14 | JULY 27 • 2023 

Y

om HaShoah, Holocaust 
Remembrance Day, is a day set 
aside to remember and honor 
the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazis. 
The national holiday in Israel, commem-
orated in Jewish communities worldwide, 
began this year on the evening of April 17. 
Communal programs held on or near the 
date included appropriate recitations and 
memorial candle-lightings.
For anyone personally affected, howev-
er, one solemn day of remembrance each 
year is not nearly enough. The unprec-
edented murders and loss of family in 
Europe constitute a tragedy that forever 
looms over Holocaust survivors and their 
descendants. Whether discussed openly 
or kept hidden, the experiences of Shoah 
survivors made the families they headed 
different than other Jewish families. Their 
children (2Gs), being closest to their par-
ents’ trauma, grew up feeling its effects in 
both negative and positive ways. 
A group of 2Gs living in Ann Arbor 
decided to write a book about their survi-
vor parents and the impact on themselves 
and other family members. The 16 per-
sonal essays contributed are the heart of 
an award-winning anthology, The Ones 
Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices 
of the Holocaust (City Point Press, 2022; 
334 pages). 

Despite a variety of factors defining 
their particular families, the writers were 
united in wanting to discover their own 
identity as the children of traumatized 
individuals. Essential questions they 
confronted in writing their stories were 
“‘Who are we?’ ‘What do we carry from 
our parents’ experiences?’” said essayist 
Joy Wolfe Ensor, a book co-editor and 
member of the “executive team,” elected 
by the group to manage the project’s 
business aspects. The other team mem-
bers are chair Ruth Wade, Rita Benn and 
Julie Goldstein Ellis.
Long before writing their anthology, 
the contributors were members of the 
Generations After group at Temple Beth 
Emeth (TBE) in Ann Arbor. Martha 
Solent, whose survivor parents were 
founders of the Reform synagogue, found-
ed the TBE Generations After group in 
2003. Ensor reported that 
Solent approached then- 
Rabbi Robert Levy after a 
Yom HaShoah service and 
said, “You know, I think we 
can do better,” to which he 
responded, “‘Why don’t you 
get some people together and 
see what you can do?” 
Solent located other mem-
bers of the congregation she 
hadn’t known previously were 
2Gs. They shared her inter-
est in writing and leading 
the temple’s Yom HaShoah 
commemoration, as well as 
a portion of the afternoon 
Yom Kippur services, to 
make them “more personal 
and immediate than what we 
found in the existing liturgy,” 
Ensor said. 
Although she said 

Generations After was created for “task-fo-
cused purposes,” the group members expe-
rienced a satisfying sense of kinship while 
working with one another. 
“We became an intentional family that 
understood almost instinctively the kinds 
of situations, deprivations and emotions 
that commonly arise for children of Shoah 
survivors. 
“It wasn’t the original raison-d’être of 
our group, but rather a surprising and 
enduring bonus,” Ensor said. “We knew 
from the beginning that we wanted our 
services to center around our survivor par-
ents’ stories. We hoped our congregation 
would move through the incomprehen-
sible ‘6 million’ into the world of specific 
families, as introduced to them by mem-
bers of their own temple community.”
Ten years into their efforts for the tem-
ple, some group members “expressed an 

Ann Arbor 2G group publishes book of essays 
about growing up with a Holocaust survivor.

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

OUR COMMUNITY

Book author Ava Adler, 
Esther Allweiss Ingber, 
and book authors Joy Wolfe 
Ensor and Eszter Gombosi

