Elizabeth Rosner: What Children of Survivors Carry Forward

Our guest is Elizabeth Rosner, acclaimed author of six books, including Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening. In Survivor Café, she confronts what it means to live in the aftermath of the Holocaust not as a direct witness, but as the child of survivors. She asks: How do we carry inherited pain? What role does storytelling play in transforming trauma into meaning? And how can remembering, rather than forgetting, help us heal?

Elizabeth Rosner: Thank you, Rabbi. That was a beautiful introduction.

Rabbi: Your book is filled with Post-its for me. It’s about the burden and gift of memory—and whether those of us who came after have the right to tell survivor stories. Can you share your family’s story?

Elizabeth: I think of inheriting my parents’ histories as a loved obligation—something I didn’t choose, but came to honor. Telling their stories keeps them alive and keeps memory in the present. My mother was born in Vilna (Lithuania/Poland). In 1939 she and her parents were forced into the Vilna ghetto. Before the liquidation, they were hidden outside the ghetto walls and survived. After liberation, they fled to Sweden while awaiting visas to America.

My father was born in Hamburg in 1929, the eldest of three. The Nazis repossessed the family shop. His mother put the children in an orphanage. Two boys—including my father—were deported to Buchenwald, survived until liberation, and made their way to Sweden. That’s where my parents met as teenagers.

Rabbi: That makes clear why you use the metaphor of the labyrinth for memory.

Elizabeth: Each retelling rewrites a story in small ways. We try to be faithful to facts, but memory shifts. A labyrinth reminds us: sometimes we think we’re closer to the center, then drift outward again. We do our best to follow the path, imperfectly.

Rabbi: What’s the difference between personal and collective memory?

Elizabeth: In Jewish tradition, repetition matters—the Seder, the Book of Esther, the way we retell stories. Even when memory feels personal, it becomes collective because we’re connected. Literally, I’m made of my parents’ DNA as they were made from theirs.

And there’s epigenetics: trauma doesn’t change DNA itself, but can affect gene expression—like how we process stress. Survivors’ stress systems were massively engaged for years. Now studies show later generations may experience PTSD-like effects. I knew as a child something that happened to my parents liv