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Buried rivers : a spiritual journey into the Holocaust / Ellen Korman Mains.

by Mains, Ellen Korman.

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West Lake Books, 2018.

940.5318092 M225b

Children of Holocaust survivors -- Biography.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Poland.

Jews -- Poland -- Biography.

World War, 1939-1945 -- Biography.

9781641840170 (pbk.)

xvi, 301 p. ; 23 cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

"After the Holocaust, how do we not lose faith in each other--or in ourselves? This extraordinary 2nd generation Holocaust memoir explores powerful bonds between the living and the dead--against the backdrop of generational trauma and family conflict. To the disappointment of her parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, the author began following a Buddhist path at the age of 19. Though her parents were not particularly religious, they felt betrayed and, along with her domineering uncle, took extreme measures to try to remove her from what they believed was a cult. More than three decades later, on a German train, Ellen felt the presence of spirits who had died in the Holocaust and had lost their trust in basic goodness. Their plea for help sent her on a series of life-changing journeys to Poland to touch a cosmic wound and reconcile it with basic goodness. Could those years of Buddhist meditation finally prove helpful to her family lineage instead of being a betrayal? In 2006, Ellen travels to Poland, the Holocaust's largest graveyard, and to her mother's city of Łódź, to reconnect with her family's tragic history while exploring basic goodness--not theoretically, but in her bodily experience. In 2009, she studies Polish at a language school where she is the only American in a class comprised largely of Arabs. With no elders still alive to consult, she relies on an account dictated before his death by her uncle, an Auschwitz survivor, for clues to her family's past. As she retraces her mother's and uncle's steps through Europe and walks in the places where her ancestors lived for centuries, she stumbles into a mysterious stream of love--if only she can receive it. Increasingly aware of her own traumatic imprints, she realizes that helping the dead is inseparable from healing her own wounds. And that opening to events previously hidden, and to the darkness we habitually avoid, brings a transformation that widens our perception and changes us forever. Beyond recovering her family's lost history, this compelling memoir reveals powerful connections between spirituality and trauma, and between Judaism and Buddhism, and intimately explores the challenges of family loyalty, crossing religious boundaries, and opening to the invisible blessings of ancestors. With unflinching emotional honesty and deep inquiry, channeled through a poetic spirit, Buried Rivers reveals how healing, magic, and life itself can transform fear and open our hearts despite unimaginable suffering."--From publisher.

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