Losing the Dead

Lisa Appignanesi was born Elsbieta Borenztejn in Poland. Unlike other holocaust memoirs, hers is the story of how the nucleus of a family survived outside the camps, beyond the ghetto and eventually made it to the new world, where Lisa's mother found that her years of masquerading as an Aryan stood her in great stead in anti-semitic post-war Catholic Quebec. As her mother's memory fails, Lisa finds her self trying to unravel the truth about her family, searching not only for signs of her mother's lost brother - a Jewish Schindler character, making money and saving Jews in Warsaw - but also for the truth about how her parents managed to survive, and for her own birth certificate. It's above all the compelling story of one woman's determination not to go under, and the story of her father, who learned to make himself invisible and hide behind silent rage. This is a remarkable tale of terror, courage, deprivation, persecution, survival, and Jewish family life.