Hunger, the proverbial wolf at the door, is a universal experience. Eating may keep the beast at bay but it doesn’t tame it; calories alone can nourish the body, but not the mind and soul. For many with PTSD, including Holocaust survivors, food can be an incomplete escape into a more stable life. In How to Share an Egg—a narrative that interweaves the author’s own story with that of her Holocaust-survivor father, Saul — Bonny Reichert explores how identity and trauma can be preserved and transmuted across generations. Saul’s memories of suffering and sustenance feed Reichert’s hunger for understanding, tikkun (repair), and healing.
This book begins in 1945 with Saul on the brink of starvation after his recent liberation from the Flossenbürg concentration camp (preceded by imprisonment in the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Sachsenhausen). This moment anchors the intergenerational trauma that Bonny explores throughout this book. Although her childhood in Edmonton, Canada could be described as genial, that would deny the profound darkness that she struggles with.
Author Bonny Reichert will join us via zoom.
Sponsored by the Barshop JCC and Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio
