Holocaust som familiehistorie

Abstract

How does one write about Holocaust in the family? How does one dare? How does one communicate someone else’s experience of the Holocaust? And does anyone care? How can experiences as 2nd or 3rd generation survivor be used in a modern society? For what or for whom? These are some of the questions Mikaela v. Freiesleben reflects upon while she prepares a biography about her grandmother, who as a young woman survived the camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. During a trip to Szombathely, Hungary, her grandmother’s native village, Mikaela v. Freiesleben meets with historians, archivists, and members of the shrunken Jewish community to shed light upon her grandmother’s life in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s, and the fate of the Jewish community in the 1940s. All the time wondering how she can do justice to her grandmother’s story, and how it has affected her own life to grow up with Holocaust as family history.