Trauma and origins: Post-holocaust genealogists and the work of memory

In the 1970s, as children of Holocaust survivors reached adulthood, many began to excavate, piece together, and re-fashion their fractured family histories. This movement achieved momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, as the so-called "second generation" moved into middle age. Drawing from data gleaned from participant observation on a listserv for children of survivors and from interviews, I argue that those who engage in post-Holocaust genealogy are searching for coherent narratives that place their own origin in the context of the families into which they were born. By seeking, borrowing from and selectively appropriating traces of the past, they are using them as raw material in the production of new stories about the past and, by implication, the present.