Sons of Survivors, Making Peace with Inherited Trauma

The authors of this dual memoir did not live through the trauma of the Holocaust; they inherited it. Whether survivor-parents revealed what they endured or erected barriers of silence, the horrors they experienced permeated the lives of their children.

Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura grew up in the close-knit community of Yiddish-speaking refugees in America. After meeting in Los Angeles as high school students, the two became fast friends with much in common--including the fact that they were both conceived in the same displaced persons camp in US-occupied Germany.

This memoir traces their colorful growing-up adventures through fast-paced alternating passages. Though the Holocaust formed the backdrop of their lives, they didn’t talk much about it--until, as older adults, they embraced the imperative to bear witness. They set out to discover everything they could about what happened to their parents and other relatives in Poland during World War II.

For Aron, the most powerful revelations were contained in a nearly forgotten memoir written by his uncle fifty years earlier in Argentina. Marty’s breakthrough came after participating in a Zen Peacemakers immersion retreat on the killing fields of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Navigating through this haunted terrain together, the friends realized that the love they inherited from their parents transcends the trauma. Their joint memoir attests to a legacy of love against hate.

Aron Hirt-Manheimer, co-author, served as editor of Reform Judaism magazine (Union for Reform Judaism) from 1976 to 2014 and as URJ editor-at-large until 2021. He co-edited with Irving Abrahamson Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel (Holocaust Library, 1985); co-authored Jagendorf’s Foundry: Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust, 1941-1944 (HarperCollins,1991) and was a coauthor with Arthur Hertzberg of Jews: The Essence and Character of a People (HarperCollins, 1998). He lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Marty Yura, co-author, received his BA in psychology at UCLA in1970, immigrated to Israel, and was inducted into the Israel Defense Forces serving as an officer and field psychologist in an infantry brigade during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Afterwards he returned to the U.S. and completed his MA in psychology at California State University - Los Angeles (1976). For the next 30+ years he worked as a management consultant in both the computer-based learning and the financial services industries. In 2009, he and his wife, Marti co-founded Vista Yoga, where he teaches yoga and meditation. He also teaches yoga at a program for veterans with PTSD at Emory Healthcare. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Yael Danieli, Foreword contributor, is a clinical psychologist in private practice, a victimologist, traumatologist, and the Director and co-founder of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children (1975) in the New York City area. She has done extensive psychotherapeutic work with survivors and offspring of survivors and has studied their post-war responses, attitudes and the impact the Holocaust has had on their lives. In the last decade, she has created the Danieli Inventory for Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma that allows scientifically valid assessment and comparative international study of this phenomena. Most recently she has founded the International Center for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma: www.icmglt.org