How does one combine memoir, ethnography, self-discovery, and history, while contributing to two important bodies of literature—Holocaust and psychotherapy—in an eminently readable book? Do what Leila Levinson has done in Gated Grief: The Daughter of a GI Concentration Camp Liberator Discovers a Legacy of Trauma (Cable Publishing, 2011). The breadth of her project is evident even in the awards it has won—one for women’s memoir and the other for military writing.[1] But its reach is greater than that. Anyone interested in post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trans-generational trauma, especially as it affects veterans and their families, should find this book valuable. I gave my copy to my cousin whose father, like Levinson’s, was among the troops that liberated Hitler’s death camps. Levinson begins her story with the discovery, after her father’s death, of photographs he took at the liberation of Nordhausen—an experience he never told his children about. The photos of stacked corpses, latrine-type graves, and walking-dead prisoners were kept in a cardboard box in a trunk in the office of the formidable father’s medical practice, guarded by a Nazi helmet he had taken as a souvenir. One photo is blurred by the photographer’s hands, shaking from the shock of the horror before him. The discovery of photos leads Levinson on a journey to find the father behind the camera—how he and their family were all affected by his traumatic witnessing. She interviews a dozen elderly subjects, living in different parts of the U.S., who were also camp liberators,…

Many people all over the world have families who have been affected by the events of World War II. Elizabeth Rynecki is one of those people. Her great-grandfather Moshe Rynecki “depicted the everyday lives of the Polish-Jewish community in his art,” but sadly, he died in a concentration camp and most of his art was lost in the war. Elizabeth Rynecki’s book, titled Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter’s Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy, details the journey of Elizabeth as she strives to rebuild her great-grandfather’s art collection. For some time, Elizabeth has been working on producing a documentary film which bears the same title as her book, and now, at the end of May, the film will premiere in Warsaw, Poland. In light of this exciting news, I had the chance to interview Elizabeth Rynecki for Swenson Book Development, and I am excited to share it with you. Swenson Book Development: What has it been like seeing this documentary film project come to life? Elizabeth Rynecki: We filmed the first interview in 2008 and cut a 9 minute “proof of concept” trailer in 2010 as a way to generate interest and funding in the project. I thought I’d be finished in a year. I had no real understanding of the complexity of putting together a documentary film. I didn’t know how much money I would need, how hard it would be to raise it, nor how important it would be to assemble just the right team to bring it all…

It’s no secret, I like history. It offers us lessons about the future. You won’t be surprised then to hear this past year I’ve read a lot of books about the years in Europe leading up to WWII. From Richard Halliburton’s world adventures as a swashbuckling celebrity travel writer in American Daredevil by Cathryn Prince to the international search for the incredible artwork of Moshe Rynecki, whose paintings offer a visual ethnography of Jewish life in Warsaw during the interwar years, I’ve read widely about the shifts in political and cultural winds. And what happened then bears relevance to what happens today. And tomorrow. The Oxford word of the year for 2016 is post-truth. A recent Stanford study on students’ inability to discern fake news from legitimate news didn’t shock me. Or you, given current events in our country. These are new nonfiction releases I can recommend on the subject which brings something new and fresh to understanding the Nazi era. Elizabeth Rynecki has written a memoir, Chasing Portraits, about her transformation from claimant to art historian as the great-granddaughter of an artist killed in a concentration camp whose 800 paintings were hidden and most disappeared during the bombings of Warsaw. We learn about the legal complexities of Holocaust art restitution, crowdsourcing historical research, how each piece of art is a survivor with a story, and the backstory of making a documentary. This true story shows how much grey area lies between black and white, good and evil. This wasn’t…