Prisoner of Her Past: A Son's Memoir

Prisoner of her Past: a Son’s Memoir is by Howard Reich. This is one of the most upsetting Holocaust memoir I have read. It is one thing to be having flashbacks into your past when you know what is happening; but to have flashbacks and not have any idea what is happening must be simply overwhelming for the person and the family. This book makes me wonder just how many Holocaust survivors have experienced this without the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s or Dementia. To have symptoms of PTSD and not know it is quite distressing. This is what happened to Howard Reich’s mother.Howard’s Mother was from Dubno, Poland and was “the spoiled first grandchild of an extended family.” This existence was torn from her as a child when the Soviet Union took over her town as part of the deal with Germany. Then, the town was retaken by the Nazis and at the age of eleven, she was on the run by herself. All but four of her extended family were massacred here in Dubno. She made it to the United States, married, and raised her family in Chicago. However, she never talked about her four years of running to her family. It wasn’t until after the death of her husband, also a Holocaust survivor who rarely talked about his past and never to his son, that she began to have problems with hearing voices and becoming paranoid about people killing her. It was only after many doctor and hospital visits, stays in institutions and nursing homes, as well as her son’s visit back to Poland, that Howard became aware of exactly what was wrong with his Mother. Unfortunately, there was little the doctors could do to help her due to her intense paranoia and her determination to fight them this time.The book is well-written and is compelling to read. In addition to the book, Howard went back to Poland and with the help of those still living in Dubno who remembered the past, made a documentary film of his Mother’s life. Hopefully what he discovered in this search will be of benefit to others who have traumas and develop PTSD. In addition, the book gives a very explicit description of the horror of the massacres of the Einzsgruppen as they exterminated the Poles near Dubno. I would be very careful to use this book in schools while teaching the Holocaust.

This is a beautiful and important book that I cannot recommend too highly, and that I will not forget: “Prisoner of Her Past,” Howard Reich’s family memoir of growing up in Chicago with parents who had survived the Holocaust, and of his Mother’s late-life struggle with late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder resulting from her unfathomably brutal childhood experiences. It is an extraordinarily loving and humane look at his Mother’s life and a clear-eyed look at her disease — in a way, the diametrical opposite of dementia — which is characterized by extreme awareness of her surroundings (a survival mechanism from her childhood), coupled with paranoid delusions that people want to kill her. As she aged and her symptoms began to express themselves, Reich went to extraordinary lengths to understand his Mother’s childhood experience — something she had concealed, and would not talk about — reading the existing documents, going back to her little Polish village, talking with residents, visiting the house she grew up in, seeing the Jewish cemetery, and the places where so many perished.Reich brings this all into the present: “Surveying the psychological wreckage of the war this many years later, I couldn’t help thinking of the children of the world today — in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Afghanistan, Darfur, Liberia. Youngsters in these war-torn places are suffering experiences with too many similarities to those my mother and father endured. These children, too, typically receive scant treatment for a disorder virtually unrecognized by practicing psychiatrists…” In making a compelling case for understanding late-onset PTSD, he writes: “PTSD may be the most patient and persistent of illnesses, content to wait half a century or more to unleash its full wrath, when its victims are old, weak, and at their most vulnerable.”He concludes his book: “Now when I look at my mother — small, frail but defiant — I’m awed by her heroism in standing up to the horrors she believes she is facing once again. At last, I know and love my mother for who she really is, a woman whose steadfastness as a child saved her life and eventually gave life to me and so many others, a hero who to this day wants nothing more than to live, and to protect the lives of those she loves.”This is an extraordinary book.

This book is very well written and informative. I didn't know that post traumatic stress disorder could appear many years after the trauma, while at first the person appears to function just fine. But the same book is published under a different title and I bought both not knowing that.

The book was extremely interesting but I wish it was longer.........

Amazing story!

The book was very good, but I ordered two copies and only received the first one.