Generations after: personal testimonies
Personal stories from the Auckland second generation (2G) group
Hannah Brodsky-Anzer
The 2G perspective: Growing up in the shadow of unspoken family trauma and the journey to piece together a fragmented past.
Summary: Hannah’s poignant account explores life as a child of survivors who carried deep, silent psychological scars. Her narrative captures how the Holocaust subtly permeated her everyday upbringing – through family silences and missing relatives – and chronicles her adult quest to reconstruct her family’s pre-war history and define her own identity as a descendant.
Published in Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember, edited by Deborah Knowles, 2003.
Claire Bruell (on Frank and Alice Briess)
The 2G perspective: Honouring a legacy of survival by preserving the detailed history of a family's narrow escape and post-war resilience.
Summary: Claire documents the harrowing journey of her parents, Frank and Alice Briess, who fled Czechoslovakia just as Nazi control tightened. Her account focuses on the immense challenges they faced adapting to a new life in New Zealand, the pain of losing extended family to the death camps, and her own dedicated effort as a second-generation descendant to ensure their survival story is accurately recorded for future generations.
Published in Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember, edited by Deborah Knowles, 2003.
Naomi Johnson (on Hans Johnson)
The 2G perspective: Reflecting on a father's survival as a forced labourer and the quiet burden of growing up with inherited wartime secrecy.
Summary: Naomi shares the story of her father, Hans, who survived the war as a German-Jewish forced labourer, labelled by the Nazis a Mischling, before rebuilding his life in Auckland. Her narrative focuses on the complex psychological reality of being raised by a parent who masked his past to protect his children, and explores her own journey to uncover and embrace her family's hidden history.
Deborah Knowles
The 2G perspective: Examining the profound psychological landscape of growing up as the child of a survivor and of grappling with a sense of ‘Second Generation’ identity.
Summary: Deborah offers an analytical yet deeply personal reflection on what it means to inherit a traumatic legacy. As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, her account shifts from standard family history to explore the shared emotional traits, creative outlets, and unique psychological boundaries that define the 2G community in New Zealand.
Published in Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember, edited by Deborah Knowles, 2003.
Ian Morrison
The 2G perspective: Tracing the echoes of a mother's hidden identity, survival in hiding, and the ultimate migration to the South Pacific.
Summary: Ian explores the remarkable survival story of his mother, who managed to evade Nazi capture by living in hiding under a false identity in Europe. His narrative deals with the generational impact of secrecy, detailing how his mother’s wartime survival strategies influenced their family life after she emigrated to New Zealand to build a completely new future.
Published in Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember, edited by Deborah Knowles, 2003.
Diana Wichtel
The 2G perspective: Confronting the painful mystery of a father's survival, his subsequent disappearance, and the enduring search for truth.
Summary: Diana is an award-winning New Zealand journalist and author who recounts in her book Driving to Treblinka, a deeply personal quest to uncover the fate of her father, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust but was left permanently shattered. Her narrative focuses on the devastating impact of his trauma on their family life and her lifelong journey to trace his final years, offering a profound look at the generational echoes of loss.
Published in Mixed Blessings: New Zealand Children of Holocaust Survivors Remember, edited by Deborah Knowles, 2003.