CotH cover yellow £7.99 on Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (elsewhere, available from Penguin); disponible en français; auch auf Deutsch erhältlich

Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors by Helen Epstein (123,000 words; with a 30th anniversary preface by the author)

Children of the Holocaust — the first book of Epstein’s non-fiction trilogy about the after-effects of genocide — was the first to examine the inter-generational transmission of trauma. In a starred review Publishers Weekly wrote: “Charts new and sensitive territory as it provides important insights into the long-term effects of the Holocaust on those who survived and the ways their trauma shaped the lives of the next generation. Epstein’s courageous, dogged probing of the past is beautifully written, but it is the discoveries she makes and the process of uncovering them that informs her words, that makes the soundings so deep, so human, so haunting.”

Originally published in 1979, it has never gone out of print and has been widely translated and anthologized. This edition includes a new preface written in 2020 and an updated bibliography.

The sequels to
Children of the Holocaust are Where She Came From, a family and social history of Central European Jews, and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma.


A “Best Book of the Year.” —
New York Times

“An enormous achievement, heart-wrenching and unforgettable.” —
Chicago Tribune

“A passionate, brilliantly illuminating work.” —
Los Angeles Sunday Times