Decades later, B.C. author feels trauma of the Holocaust

When Claire Sicherman's grandmother died, she didn't know what to do with the grief, so she began to write.

As she wrote, the Salt Spring, B.C. authorsays she began hearing the voices of her ancestors "just beneath her skin."

"I wouldn't say I was surprised, because I've always carried this heaviness with me," Sichermansaidin a conversation with host SherylMacKayduring CBC's North by Northwest.

Sicherman'smaternal great-grandparentsdied during the Holocaust, whichsawmillions of European Jews murdered by Nazis during the Second World War.

AsSichermanwrote, she realized she was experiencing third-generationtrauma that she had been carrying in her body.

Psychologists first became aware oftransgenerational trauma during the 1960swhen the children of Holocaust survivors started seeking psychiatric treatment.

Through complex post-traumatic stress disordermechanisms, trauma survivors can physically pass that pain onto future generations.

Imprint

Sicherman's writing ended up as an account of her ancestor'sexperiences, detailed in her new bookImprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation.

"I began exploring their voices on the page," said Sicherman. "It really started telling my grandmother's and grandfather's stories."

"It became a way of honouring and remembering them. And also a way for me to tell my son Ben about his own birth story."

While writingImprint,Sichermanresearched her family extensively, and learned more grim details about various relatives.

Perhaps the most harrowing is her grandparents' story of being carted aroundtodifferentconcentration camps.

At thetime of liberation by the Allies, her grandmother was sick with typhus and her grandfather withtuberculosis. Afterwards, through the Red Cross, her grandmother learned her husband was still alive.

"They were walking ghosts," said Sicherman. "They cobbled a life together by pushing the horrorsand their griefdown."

Sicherman's mother was born in 1949 in Soviet-controlledCzechoslovakia. For safety reasons, Judaism was not a part of her life. Her family moved to Canada shortly after.

It wasn't until Sicherman'sadulthood that she learned the cause of her grandfather's death was suicide.

"There was so much shame around it, my grandmother didn't want anybody to know," said Sicherman. "So my mom had this burden of keeping this secret."

Sicherman grew up knowing her family had gone through tribulations her grandmother would tell the story of the tattoo she had been assigned atAuschwitz but she never knew the extent of the horror until doing the research forImprint.

Letters to Ben

A large portion of the book is also made up of letters Sicherman wrote to her son.

One of the first letters details the complications of his birth, when hisumbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. He survived, however the word "asphyxiation" was written on his hospital report.

Asphyxiation had been the cause of death for many members ofSicherman'sfamily during the war.

"That link for me was really big," she said. "He was born without breath."

ThroughwritingImprint, Sicherman said shewas able to form a new narrative for her family.

Instead of being weighed down by mental images of smoke stacks, prison uniforms and armed guards, she was able to celebrate her family's saga as one of survival and the continuity of life.

With files from North by Northwest