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Under the Same Roof: My Life as the Son of Holocaust Resisters
Dr. Mark Henry Kinn grew up both searching for and running from his parents’ tragic past. How do you live through a trauma that isn’t even your own? How does a child live with the poignancy and sadness of a generation, following him to school, to work, and out into a world that doesn’t understand?
Kinn’s mother, Sonia, evaded the Nazis by hiding in the forest, but she never forgot her murdered family. His father, Phil, joined the Russian resistance, but sneaked back into the ghetto to find his father and sisters. Sonia and Phil met in 1944 when both joined a secret caravan of Jews escaping from Eastern Europe; both were struggling to move past the memory of extreme brutality and overwhelming loss.
As Dr. Kinn explains, “My sister and I were left with an apocalyptic sense that our parents’ world had been uprooted, killed, destroyed. They thought they were hiding their past, protecting us from the Holocaust and its atrocities, but this made it worse. They rarely spoke about the Holocaust during our childhood yet it was there every day, in everything, omnipresent but never acknowledged, never explained.”
In stories pieced together from early childhood to adulthood, "Under the Same Roof" sensitively illustrates the impact of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors. “You kids have Holocaust on the brain,” Kinn’s mother would say when he asked her about her experience in the woods or his father’s time in the resistance.
This gentle and subtle memoir follows Mark Henry Kinn from a childhood full of secrets and unexpressed feelings (afraid of upsetting parents who had “been through so much”) to an adulthood of trying both consciously and unconsciously, to heal his parents’ pain by becoming a doctor.
"Under the Same Roof" is about the consequences of unimaginable horror. It’s about the struggle to discover an identity apart from an all-encompassing legacy of fear, anger, guilt and sadness. Told with great love for his heroic parents and a wish for a better life in the face of an inescapable past, "Under the Same Roof" is an insightful illustration of the consequences of intergenerational trauma.
Kinn’s mother, Sonia, evaded the Nazis by hiding in the forest, but she never forgot her murdered family. His father, Phil, joined the Russian resistance, but sneaked back into the ghetto to find his father and sisters. Sonia and Phil met in 1944 when both joined a secret caravan of Jews escaping from Eastern Europe; both were struggling to move past the memory of extreme brutality and overwhelming loss.
As Dr. Kinn explains, “My sister and I were left with an apocalyptic sense that our parents’ world had been uprooted, killed, destroyed. They thought they were hiding their past, protecting us from the Holocaust and its atrocities, but this made it worse. They rarely spoke about the Holocaust during our childhood yet it was there every day, in everything, omnipresent but never acknowledged, never explained.”
In stories pieced together from early childhood to adulthood, "Under the Same Roof" sensitively illustrates the impact of the Holocaust on second-generation survivors. “You kids have Holocaust on the brain,” Kinn’s mother would say when he asked her about her experience in the woods or his father’s time in the resistance.
This gentle and subtle memoir follows Mark Henry Kinn from a childhood full of secrets and unexpressed feelings (afraid of upsetting parents who had “been through so much”) to an adulthood of trying both consciously and unconsciously, to heal his parents’ pain by becoming a doctor.
"Under the Same Roof" is about the consequences of unimaginable horror. It’s about the struggle to discover an identity apart from an all-encompassing legacy of fear, anger, guilt and sadness. Told with great love for his heroic parents and a wish for a better life in the face of an inescapable past, "Under the Same Roof" is an insightful illustration of the consequences of intergenerational trauma.
277 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 22, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 19, 2017
I can't finish this book.
I got through about five minutes of reading the first chapter and gave up in disgust. The author may have a good story to tell but it is so badly written that I couldn't go on. He jumps around from med school to his father's death to Israel to med school again and makes a hash of all of it with no context. He refers to people as "types" which is rather unprofessional from a doctor. I can't waste my time on this.
I got through about five minutes of reading the first chapter and gave up in disgust. The author may have a good story to tell but it is so badly written that I couldn't go on. He jumps around from med school to his father's death to Israel to med school again and makes a hash of all of it with no context. He refers to people as "types" which is rather unprofessional from a doctor. I can't waste my time on this.
February 5, 2018
Very Good, it'd be a Fantastic Novel- yet it's honest insight to a family.
Interesting on many levels. Medical, holocaust, foreign med program, maturing as a child of parents, honest open telling of stories you don't want it to stop--
Interesting on many levels. Medical, holocaust, foreign med program, maturing as a child of parents, honest open telling of stories you don't want it to stop--
May 25, 2026
heartfelt family story
A personal account of the horrors of WW II experienced by the Jewish people from the son of 2 survivors. Incredibly moving and also very informative. I feel fortunate to have met the author which is how I came tonread his book. I highly recommend
A personal account of the horrors of WW II experienced by the Jewish people from the son of 2 survivors. Incredibly moving and also very informative. I feel fortunate to have met the author which is how I came tonread his book. I highly recommend
October 18, 2017
I enjoyed this book. The story of his life is interesting but he seemed to jump from one memory to a different memory and back. It was confusing at times.
May 31, 2018
I chose to read many books of this genre and thought this was the poorest of them all. I was surprised by the lack of cohesion between chapters, confusing the life events, large and small. Too much personal information about his college and medical school experiences, written like a gossip column. There was an important story to relate here, and it just didn't come through..
August 22, 2017
I loved this book. It's a wonderful character study.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews