When the Birds Stopped Singing: Living with the Wounds of War: Personal Essays

by Clemens Loew

Having lived as a child through times of Nazi violence, I am familiar with loss and terrifying uncertainty, and have witnessed gritty heroism. This is a memoir about my mother's fi erce genius for survival and deep love for me. It is the story of love and hope found in new relationships, and of my struggle to give meaning to the madness I experienced and witnessed and that lingers in me as an adult. I acknowledge that along with the privilege of survival comes the obligation to live one's life to its fullest and honor those who did not survive.

184 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2014

About the author

Clemens Loew was born in Poland two years before World War II began. He survived the Holocaust in part by hiding his identity and then by hiding in a convent outside Warsaw. His mother and uncle survived, but the rest of his family was killed.

Following the war, he and his mother stayed in a displaced-person camp and then in Munich, waiting for visas. They arrived in America in 1949, when he was 11 years old, speaking Polish, German and Hebrew.

He was raised in Manhattan, where he attended public school.

After obtaining his PhD in clinical psychology at the University of Iowa, he furthered his postgraduate training in New York City. He lives and practices in Manhattan, where he is a psychoanalyst, author and co-founder of the prominent National Institute of Psychotherapies. His portraits of child Holocaust survivors, exhibited in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Manhattan, brought him recognition as a photographer.