In her recently published book, Survivor Café, Elizabeth Rosner brings a deeper meaning to genocide, an experience she has been trying to process as a writer and the daughter of Holocaust survivors. In her first work of nonfiction, she explores the common threads that tie all survivors of mass trauma – from Armenia to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bosnia – but always returns to Buchenwald, the concentration camp where her father, a young teenager, was imprisoned during the last year of WWII. She and her family have visited Buchenwald several times, the last time at the 70^th reunion of the survivors.

It’s difficult to listen to a survivor’s traumatic experiences, especially the survival story of one’s parents. The telling itself can cause additional trauma in both the survivor and the listener. This is one epiphany Rosner uncovers.

She also weaves in stories and insights from survivors, philosophers, writers, scientists, and psychologists to explore how trauma is passed on and manifested from generation to generation. Even young Germans today must deal with the trauma their grandparents inflicted more than 70 years ago.

As the child of a Holocaust survivor myself, this was a difficult book to read, but it gave me insights into my family and myself. Rosner’s writing is crafted like the poet she is, and her ability to meld and transcend her own story with those of survivors of wars, slavery, and genocide is nothing less than brilliant and more importantly, healing.