Springcleaning Book 18 – “Irena’s Gift” by Karen Kirstin

Irena’s Gift is a memoir of her family by Karen Kirsten. It particularly concentrates on her grandmother Alicja who was imprisoned in a concentration camp and who fled Germany after the war and settled in Australia with her daughter, the author’s mother, and her husband who also survived the camps. Alicja was not an easy woman and she did not have a good relationship with her daughter. The author began to investigate the past of her grandparents in order to try and understand why they couldn’t make good relationships and also to look at how the things of the past still affect families today. I have a number of memoirs where family members have been persecuted during the war but this is one of the few that takes the story forward to the present and tries to show that what people experienced and what they had to do to survive wounded and damaged them deeply and affected the rest of their lives.

Alicja grew up as a Jew in Poland where her people were already a persecuted minority. The advent of the Nazis allowed local people to express their opposition to Jews in their society more openly. Although there were, of course, many brave and kind people there were some that were not and this is a story of betrayal and cruelty by many. Alicja and her family were unable to rely on others and were, in the end, betrayed, as were many others. In the end, the author’s mother was only saved by the actions of a Nazi officer who was bribed into it and by hiding her in a rucksack when what remained of the family were finally able to flee the country for their new life in Australia.

When the author delved into the story of her grandmother’s life and what happened to her mother as a child she found that there was a huge secret at the centre of all their lives which completely changed the way that she saw the family dynamics. She also realised that there were other secrets and actions which the family members were ashamed of and where the full details will probably never be known. Having understood the past she began to understand, if not necessarily to excuse, the attitude of her grandmother and unpick how that affected her mother and her own relationships.

This is not an easy book to read, although it is very slim, because of what the author uncovers and because of what we learn about the almost casual cruelty of so many people towards others. The suffering of was enormous and its ramifications echo down the years. The author and her mother have achieved some sort of peace with events and the revelations of this book but I cannot think that it has been easy.

I picked up this book in my favourite Oxfam charity bookshop in Holmfirth some time ago, I think, because it was a family memoir. I now have a collection of books about families and their secrets and I shall add this one to that shelf.