge the farther back we go in our family history, the less 24/7/365 media programming/brainwashing was available. Today we have news stations and social media channels blasting fear and panic over toilet paper, a virus, lockdowns, vaccines, and food shortages and killer hornets, and every other disease and way to die has been cured because CDC says covid is the only way people are dying now (or is it?) all…day…long.

And the narrative keeps changing – have you noticed? We are slowly being programmed to be in fear and rely more on the government and start to fear things outside our homes. There is a quote that goes something like, I never thought I’d see people so afraid to die that they stopped living.

Have you noticed how much of the world has stopped living?

Would you have been so afraid of the virus if the media had not told you to be afraid? Especially when studies are coming out now that show us it is less deadly than the flu? That the majority of people dying are in nursing homes (which already had care issues?)

Have you noticed the media said there will be no toilet paper so everyone ran out to buy it? We’ll be locked in our homes for decades – so there was a run on food? We can’t open the country safely unless we have a vaccine (even though Fauci said in the Senate Hearing yesterday the vaccine may not work or create more issues for those with prior health issues) – even though there are therapeutics that work (see latest France and Italy studies and what’s coming out in America outside of mainstream media.)

Why were we never told to be afraid when H1N1 came out in 2009? How many of us were so sick with that flu and the country stayed open? No shortage on toilet paper or food… makes you question right?  I remember being sicker than I’d ever been with three kids ages 8 and 4 (twins) to take care of and the government didn’t shut down the world.

Now look at your ancestors…

Less media interference may have created fewer issues with fear and safety. When you examine the propaganda/news created for WWII to get families to buy into the war effort THEN look at the propaganda/news created for WWI (a generation prior) and THEN look at propaganda/news for the generation before that, what do you notice?  

  1. What kind of media did our ancestors have access to?
  2. Our parents? I’m 47 and my parents had access to TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
  3. My grandparents? TV (after WWII), radio, magazines, and newspapers.
  4. My great grandparents? Radio, magazines, newspapers. If they could read.
  5. My great great grandparents? Magazines, Newspapers, pamphlets (at least in the U.S. – in Europe I’m not sure as they were peasants and likely couldn’t read). Word of mouth news which as we know often is distored.

Start Asking questions

  1. What events did my ancestors go through that created fear?
  2. What events did my ancestors go through that created safety issues?
  3. How did my ancestors handle these events? (Did they ignore their emotions and push it down? Did they talk about it? Use faith/religion to see them through? Talk it out with a therapist or other healer?)
  4. How much have I bought into the fear propagated by the media and social media which is showing one side of the story?
  5. How am I handling this fear and concern over safety? Or am I content letting the governors take away my rights and force me to stay home where my finances are suffering, my health is suffering (mental and physical), my business may be suffering or I lose my job, my kids are suffering on many levels.
  6. What emotions and thoughts keep coming up for me throughout this lockdown? WHOSE thoughts and emotions are they? Mine or my ancestors? Mine or my friends?
  7. What fear or safety based issues keep coming up for me? Journal on this.
  8. What can I do to let go and release these thoughts and emotions that are not mine? Therapy, call a suicide prevention line, energy healing, chakra healing, journaling, exercise, etc.

These are only a few questions and areas to explore in your life and that of your ancestors’ lives. We are at a pivotal moment in history where we need to be exploring these issues and questions. To heal and release all those things that don’t serve us, but certainly mess up our lives. To ask more questions about the narrative being pushed on us all day long. To start LIVING again and making choices that align with our true heart and soul. Possibly the most important thing to start doing: Stop blaming everyone else for the choices you are making. You might read my other articles on these topics:

Resources

These are a few resources you can explore to dip your toes into ancestral healing and personal healing. You may also ask to join my FB Group for more support.

Book Review: Healing Ancestral Karma

by Leave a Comment

Over the last few years I have begun studying different aspects of ancestral lineage healing, family patterns, family secrets, and other topics as they related to my military and family history. Many of my clients have also been seeking resources around these topics. I have one to suggest to those just dipping their toes into this pool. Healing Ancestral Karma by Dr. Steven Farmer

I discovered Dr. Farmer through The Shift Network when I received an email for his class “The 5 Ancestral Realms” in the fall of 2019. The class description gave a different view of working with the ancestors than Dr. Daniel Foor in his book and course (which I’m taking currently). After signing up for Dr. Farmer’s course, I ordered his book. The book wasn’t required for the course but contributed to what I was learning.

The book has short chapters which make absorbing the information easier. Reading the book I was also introduced to many others books, which of course I had to purchase, to add to my ancestor education. Reviews on those will be scattered over the next few months.

Healing Ancestral Karma provides primary sections on:

  • Getting Acquainted with the Ancestors
  • Making Contact with the Ancestors
  • Healing Ancestral Family Patterns

Within those sections he introduces readers to these topics and many more:

  • Making contact with your ancestors.
  • Contacting spirit and animal guides.
  • Energy, DNA, and Ancestors
  • Mediumship
  • Automatic Writing
  • Shamanism
  • Family Secrets
  • PTSD
  • Creating a family altar

I walked away from this book with some new strategies to work with ancestors and new ways to create rituals and family altars. Whether you have been doing energy and ancestor work for years or are just getting started, this book will contribute to your practice.

