Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Extraordinarily little has been written about how women who survived the Holocaust dealt with life after the war, with the trauma of their immediate pasts, and with the debilitating sense of alienation they felt in a changed world. Letters from the Afterlife chronicles the experiences of two female Holocaust survivors as they adjusted to life in their adopted countries of Canada and Sweden, where they knew neither the language nor the culture.
Childhood friends in Poland, Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson lived through the Lodz Ghetto and the death camps together, parting soon after their liberation from Bergen-Belsen. For the next fifty years, they continued their friendship through letters written in Polish, their only shared language. Despite their continuing traumas and insecurities, Rosenfarb and Larsson went on to become distinguished novelists in their respective languages, Yiddish and Swedish. In 1972, Larsson published her own side of the correspondence translated into Swedish, which caused a temporary rift in their enduring friendship.
Letters from the Afterlife, with evocative translations by Krzysztof Majer and Sylvia Söderlind, makes these letters available to an English readership. Rosenfarb’s daughter, Goldie Morgentaler, provides an introduction that establishes the importance of the correspondence from both cultural and historical perspectives and an epilogue that continues Rosenfarb and Larsson’s story after their written exchange was abruptly but temporarily suspended in 1971.
“Letters from the Afterlife offers much to ponder, opening a window into a remarkable postwar story told in real time. Gathering the correspondence between two articulate women rebuilding their lives after the Holocaust, the book reveals innermost hopes, frustrations and private reflections rarely captured in traditional historical accounts.” Hadassah Magazine
“Two very creative authors trusted each other sufficiently to confide their intimate thoughts. We are privy to them through the efforts of Polish translator Krzysztof Majer and Swedish translator Sylvia Söderlind, and the sensitive editing of Goldie. The book captures an historic era through two very personal perspectives and experiences.” San Diego Jewish World
“Letters from the Afterlife unlocks the pages of the relationship between these two women, who love each other profoundly and are separated by language, distance and time, so that the only outlet for their love and care for one another is a lined page of notebook paper and a stamped envelope. These letters clearly should be of interest to a wide range of audiences.” Nashim
“This book contains a priceless treasure: hundreds of letters, methodically recovered and translated, which document the profound bond between two women, a bond strengthened by shared trauma and creative endeavor. Editor Goldie Morgentaler has done the world a great service by making this correspondence—so rare in its completeness and so rich in detail—available in English to scholars, students, and readers of all kinds.” In geveb
“Goldie Morgentaler, the editor of this book and the dedicated, intelligent, guardian of her mother’s legacy, refers to the complexity of women’s lives lived in the “afterlife” of the Holocaust. The reader feels very much in the presence of two strong-willed yet vulnerable women, writing their secrets and their doubts into the vast space that separates them.” Montreal Review of Books
“Letters from the Afterlife unlocks the pages of the relationship between two women, who love each other profoundly and are separated by language, distance and time, so that the only outlet for their love and care for one another is a lined page of notebook paper and a stamped envelope.” Nashim
“As non-fiction written in the tone of fiction, this isn’t yet another book about female peril and perseverance in the Holocaust years, though there are shards of peril and ample portions of perseverance in these pages. Rather, this is a book about what happens after survival: How the second beginning offered by chance and caprice is turned to account. Whether the sweet futures that Holocaust prisoners dared to dream actually came to pass. And how there never really is a post- trauma time of pure serenity and beauty.” Literary Review of Canada
Goldie Morgentaler (Editor)
Goldie Morgentaler is professor emerita at the University of Lethbridge and an award-winning translator from Yiddish to English.
Krzysztof Majer (Translator)
Krzysztof Majer is a literary translator, assistant professor at the University of Lodz, and editor at Literatura na Swiecie and Text Matters.
Sylvia Söderlind (Translator)
Sylvia Söderlind is professor emerita at the Department of English, Queen's University.