Carolyn Ariella Sofia’s chance meeting with Jerzy Kosiński, author of The Painted Bird, opens a window onto the haunted inner lives of writers who grew up during the Holocaust. From Kosiński to Georges Perec and Sarah Kofman, Sofia explores how they concealed their identity to survive—and how that buried turmoil became the raw material for extraordinary literature.
To my surprise, when we were saying goodbye afterwards, he asked to meet again. I promised myself to tell no one what had happened that night. Memories of my maternal grandmother were surfacing – how she concealed her Jewish identity when she came to the United States, how she helped raise me as a Catholic on the outside with a hidden Jewish self. Not the same as living in Nazi-controlled Europe, but I understood something about hiding. Already the secret keeper for my grandmother, I felt compelled to keep Kosinski’s secret too. He may not have used words to answer my question about hiding childhood experiences in female characters, but his outsized reaction at the table felt like a confirmation.
More picks on the Holocaust
As a Former IDF Soldier and Historian of Genocide, I Was Deeply Disturbed by My Recent Visit to Israel
“This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history—and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree.”
How Do You Make a Movie About the Holocaust?
“With ‘The Zone of Interest,’ Jonathan Glazer is just the latest director to confront the problem.”
The Race to Catch the Last Nazis
“A lifetime after the Holocaust, a few of its perpetrators somehow remain at large.”
On the Record, At Last
“My father never got to tell his story at the war crimes trials at Nuremberg—it’s taken decades for the truth to come out.”
Beyond Borders
“Everything a man keeps on himself, in cases of capture, can save his life.”
The Forgotten History of the World’s First Trans Clinic
The Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin would be a century old if it hadn’t fallen victim to Nazi ideology.
