Helen Epstein. Author's reading and discussion

Helen Epstein was born in Prague in 1947 to Holocaust survivors. Shortly afterward, her family emigrated to the United States, where she grew up in New York. She studied journalism at Columbia University and also attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

In August 1968, she witnessed the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. She managed to leave the country and quickly reported on the situation by publishing an article in The Jerusalem Post.

After publishing her 1977 article Heirs of the Holocaust in The New York Times, in which she wrote about her experiences as a member of the second generation, she was contacted by hundreds of people with similar stories. Based on numerous interviews, she wrote the groundbreaking book Children of the Holocaust, which was one of the first comprehensive works on transgenerational trauma.

In her second book, Where She Came From, she traced the history of her mother’s family, which originated in central Bohemia. In her third book, Getting Through the Silence, she addressed the issue of sexual abuse, which she had experienced as a child.

Helen Epstein continues to lecture and write.