The Survivors: A Story of War, Inheritance, and Healing

Summary (from the publisher): A memoir of family, the Holocaust, trauma, and identity, in which Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, must come to terms with the legacy of his family’s painful past and discover who he is in the wake of a life-changing revelation about his own origins.

Adam Frankel’s maternal grandparents survived the Holocaust and built new lives, with new names, in Connecticut. Though they tried to leave the horrors of their past behind, the pain they suffered crossed generational lines—a fact most apparent in the mental health of Adam’s mother. When Adam sat down with her to examine their family history in detail, he learned another shocking secret, this time one that unraveled Adam’s entire understanding of who he is.

In the midst of piecing together a story of inherited familial trauma, Adam discovered he was only half of who he thought he was, knowledge that raised essential questions of identity. Who was he, if not his father’s son? If not part of a rich heritage of writers and public servants? Does it matter? What defines a family’s bonds? What will he pass on to his own children? To rewrite his story in truth and to build a life for his own young family, Adam had to navigate his pain to find answers and a way forward.

Throughout this journey into the past, his family’s psyche, and his own understanding of identity, Adam comes to realize that while the nature of our families’ traumas may vary, each of us is faced with the same choice. We can turn away from what we’ve inherited—or, we can confront it, in the hopes of moving on and stopping that trauma from inflicting pain on future generations. The stories Adam shares with us in The Survivors are about the ways the past can haunt our future, the resilience that can be found on the other side of trauma, and the good that can come from things that are unspeakably bad.

Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this book from HarperCollins. 

Part family history, part memoir, this moving work of non-fiction details the stories of the author's maternal grandparents who survived the Holocaust to build new lives in Connecticut. Yet the scars inflicted upon his grandparents had lasting effects on his grandparents, his mother, and on Adam himself. In this book, author Adam Frankel explores his family history, the familial trauma he inherited, his relationship with his parents, and how he defines who he is. 

Adam's grandparents' story was horrific in the way that only Holocaust survivor stories can be. Their response to nearly being killed and watching many others die was to start completely over in a new country, with new names, and to avoid telling their stories of the war as much as possible. They were close knit and suspicious of others, passing that on to their daughter, Adam's mother, who experienced many bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his childhood and young adult period. 

While hard to read, my favorite part of this book was the historical section where Adam details his grandparents' war experiences. Later sections of the book read more like contemplative memoir. While obviously all interconnected, in other ways it felt like multiple memoirs that had been pieced together. Also fascinating was Frankel's career as a presidential speech writer for Barack Obama. In short, Frankel contains multitudes and could easily have written multiple books: one for his grandparents' story, one for his complicated relationship with his parents, and yet a third for his career. A moving memoir of immense loss and the reverberations through the generations. Ultimately, Frankel concludes that you cannot ruin from your trauma but must stand to face it. 

Stars: 4