As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anna Eisen's memoir, "Pillar of Salt" breaks the down the barrier of silence that was intended as a protective shield for her parents and their children. From early childhood, Anna, as a second-hand witness to the Holocaust, felt overwhelmed by the unspoken but ever-present trauma of her parents' past. Her father, born as Lucjan Salzman, survivor of ten different concentration camps, is enveloped in impenetrable grief and his history encased in secrecy. But Anna is determined to look backwards, breaking through the silence to confront the unspoken terrors of the past.
The entire Salton family embarks on a journey through Poland unlocking a history sealed in silence and buried by time. The Salton family's journey takes them to the towns where Anna's parents lived as children under Nazi occupation. The family returns to the ghetto where a 15-year-old Lucien Salton experienced his first selection and bid farewell to his parents before they were herded into a boxcar and sent to the deaths at Belzec concentration camp. They continue their travels through picturesque Polish countryside, still pock mocked by the remnants of former concentration camps and a spattering of Holocaust memorials.
By the end of her odyssey, Anna acquires a new understanding of her legacy as a child of Holocaust survivors and how trauma is revisited upon subsequent generations. By revisiting those the places of trauma with her father as her guide, Anna Eisen's tour of terrors provide her with a new understanding of how her identity has been shaped under the shadow of the Holocaust. Anna confides that by looking back like Lot's wife, and by taking in the whole story, "I could carry the pain of the Holocaust and find there is more to me than a pillar of salt."Publisher
In Pillar of Salt, Anna Salmon Eisen's father breaks a lifetime of silence about the Holocaust as they journey together to the small Polish town he lived in during Nazi occupation, visit his childhood home, return to the ghetto where he experienced his first selection and said his final farewell to his parents before they were sent in a boxcar to a death camp. They then travel across the Polish countryside checkered with concentration camps and Holocaust memorials.
This book differs from other second-generation memoirs because the author was able, at her father's side, to understand her legacy and help him heal from the traumatic past, including saying the Jewish prayer of Kaddish with him the place where his parents were killed in a gas chamber. Anna then returns to her life with a new understanding of her identity shaped under the shadow of the Holocaust.
A profoundly moving tale of generational trauma and healing between father and daughter. Through her travels with him to Poland and her relentless search through personal keepsakes and Nazi archives, she discovers her own history. —Jacob Wise, filmmaker, and documentarian
