LITTLE BOY, I KNOW YOUR NAME

The son of Holocaust survivors explores generational trauma in this memoir.

“When speaking of my childhood,” writes debut author and charity director Raff, “I learned to be careful…knowing that often it would lead to more uncomfortable questions.” As the son of Holocaust survivors, the author’s story may not be as harrowing as his elders’, but it was shaped by the same traumatic events. His mother, for instance, watched his grandmother die during the war, and witnessed Nazis invading her home in Poland; according to Raff, her later life was made up of actions that were “reckless and selfish,” as she lived a nomadic life in Canada, the United States, and Israel. One of the central traumas of the author’s life was when his divorced mother kidnapped him in 1969 and took him to Israel to live with her; eventually, his father reclaimed him. As a child, Raff was frequently told that the “worst thing” he could do to his family was marry someone who wasn’t Jewish—a sentiment that lingered in his mind well into adulthood, when he married a woman outside the faith. Although he was a successful California businessman, the author was, in the words of his therapist, “a well-dressed poser” for much of his adult life, as he masked his emotional pain behind a façade of confidence. In addition to exploring the author’s inherited suffering, the book also surveys his role as “the connective tissue between my son, Joshua, and the trauma of my parents’ generation.” Overall, this is a harrowing, empathetic, and profoundly personal work that’s unafraid to explore Raff’s family’s “fumbling” response to mental anguish; he effectively calls it a cycle of pain that “lacerates those we choose to love.” Informed by years of personal therapy, the book is intended to give hope to others who may feel hopeless. Some may find the book’s nuanced portrayal of imperfect survivors to be uncomfortable at times, but its authentic narrative from a second-generation survivor is a thoughtful addition to Holocaust literature.

An absorbing remembrance of a difficult psychological legacy.