Would you like to explore more around the topics of Ancestral Lineage Healing? Join my Facebook group, Genealogy Ancestral Lineage Healing.

You can also explore my webinars and courses on ancestral healing topics on my Finding the Answers Journey website.

Would you like another opportunity to expand your gifts?

The Shift Network is offering the Evolved Empath Summit March 9-13, 2020. RSVP here for the Evolved Empath Summit — at no charge.

Disclosure: The book link and the summit link are affiliate links. It does not affect the price you pay for the book or the price you pay if you choose to upgrade your summit video package.

© 2020 World War II Research and Writing Center

Book Review: The Survivors

by Leave a Comment

There is an incredible book The Survivors. A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing by Adam P. Frankel. I picked this book up to attempt to find another book I could use in my master class on war, inherited trauma, and healing. This book gave me a completely different view of healing than others I’ve read.

Whether you are from a family of Holocaust Survivors or not, the themes in this book speak to many of us. As Frankel tells his story we learn about identity, family secrets, family patterns, loyalty, grief & loss, survival, sexual secrets, mental illness, PTSD, shame, anger, familial behavior, and so many other themes associated with war, survival, the physical manifestations of keeping secrets, inherited trauma, and how we each have to choose our own path regardless of our family’s choices. We also learn how his Jewish family, who survived the Holocaust, felt about loyalty and looking the other way on family secrets.

If you were to look at my copy of this book, you would see underlining on many pages. Notes written in the margins, and a lot of questions or correlations I make to my own family. I think any good book makes us think and helps us to see where we are not alone in whatever we are going through and if we are lucky – just how much we have changed and healed ourselves.

By the end of the this book I could see some of myself in Frankel – his experience, how he dealt (and didn’t) with the family secret he learned about himself, and in the end how he began healing. Honestly, I was in tears.

I will spend some time journaling on what I read and going back through the book to see all the passages I marked as important.

Have you read this book? What was your reaction? Do you have another similar book you can recommend I read?

Disclosure – the book link is an affiliate link. It does not affect the price you pay for the book.

© 2020 World War II Research and Writing Center

Book Review: Salt to the Sea

by Leave a Comment

Disclaimer: The book link is an affiliate link. I make a small percentage off the sale which does not affect your price.

A few days ago I spent an entire day, minus a few hours exploring Haarlem, The Netherlands with my camera, reading Ruta Sepetys’ book Salt to the Sea. While historical fiction, it is based on a real-life, little-known story of a ship sinking that took more lives than the Titanic.

Before you stop reading, because I realize some of my readers feel military historical fiction is worthless, consider this written by the author at the end of her book.

What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memoirs, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.

ruta sepetys, author’s note “salt to the sea”

I applaud Ruta for including this in her book. I firmly believe within every book – fiction or non-fiction, there are stories, secrets, pain, truths, love, hate, and more dark things we keep hidden from our families that should be brought to light. Historical fiction gives us a start point to do this if we are brave enough to confront the past.

Sometimes writing fiction is easier for families to do because you can “hide” the truth and pain of something that happened inside a fictional story. I think reading historical fiction also provides family historians and military historians with the opportunity to see new topics to explore, questions to ask their family members about their past, especially those who left Europe before and after WWI and WWII.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a ship tasked among many in Operation Hannibal, to take Germans and other “desirables” out of Germany when the Russians were moving in during the end of the war. It sunk. The official count is unknown as German staff could not longer keep order after 5,000 souls boarded the ship. Thousands more rushed the ship. It was hit by a Russian torpedo sunk. You can read more about this operation on the Wilhelm Gustloff Museum’s website.

Without giving too much away, the story casts four primary characters through which the story is told. There are other characters that support the story, but these four bring up topics that I almost never hear genealogists talking about in their family histories. Why is that? Are we so afraid to go there? The author introduces us to each in this way:

  • Joana – Guilt is a hunter.
  • Florian – Fate is a hunter.
  • Emilia – Shame is a hunter.
  • Alfred – Fear is a hunter.

Each character has a story that contains guilt, shame, fear, fate, secrets, death, with fear being the overwhelming emotion I felt. One character in particular really made me angry as I read the book and I can see a little clearer why some men and women left the war and used stolen valor and elaborate stories of their service, sacrifice and experiences. I think we have to look at the psychology of a person as it connects to stolen valor and elaborate stories that usually are not true. People sometimes came into the war with the darkness they carried. The war then made it worse and may have twisted it.

What I learned/Questions I had

When I finished reading I spent time writing out two pages of questions and comments that came out of the book for me. They are good suggestions and start points for those of you who wish to start asking questions and writing about this dark part of family and military history.

