The Butcher's Daughter by Florence Grende

Written with brutal honesty and compassion The Butcher's Daughter embraces the beauty, complexity and resilience of the human spirit. But the war followed them to America, where their growing daughter had to learn to live with the emotional aftermath of horrors she didnt understand. This section also describes Grende's week in Wannsee, Germany, where, with other descendents of survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich, she seeks to confront the past and lay demons to rest. Aaron and Helen Grende were Polish Jews who survived World War II by hiding and fighting in the forest. It describes the years after her father died and her ongoing troubled relationship with her mother. Her parents survived in the countryside as partisans. Section three (Afterwards) recounts her parents' post-War attempts to rebuild their lives, first in Poland, then in Germany. Florence Grende was born in Europe at the close of World War 2. Using her father's post-War testimonial outlining his partisan activities, as well as research and bits of stories told her, Grende reimagines, with gripping imagery, both of her parents' survival struggle.

Section two (Der Melchome) shifts to her family's survival in the frozen Polish forests of WWII. Events come alive as she describes in graphic, sensual detail her experiences and conflicts while straddling an immigrant Jewish life in a post-War American world. She begins (Outside, America Waits) by vividly recounting her 1950's and 1960's Bronx life. In short chapters divided into three sections, Grende leads the reader on a journey of discovery and beyond.

A past that, sheltered in shadow, haunted them all. The Butcher's Daughter 'The Butcher's Daughter' has been short-listed for the prestigious 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. It rested in her parents' thick silences as they forged on to create a new life in America, ignoring the impact of the past. Heartfelt and spare, a riveting account of what it means to be the daughter of Holocaust survivors.įlorence Grende knew from childhood on that something evil resided in her household, separate from the rages and tears that gripped her parents that evil an entity her parents called Der Melchome, The War.

The Butcher's Daughter by Florence Grende