Through literary works and public appearances, Edith Bruck, born 1932 in Hungary, has devoted her life to bearing witness to what she experienced in the Nazi concentration camps. In 1954 she settled in Rome and is today the most prolific writer of Holocaust narrative in Italian. The book is composed in two parts. "Lettera alla madre"--an imaginary dialogue between Bruck and her mother, who died in Auschwitz--probes the question of self-identity, the pain of loss and displacement, the power of language to help recover the past, and the ultimate impossibility of that recovery. "Tracce," a...

Through literary works and public appearances, Edith Bruck, born 1932 in Hungary, has devoted her life to bearing witness to what she experienced in the Nazi concentration camps. In 1954 she settled in Rome and is today the most prolific writer of Holocaust narrative in Italian. The book is composed in two parts. "Letter to My Mother"--an imaginary dialogue between Bruck and her mother, who died in Auschwitz--probes the question of self-identity, the pain of loss and displacement, the power of language to help recover the past, and the ultimate impossibility of that recovery. "Traces," a...

-Edith Bruck tells the story of the 'Lager' with the inherent strength of a wounded animal and in confronting the unbearable sadness of it closes the account and does not surrender to the void...Unforgettable testimony.---Primo Levi

-With a style both warm and spare, Edith Bruck recreates the hardships of her existence as a Jewish child in Hungary before the Holocaust, the horrors of her time in the camps, and the protracted pain and disorientation of her lonely return to 'normal' life after the war. Her readers will marvel at her ability to perceive good as well as evil in those who...