Karen Gershon (1923-1993) – Writing my mother’s story: a journey of redefinition

The author and poet Karen Gershon, probably best known for her book We Came as Children (1966), arrived in England as the child Kate Loewenthal on a Kindertransport in December 1938. For her daughter Naomi Shmuel, writing her story has been a harrowing journey of redefinition as she uncovered stark truths in letters written to her sister over a lifetime. The unfolding story includes both the narrative of a child survivor forced to change languages who became the voice of a whole generation, and the unfolding tragedy of a very English family largely unaware of their Jewish connection struggling with immigration to Israel and inevitable unsolvable conflicts. Some of the themes of her life – rootlessness, the never-ending search for a viable identity and sense of home, the aftershock of the Holocaust – are also clearly apparent in the lives of the next generation – her children. Assembling pieces of the puzzle of her mother’s life made Naomi, whose  book The Legacy of Karen Gershon: Child Survivor to Author and Poet was recently published by Cambridge Scholars, question her own.

Naomi, herself a prize-winning British-Israeli author with a particular interest in anti-bias education and human and cultural diversity, will talk about Karen Gershon as her mother and about the experience of writing the book. She will be joined by Phyllis Lassner, Professor Emerita at The Crown Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, Gender Studies, and Writing Program at Northwestern University, Illinois, who will discuss Gershon’s literary contribution to the understanding of the Kindertransport experience.

To book, click here

Image: book cover (detail)