Customer Reviews

Sister, Sister

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In _Sister, Sister_, Anna Rosner Blay plaits together the stories of three women's lives. Her own story is interspersed with the remembered narratives of her mother Hela and aunt Janka, Polish-born women who survived the Holocaust, spent time in the Schindler's factory, and ultimately emigrated to Melbourne, Australia.

Blay juxtaposes her own questing for identity as the child of a generation of Jews whose lives were riven by their experiences, and unflinchingly raises a number of ethical questions about this. She writes with great sensitivity about the political and emotional scars sustained by the children of Holocaust survivors, but contextualises these alongside the harrowing memories of her mother and aunt.

This is compelling and radical biography, melded with insightful and disturbing questions about nationality, identity and that which we inherit from our parents. It traces the extraordinary and fractured experience of a sun-imbued suburban Australian upbringing, with the often erased and concealed atrocities inflecting it.

This book is beautifully written and extremely moving. I have read many holocaust books, but this one touched me the most. The personal accounts of the two sisters provide an incredible insight into the hardships they faced for all those years. My father is a holocaust survivor who never spoke about his experiences of the war years. Somehow, when reading this book, I felt as though it was speaking for him as well. In addition, the author touches on her feelings as the daughter of a holocaust survivor, which I could really relate to. An excellent book for anyone interested in reading about the holocaust.