A Childhood Unspoken https://secondstorypress.ca/azrieli/a-childhood-unspoken
This line spoken by author Marie (Mariette) Doduck in a CBC interview lodged in my mind: “It’s happening again and it won’t be just Jews.”
I read the small book. I recommend it. It costs $15 new.
“Mariette has always been a reluctant but powerful educator. Her memoir, A Childhood Unspoken, considers the nature of childhood memory, and follows Mariette’s transition from a hidden, silenced child, confronted with unimaginable loss, to a passionate community builder and leader. With candour, and at times with humour, Mariette speaks to the enduring effects of trauma and offers compelling insights into the capacity for resilience. Her reflections on the significance of documentation, education and remembrance in the aftermath of genocide are inspiring.”—Nina Krieger, Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
“Marie Doduck’s memoir is an extraordinarily moving and unconventional account of a small child’s survival in the Holocaust and her gradual return to life in postwar Canada. Based on a collaboration with the historian Lauren Faulkner Rossi, A Childhood Unspoken collects the fragments of memory, many quite horrifying, of young Mariette during the war and follows her transformation in her new Vancouver home into Marie, an activist for Holocaust remembrance. At the core of this gripping memoir is the fraught relationship between the child who never recovered from her trauma and the grown woman who becomes a symbol of the ability to build a rich and meaningful life in the wake of catastrophe.”—Samuel Pisar, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University