Travels with Vera

Vera’s parents came to Israel after World War II, bringing with them their small daughter who, they hoped, would console them for the loss of their earlier families in the Holocaust. This is a heavy burden for young Vera to carry, but it also toughens her. With them is also her mother’s elder daughter, Annika, the only surviving child of her previous life. Vera’s parents and Annika are still haunted by those terrible years, with her mother continuing to search for her lost children and relatives, planting fears and nightmares in her little daughter. Small wonder that Vera wants to be someone else: not the child of an aging, sickly woman who looks like her grandmother, but of a young, carefree, normal mother; not living in an immigrant neighborhood full of tormented people, but in a vibrant, forward-looking Israeli surrounding. Vera’s childhood and adolescence is the story of the Holocaust’s second generation, who inhabit two worlds. On the one hand, she tries to live like all other youngsters of her age, on the other she internalizes her parents’ past, conveyed to her each evening in small doses as “bedtime stories,” first by her half-sister, then by her mother. A powerful, moving novel, with touches of subtle humor, based on the author’s own life.