During the dark days of the Holocaust, a Jewish family struggles to survive.
The author’s grandparents were newlyweds when Hitler invaded Europe. As the Nazi madness enveloped the continent, they were forced to make unthinkable choices in order to save themselves and their young children, eventually sending their two-year-old son into hiding alone in a lonely Belgian convent, and giving their newborn daughter up for adoption. Ultimately these sacrifices worked, and the family was reunited. But was there a hidden cost?
Decades later, when her son was born, the author experienced flashbacks of being hunted by the Nazis. Did the trauma that Tammy Bottner’s predecessors experience affect their DNA? Did she inherit the memories of the war-time trauma in her very genes?
In this moving family memoir, told partly from her grandmother Melly’s perspective, the author, a physician, recounts the remarkable saga of her courageous family’s experiences during the Holocaust. This tale, part history, part scientific reflection on epigenetics, takes the reader on a journey that may read like a novel, but is all the more fascinating for being true.
