The Survivors by Adam P. Frankel, a former speechwriter to President Barack Obama, is about the ways the trauma of the Holocaust has reverberated through the generations in his family. Adam’s maternal Zayde survived Dachau, among other Nazi camps, while his maternal Bubbie spent much of the war in the woods of Poland with Jewish resistance fighters and Russian partisans.
Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines — a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret — this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is. The stories Adam shares with us in The Survivors are about the ways the past can haunt our future the resilience that can be found on the other side of trauma, and the good that can come from things that are unspeakably bad.
