Nicht in meiner Familie

by Roger Frie

Winner of the 2018 Western Canada Jewish Book Award
Winner of the 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award

Even as the Holocaust grows more distant with the passing of time, its traumas call out to be known and understood. What is remembered, what has been imparted through German heritage, and what has been forgotten? Can familiar family stories be transformed into an understanding of the Holocaust's forbidding reality?

Author Roger Frie is uniquely positioned to answer these questions. As the son of Germans who were children during World War II, and with grandparents who were participants in the War, he uses the history of his family as a guide to explore the psychological and moral implications of memory against the backdrop of one of humanity's darkest periods. From his perspective of a life lived across German and Jewish contexts, Frie explores what it means to discover the legacy of a Nazi past. Beginning with the narrative of his grandfather, he shows how the transfer of memory from one German generation to the next keeps the Holocaust at bay.

Not in My Family is rich with poignant Frie beautifully combines his own story with the stories of others, perpetrators and survivors, and the generations that came after. As a practicing psychotherapist he also draws on his own experience of working with patients whose lives have been directly and indirectly shaped by the Holocaust. Throughout, Frie proceeds with a level of frankness and honesty that invites readers to reflect on their own histories and to understand the lasting effects of historical traumas into the present.

Genres: Jewish

Perfect Paperback

First published March 6, 2017

Reviews

[Harry · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2012, I attended the European Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation bi-annual conference in Berlin. I recall the atmosphere as being both guarded and strained; yet there was also a sense of something fresh and exciting arising. Long after the final death throes of two world wars, a cold war and unprecedented genocide, there were moments when it felt that the gathered attendees were beginning to make sense of the transmission of trauma through the generations. The sobering knowledge that we were anything but immune from the downstream effects of inter-generational trauma stood alongside the awareness that otherwise inexplicable human behavior could be more easily understood, and possibly addressed.
Roger Frie's beautiful exploration and meditation on the passage of history and its enduring effects on the generations that follow perpetration, disconnection and victimization deepens that same terrain. in his book, he seamlessly weaves personal and family history with the work of numerous historians, psychoanalytic writers and academics.
As a psychotherapist, I am deeply familiar with the phenomenon of simultaneously knowing and not knowing. As an individual, I am more and more aware of how I carry the burdens and unprocessed events of ancestors forward in my own life. Both these areas were explored in ways that deepened my own understanding of dissociation and historical memory.
Drawing on his own rich life experiences, as well as those gained from his work as a psychoanalyst and academic, Roger Frie offers a moving and important reflection on memory and responsibility, on the need to not only not look away, but to avoid the seductive spell of looking incompletely.
Wide in scope and filled with humanity, sensitivity and empathy, the book ends with a statement which might be construed as an admonition, a warning or a hope.
To me, it is all three.
Highly recommended. This is an important book.

[Erika Sampson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did read every essay/chapter

There were a lot of personal/familial accounts, which wasn’t my favourite. A balance is important and does make these “memory” pieces uniquely compelling, but it felt too much like a memoir and not an academic study.

[Susu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nachfahre von Deutschen in Kanada - der Enkel der Kriegsgeneration - seziert den Umgang mit der NS-Vergangenheit in der Familie und im gesellschaftlichen Erinnern - das Verschweiden, die Nachfragen, die Konfliktzonen zwischen den Nachfahren der Täter und Opfer. Sehr lesenswertes Denkfutter