AO3 In the Maelstrom of History. A Conversation with Miriam by Rosanna Turcinovich Giuricin

This book tells the story of Miriam Frankel, née Grünglas, a Holocaust

survivor born in Tyachiv (then Slovakia, now Ukraine) but raised from

infancy till age thirteen in Trieste (Italy) where her parents ran a kosher

guest-house. In the wake of Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 Miriam and

her family were deported from Italy back to Tyachiv. Here the family fell

victim to the Nazis and was taken, with the town’s entire Jewish commu-

nity, to Auschwitz. After surviving Auschwitz, the war, and a crippling

physical ailment, Miriam, now an orphan, emigrated to Canada where she

started life anew. Today Miriam is a beloved matriarch who devotes

herself to her new family and to talking to school children and community

groups about the Holocaust as she experienced it.

The book is based on a series of interviews with Miriam Frankel

and other survivors of Nazi concentration camps, as well as on extensive

research in Trieste in both the State Archive and the Jewish Archive. The

result is a riveting story of survival enriched by the author’s own medita-

tions, in conversation with the protagonist, on the violence wrought by

intolerance and on the perils of that come from remaining silent.