Books & Digital Picks
KATJA PETROWSKAJA (TRANSLATED BY SHELLEY FRISCH) Fourth Estate, 272 pages, £8.99
This month’s family history inspiration
Katja Petrowskaja was born in Kiev in 1970 into a Russianspeaking family. Her compelling memoir, written in German and translated into 19 languages, has won several European literary awards. It is now available in paperback after the hardback release last year.
Petrowskaja grew up trying to piece together the fragments of her family’s past. Maybe Esther describes her journey to find her own place in her family tree, exploring the past and present, moving seamlessly between family stories and memories, and across history and geography. Her story is about the family and their enforced movement through Europe, covering countries including Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Germany. Her family tree has many branches that were affected by the Holocaust. Her great grandmother – whose name may or may not have been Esther – was killed by the Nazis in Kiev.
The author explains how she located and linked up with her dispersed family, researching and discovering their stories and creating vivid portraits of their
lives. She brings a very articulate narrative to a story that is sadly similar to those of thousands of other families who were affected by the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, I felt that Petrowskaja sometimes loses track of facts in her narrative. Sometimes, where she hasn’t had specific facts or found records, she relies on online information that may not be accurate. This possibly makes the book less useful for others looking at the same families. However, Holocaust researchers should still be able to mine the book for clues to make their own discoveries about those who died, as well as those who managed to survive.
Jeanette R Rosenberg OBE is a genealogist and family historian specialising in Jewish genealogy and Holocaust research
‘The author describes her journey to find her place in her family tree’