Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History

by Helen Epstein 
Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers; Reprint edition (April 15, 2005)

Helen Epstein, an American journalist by profession, the daughter of Frances Epstein, a survivor, is drawn upon the death of her mother to search out literally, “where she came from.” Who was this woman with whom, “So intense was our bond, that I was never sure what belonged to whom, where I ended, and where she began.” 

Working from the text of a 12-page letter written by her mother, Epstein sets off on a multinational research project to unearth the history of the three generations of Jewish women who preceded her. I appreciated the richly descriptive history of Jewish life and culture over the centuries in Central Europe and was fascinated by the challenges of her research. But even more compelling was witnessing the evolution during this research of the relationship between Helen, Czech born and American bred, and her European mother who immigrated to the U.S. in 1948. Helen had always loved her mother but now, in uncovering her history, she sought to understand this woman who was an extension of herself.

Epstein’s investigation is fascinating and painstaking – an eight year process. Faced with a lack of official documentation on the lives of ordinary women who were typically not involved in a world beyond the domestic and private, she had to resort to flinging her net wider and wider, having to search for the descendants of someone who would have known her grandmother or great-grandmother and then moving on from there to reconstruct their lives.  Epstein claimed she, “… began to feel like an archaeologist, who, instead of collecting shards of broken pottery, was picking up pieces of narrative.” 

What she finds is the story of her connection to this line of three Jewish women who challenged the constraints of their role in Jewish society, evolved with history, and wended their way in a continually unstable landscape where their fortunes were constantly changing.

The narrative is beautifully written, weaving the past with the present, and unearthing the interlocking mysteries that tie family through generations. Epstein’s previous book, Children of the Holocaust, also concerns the topic of second-generation Holocaust survivors.

Available to borrow at the Holocaust Center for Humanity (email Rosa@HolocaustCenterSeattle.org to request the book) or on Amazon.