Irena's Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival

by Karen Kirsten Narrated by Karen Kirsten

Overview

In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Joasia, knew nothing about this extraordinary event until she was thirty-two, when a letter arrived from a stranger. She also learned that the parents who raised her were actually her aunt and uncle. Joasia kept this knowledge hidden from her own daughter, Karen-until an innocent question unexpectedly revealed the truth.



Determined to understand the generational trauma that cloaked her family in silence, her own origins, and to help heal her mother's pain, Karen set out to unearth decades of secrets and piece together a hidden history-from the glittering days of pre-war Poland to the little-known Radom Prison, where of 500 resistance members tortured, only ten survived, her grandfather the only known Jewish one. There, Karen finds answers, yet not easy ones.



As she exposes her family's saga of love and betrayal, countless brushes with death, precarious hiding places, and the astounding negotiation with an SS officer who saved her mother's life, Karen must reconcile the complicated, multi-faceted truths behind human behavior.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Irena’s Gift

"Irena’s Gift interrogates the messy complexity of family, both its tenderness and nurture but also its corrosive anger and rejection. It’s a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.” —Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner

“Karen Kirsten proves family stories and densities of human affection, when they ran up against that calamity we call the Holocaust, are as individual as fingerprints. News withheld, and what is passed on in doubt and affections, is always dramatic if it can be creatively depicted, and Karen Kirsten more than fulfils that task of narration and enchantment here.” ―Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List

“Deeply moving and beautifully written, Irena's Gift is a powerful unravelling of mysteries and memory. The journey of reconstruction and reconnection brilliantly evokes a lost era full of pain and love, as well as laying out the intricacies of intergenerational trauma. In addition to its value as Holocaust history, Irena's Gift deserves to become a classic of the memoir genre.” ―Lucy Adlington, author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

“Karen Kirsten’s debut is a harrowing family drama that spans the globe ― from Jewish ghettos patrolled by Nazis to Melbourne suburbs of poodles, kookaburras, and refugees. Kirsten goes on a quest to piece together her family’s secrets and finds much more than a tale of survival from history’s nightmare. She tells a story of disillusionment and faith. She reminds us that sometimes heroes can be repulsive, and sometimes lies keep families together. Irena's Gift is beautifully written, deeply researched and deeply felt.” ―Kevin Birmingham, New York Times bestselling author of The Sinner and the Saint
 
“This is one of the best second-generation Holocaust books ever published. I loved it and couldn't put it down.” ―Ariana Neumann, New York Times bestselling author of When Time Stopped

“An extraordinary story of how secrets and lies can tear a family apart.” ―Maya Lee, author of The Nazis Knew My Name

“In Irena’s Gift, Kirsten brings to life the true and remarkable story of her family, including her mother and her grandmother, who like my Opa, sabotaged munitions at an armaments factory. This is a story of extraordinary women, survival and sacrifice. A must read.” ―Tara Moss, human rights and disability advocate, and author of The War Widow and The Ghosts of Paris

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192270455
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	07/23/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos