The Memory Keeper - Jackie Kohnstamm

 

In many ways, this is like reading an in depth episode of Who Do You Think You Are instead of watching it. Although the detail is such that it is very easy to picture everything that transpires in this absorbing tale of one woman’s search for the truth.

If you hear the term “Holocaust survivor“, you immediately think of somebody who managed to survive or escape, the horrors of the death camps of Nazi Germany and their “final solution“. But after reading this book, I think that term can extend to relatives and descendants of those who perished. 

This book tells of Jackie Kohnstamm’s determined, indefatigable and meticulous mission to seek the truth of what happened to the grandparents she never met and who perished in Theresienstadt concentration camp. Jackie’s mother managed to escape Berlin before the deportations began as had her brother and sister before her. They, too, were Holocaust survivors in my opinion. But Mrs Kohnstamm, spoke very little of what happened during the war, leaving her daughter countless questions about the past.

In one of those indefinable moments that happen every once in a while, call them sliding doors moments, call them serendipity, call them fate, Jackie googled her grandparents names and found that four days previously two Stolpersteine had been laid in their names outside their previous residence in Berlin. This proved to be the catalyst for a search that took her back to Berlin on several occasions.

( stolpersteine  - https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ )

In this book, Jackie allows us to accompany her on her journey to find out the truth about her, maternal grandparents about their lives, and about those months of torment inflicted upon innocent people by a barbaric and heartless regime. It’s an absorbing book for Holocaust students and genealogists alike as Jackie visits various archives and researchers and translates documents and performs countless searches in her desire to know the details of Max and Mally. And as you progress through the book, you find that you want to know almost as badly as Jackie does the circumstances, the detail, the whys and the wherefores. 

There are many “moments“ in the book. But one that really got me was when Jackie in Berlin, searching through documents at the Berlin Compensation Office finds her own birth certificate -  the original. Somehow, for me, it seemed like cement across the miles and years sealing the family together.

This is a very readable book. Whether you have an interest in the Holocaust or not it’s a fascinating account of an individual’s detective work. But if you are a student of the Holocaust, it’s another invaluable addition to your library.

My thanks to Canongate Books for a gifted copy.