Like a bird on a branch - Rachel Brafman

 intergenerational family memory

Thje Shoah had a profound effect on Rachel Brafman’s life, who was hidden from the age of three in OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux enfants) homes. Later, married and with two children,Rachel wanted to understand the origin of her difficulties. She retraces the hidden years of her early childhood, then focuses on the family history up to the present day, resulting in this collection of writings from four generations.

 In 1977, for example, she commissioned her mother to write an account of the events, which saved her children and her own life, but she never recovered from the murder of many of her relatives. Rachel had to reconstruct her father’s journey, who was arrested in August 1941 and deported in early June 1942 (convoy no. 2), and miraculously returned from Auschwitz. In the same way, she tells us the story of the man in her life, also a hidden child, but whose father did not return from deportation. As a victim of the consequences of the Shoah, Rachel also asks her descendants about the inevitable transmission of the «weight of the Shoah ».

Thanks to Rachel's restorative work, the voices of these four generations allow us to measure their relevance and impact on the Jewish people, embodying their resilience.

Text established with the assistance of Geneviève Pichon.

312 pages, 131 illustrations, 22 €

To be published on April 12, 2023, in Collection Témoignages de la Shoah edited by the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and the éditions Le Manuscrit.