  1. There is always more to a person’s life and story than you know.
  2. Ask questions. Listen to stories.
  3. Observe! Ask!
  4. Write what you know. Research.
  5. Even after they are gone, you can still find answers.
  6. Fear, guilt, shame, fate, etc. all have layers. It is never just black and white. Right or wrong. Good or bad.
  7. How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do or sacrifice?
  8. No judgment. Explore through a historical lens.
  9. How do you move ahead after a traumatic experience? How do you deal with all you saw or did to survive?
  10. Survivor’s guilt – or guilt you said the “wrong” thing and someone was hurt or died.
  11. What shows up in the family as a result of what people went through?
  12. How do we save the stories? How do we share them?
  13. How do we connect with others who had similar experiences or family who went through similar things? Seems a lot of support for Holocaust survivors and families but I have rarely seen anything for the support of Displaced Persons (DPs). Why is this? Are there resources available?
  14. For those who couldn’t go home after the war – what was their journey? Where did they go? If they went home – what happened (persecution, torture, prison, labor camp, death?)
  15. War disrupts so much and we don’t consider those left behind, those forced to leave, and those who did or couldn’t return. Why?

Everyone has many and deep layers to their personal and family stories. Isn’t it time to consider exploring those layers? To better understand ourselves, our families, our history and the world? Are you ready to step onto the path of this journey? One step is reading this book.

Jennifer holik

Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?

Did you read Salt to the Sea? What did you think?

Can I help you with your research?

Are you ready to learn the bigger picture of your family member’s military service? Email us at info@wwiirwc.com to set up your free phone consultation today to discuss project options, fees, and time. You can also sign-up for our free newsletter and receive the Start Writing Your Military Story Today free!

Are you following Jennifer and all her work on all her social media sites? Click the link to learn more and find different content.

© 2019 World War II Research and Writing Center

Book Review – The Butcher’s Daughter

by 2 Comments

I recently read a book called The Butcher’s Daughter, a memoir, by Florence Grende. Florence is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her story though is not of a family who survived the camps, but who escaped to the forests prior to being sent from a ghetto to a camp and the effects that life had on her parents and herself.

The book is a short read and I read it within a couple of days. It is intense, but not so intense that you have to put it down and walk away for days before returning to it.

I was drawn to this book because Florence discussed it in a Holocaust Educator’s group on Facebook and made the comments that writing her family’s story helped her discover who she was. This really hit home for me because that is one reason I research – to know better who I am and who my family was. To heal the present and past. To create a better future. Many of my clients are also asking for answers to questions through the research which impacts who they are and the cause an evaluation of who they thought their parents were, and who they see them as after discovering those things which could not be talked about.

Many of us hold secrets from the past. Traumatic events, places, and the evils of this world cause many of us to shut down. Keep those memories as far away as possible. We often do this thinking it will protect the people we love. Does it really? I think if we were brave enough to open the door to the past more often and talk about what scares the hell out of us, what tore us apart, what made us want to die or live……would heal so many things.

Will it be easy? No. Will it change us and the world? Yes.

Florence takes us on a journey through her life in brief chapters which hit on a topic and then she moves on. Her story is one of sacrifice, abuse, the trauma of war, how one family dealt with the ghosts of the past (or did not) and how that affected their children who did not live through the war, but certainly felt its effects. In her chapter called Flesh, Florence describes her struggle with weight. As a teenager she wished to not only fit into her family and world, but also be SEEN by her family. To do so, she chose (unknowingly at the time she said), to transform her body into looking like a skeletal camp survivor, in an attempt to close the chasm between her and her parents. How many of us have turned into our parents or someone else to be seen, acknowledged, and to feel as if we fit into the world about which they cannot speak?

Maybe the most powerful part of the book for me, something I struggle with in learning more about my family’s past and that of those who fought in the war, she says,

Dare I say it? I envy their war experiences, their proof of their grit, the solidity of their pain. Like Yiddish, it belongs to them, not me. My fears are empty, inherited without the legitimacy of memory. I feel the terror of their war too, but it rides on the back of a phantom. How can my fears ever measure up to theirs? (The Butcher’s Daughter, pages 70-71).

How many of us feel this way about something in our family’s past that haunts us through the generations? In my family one of those topics is the mental state my grandpa returned from WWII in. Stories were told in the family about what he endured (I later discovered those likely had no basis in fact.) My grandma would never talk about it when we discussed family history. At that time I also didn’t know what really happened to him or what his medical records contained. We always say, “If I had only asked…..” yet we don’t always know what would be helpful to know so we could ask. My dad knew only the stories. My uncle who was much older that my dad would also only tell me the stories he heard. Otherwise it was a family secret.

I understand why it was a secret. Looking at the period after the war through a historical lens, we see that no one wanted to discuss it. There was a lot of shame, guilt, sadness, and many other emotions surrounding the war and what men had experienced and could not or would not discuss. Families wanted to be happy and move on.

This book has such depth, I could talk for hours about it, going through each chapter and commenting on something that hits home for me or I’ve observed in my clients. I highly recommend this book. It is one you can read more than once and learn something new about yourself and your family each read.

How much can we heal by witnessing other’s experiences and looking at ourselves and our families? What kind of world is possible if we confront the ghosts of the past and allow healing to occur?

© 2017 World War II Research and Writing Center