The Stranger in Our House: Growing Up With Holocaust Survivors : A Memoir

In The Stranger in Our House, Kathy Hoffstadter-Thal the daughter of two Hungarian Holocaust survivors leaves no stone unturned as she takes us on a powerful journey through her childhood. In this fascinating narrative, we are witness to the author's poignant struggle to make sense of the bizarre behaviors, the secrets and the lies that permeate her home. While her parents had physically survived the war, they were so profoundly damaged that they lacked the capacity for parenting and intimate relationships. At the center of her story is her tyrannical father, a profoundly mentally disturbed man who lives in a virtual prison of his own making. Paranoid and controlling, he guards the house and lays down rule after unspoken rule for his wife and children to obey. Towards the end, family secrets that are both joyous and heart wrenching are uncovered. The Stranger in Our House chronicles this traumatic childhood, and is relevant to children of survivors or anyone with an interest in Holocaust studies, PTSD and the transgenerational effect of trauma.