Letters to My Father

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Kathleen A. Balgley’s memoir begins with her childhood discovery of her father’s hidden Jewish identity and the prohibition of speaking of it in or outside the family. Disturbed by this uncharacteristic attitude of her otherwise unprejudiced parents, the author seeks to learn more about her own Jewish identity. Immersing herself in the historically terrorized heart of wartime Europe and the epicenter of Jewish suffering, she accepts a Fulbright to communist Poland just before the fall of the Berlin Wall (1987-1989). There she witnesses the ongoing controversy about Polish anti-Semitism, Poland’s collusion and heroism during WWII, and the history of its treatment of its Jews pre and post-war. In the state archives of Poland and Belarus, Balgley uncovers the lives (and deaths) of her relatives in her father’s birthplace in Brest, Belarus (formerly Brzesc or Brest-Litovsk, Poland). Throughout the journey, bashert, (the Yiddish term for destiny ) uncannily guides the author to uncover deeply hidden stories. Her father, who had said he would not travel to Poland to visit her, changes his mind after reading letters from his daughter about her discoveries. Touring the country together, father and daughter find a way to heal the rift between them.