Tearing the Silence: Being German in America

"A skillful interviewer, Ursula Hegi focuses on understanding the character and story of the individuals in all their complexity. While some genuinely attempt to understand their cultural heritage and feel a deep responsibility to be aware of the Holocaust and pass that awareness on to future generations, others have stayed within the familiar silence that manifests itself in denial, evasion, justification, and an inability to mourn - not all that different from the response of their parents' generation." "Tearing the Silence contributes to a more complex picture of a time period we are still struggling to understand. It is a powerful and provocative account of post-Holocaust German immigrants in America, an important document of what it is like to grow up within the numbing silence of postwar Germany, a moving story of what it means to live between two cultures."--BOOK JACKET.