A Wolf in the Attic: The Legacy of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.62 (931 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0789015498 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 294 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-07-01 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"psychoanalytically-informed Holocaust/coming-of-age memoir" according to Helen Epstein. "Memoirs, the signature literary form of the 21st century, speak to usprivately of the most intimate aspects of life. The fact that Sophia Richman is achild survivor of the Holocaust as well as a psychoanalyst and applies both of these vantage points to her life narrative, takes this memoir into new territory.She writes of the realms of childhood, adolescence and adulthood through theprism of someone whose very existence once depended on keeping asecret. This is an engaging and very special book in . Marilyn S. Jacobs said A Unique Perspective on the Holocaust. "A Wolf in the Attic", a memoir by Dr. Sophia Richman adds a valuable perspective to the literature of the Holocaust. Dr. Richman was a hidden child in Poland who survived to tell her story of what it meant to transcend such an ordeal and then go on to try to strive for and fit in with normal life. This work is a unique exposition of a journey to overcome a traumatic past and to engage fully in life under renewed circumstances yet with the past just under the surface. The process of coming to terms . "A Different and Vital Perspective" according to Lawrence E. Burgee. I thought the book was excellent! I have read dozens of books about the Holocaust and this document certainly offers a different and vital perspective that has not previously been covered in the literature. As you progress through the book, it is quite clear that the after-effects for Holocaust survivors are persistent and nagging, and greatly affect them for the rest of their lives. Sophia Richman's experience demonstrates that tragic events that surround young children can stalk in their minds lik
Strange noises came from there. Much too dangerous to tell a Jewish child marked for death. For me, there was no life before the war, no secure early childhood to hold in mind, no context in which to place what was happening to me and around me. Mama said there was a wolf upstairs, a hungry, dangerous wolf but the truth was far more dangerous than that. Her story, in addition to its immediate impact, illustrates her struggle to come to terms with the powerful yet sometimes subtle impact of childhood trauma.In the author's words: “As a very young child I experienced the Holocaust in a way that made it almost impossible to integrate and make sense of the experience. Hidden in plain sight, both she and her mother passed as Christian Poles. I ingested it with the milk I drank from my mother’s breast. The war years are followed by migration and displacement as the refugees search for a new homeland. A Wolf in the Attic: Even though she was only two, the little girl knew she must ne
. The ongoing themes of denial and her growing ability to identity herself as a survivor reading the diary of Anne Frank or seeing Stalag 17 give her glimpses into her experience drive the narrative; it is only after years of analysis that she understands a connection between the "difficulty in expressing myself verbally and the early injunctions against speaking the truth." As in analysis, Richman methodically goes through her life and offers theories of who she is and how she became that way. But there was no wolf, Richman understands later, what lay hidden behind the door was her father, who had escaped from the Janowska concentration camp and whose