What readers say
Franziska Schubert, archivist, Arolsen Archives, Bad Arolsen, Germany
Nicola Hanefeld embarks on an impressive and in-depth search for records of her family, which leads her to the Arolsen Archives. She unfolds a touching and revealing picture of her forebears with the documents she discovers there. Nicola interweaves her research experience with the dark chapters of persecution, imprisonment, and murder during the Nazi regime. The narrative reveals a striking understanding of where hatred, antisemitism, and racism can lead.
The Arolsen Archives: an internationally governed centre for documentation, information, and research on Nazi persecution, forced labour and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and its occupied regions. These archives grew from the ITS (International Tracing Service) after World War II.
Karen Sadek, Switzerland
In The Unspeakable, Nicola Hanefeld draws family members, their interactions, atmospheres of daily life and the premises of emotion out from the murky depths of shadowy Holocaust history. She is a literary paleontologist as she patiently and painstakingly brushes caked mud from delicate fact-fossils that, at the outset, she’d merely stumbled upon with a sense of ignorance, shock and confusion. Correspondence, official documents, receipts, historical archives and other authors’ research—plus photos of previously unknown, never-mentioned relatives piece together a tapestry of the past where secret truths reveal roots that newly define the author’s own.
With tact and sensitivity, and despite the overwhelming personal impact she felt while doing research and writing, Hanefeld recounts her family’s multi-faceted, multi-generational, multi-national history with an objective voice. The story gains in power as one after the other, stark facts speak for themselves. Even when unexpressed trauma (long imprisoned behind walls of silence) emanates up and out through her person and her words, Hanefeld’s narrative is largely devoid of pathos. And because of this, it is a story that is not only hers and that of her family but one that becomes ours as well, a mirror of 20th century history that is repeating itself today in new, yet not-new shape-shifting forms. The very normalcy of her relatives’ secular lives and of how they were able—or not—to cope with intentional, dehumanizing circumstances offers human perspectives that we can all recognize and honor. This is precisely what makes this book so moving, and what brings it so close to home.
Michaela Hauser-Wagner, USA
This book offers the reader many perspectives! It is a personal memoir as the author reconstructs her (paternal) Jewish family’s history. In an authentic voice and with emotional honesty, Hanefeld describes her journey into historical and familial trauma. It is a diligent research project that shows the author’s meticulous documentation of her findings, and as such it offers guidance and resources to those who recognize their own “unspoken” history and want to dig deeper into their family background. I connected most directly with Hanefeld’s carefree childhood memories and later became immersed in her descriptions of the horrific disappearance and annihilation of her ancestors. Although the author’s genealogical reconstruction is at times hard to follow, there is a sense that she is deeply committed to her lost ancestors and wants to resurrect them from the destruction and oblivion of the Holocaust. The beautiful photographs connected me to Hanefeld’s family on a personal level.
Mary McGovern, Denmark
In “The Unspeakable” Nicola Hanefeld delves into her family’s previously unknown and unspoken history of the atrocities inflicted upon them by the Holocaust. Not knowing what she would find, a story unfolds of persecution, dispossession, deportation, emigration and many, many deaths at the hands of the Nazis. It’s also a story of silence and of how survivors picked up the pieces of their lives and started again in a new country with a new language and a new culture. It’s a story of resilience in the face of utmost adversity and dehumanizing cruelty. Although the writing is unsentimental, I was very moved by it and shed a tear now and then while reading it, not least because similar horrors against humanity are still to this day playing out in various parts of the world. As well as being a work of considerable historical research, it’s also a work of contemporary importance.
Dr Lucia Llano Puertas, UK
The Unspeakable" is a thoughtful, sensitive and important contribution to the literature around the Shoah. It analyses not only what happened to members of the author's own family who were murdered by the Nazis, and other family members who escaped, but also investigates the on-going psychological impact of the Shoah on the second generation of survivors. The author draws on a wide range of sources, starting with the passport of a great-aunt who was murdered by the Nazis. From this document, she widens out her research into other family members, using family papers and mementos as well as archival research and histories of the Shoah. The result is a powerful book that takes the reader on a journey through the author's own grief as she uncovers what happened -something about which her family had never talked - and reinscribes them into history, against all that the Nazis had tried to do. It is a powerful and necessary book to read.
Ruth Hopcroft, Germany
I was deeply moved by "The Unspeakable". The tragic family story which the author slowly unfolds left a strong impression on me. The weight and effect of silence throughout generations was clearly portrayed. I felt so sad and overwhelmed by the story that I needed breaks from reading to find my way back into the present moment. I admire Nicola Hanefeld's courage to face the unspoken secrets of the family. "The Unspeakable" left me deeply touched.
Julia Waring, UK