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Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust
From Anna Salton Eisen, a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for The 23rd A Holocaust Memoir , comes this moving sequel to her father's Holocaust memoir.
As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anna Salton Eisen's memoir, Pillar of A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust , breaks 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 her father's reticence 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 quest 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 Lucjan experienced his first selection and bid farewell to his parents before they were herded into a boxcar and sent to their deaths at the Belzec concentration camp. They continue their travels through the picturesque Polish countryside, still pockmarked 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 places of trauma with her father as her guide, Anna Salton 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."
As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anna Salton Eisen's memoir, Pillar of A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust , breaks 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 her father's reticence 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 quest 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 Lucjan experienced his first selection and bid farewell to his parents before they were herded into a boxcar and sent to their deaths at the Belzec concentration camp. They continue their travels through the picturesque Polish countryside, still pockmarked 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 places of trauma with her father as her guide, Anna Salton 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."
192 pages, Paperback
Published May 10, 2022
34 people are currently reading
2248 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 30, 2022
Anna grew up in a comfortable household with her parents and two brothers. Her parents were both Holocaust survivors and to protect their children they didn't want their children to ask any questions about their earlier lives and the family that they had both lost during the war. Anna was a quiet child and started to study the Holocaust on her own. As she learned more about the horrors of life for Jewish people she internalized it and began to have bad dreams. She couldn't really make any friends in school because she knew that no one would understand her life. Her parents were loving and supportive to their children and occasionally told stories about their childhoods or about friends that they had lost. Even though her father kept his life a secret from his children, Anna finally got him to talk about it. He had been in ten different concentration camps over a two year period and had encountered all of the horrors of the camp. When Anna finally convinces him to look at this past, the family took a trip to Poland to important places in their parent's past. On the trip her parents were able to confront their pasts and honor their lost relatives. Once they returned home, her father started speaking to groups about his past and wrote a book about his life. Anna became very involved in groups of people whose parents were Holocaust survivors.
This book was beautifully written and honest. I read a lot of WWII fiction and the treatment of the Jewish people by the Nazis always horrifies me. To read a firsthand account of this treatment was even more disturbing. We need to remember what happened during those years so we can work to make sure that it never happens again.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.
This book was beautifully written and honest. I read a lot of WWII fiction and the treatment of the Jewish people by the Nazis always horrifies me. To read a firsthand account of this treatment was even more disturbing. We need to remember what happened during those years so we can work to make sure that it never happens again.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.
April 30, 2022
There are parts of history that are so heartbreaking that it’s easy to want to turn away from them. But these people and their stories need to be heard. In 𝐏𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐭, Anna Salton Eisen shares the pain of her parents’ past, as well as how it has changed her life moving forward.
Anna’s parents were survivors of the Holocaust, but they never spoke of the horrors they lived through until Anna finally confronted them.
Anna, and her family, visit the former sites of concentration camps, she helps her father write his memoir, and she continues to track down missing pieces of their family's past that were taken from them. She beautifully recounts how she rediscovers her own history as she shares her parents’ brave and remarkable story.
Thank you @otrpr and @annasaltoneisen for a spot on tour and a gifted copy of this incredibly moving book.
Anna’s parents were survivors of the Holocaust, but they never spoke of the horrors they lived through until Anna finally confronted them.
Anna, and her family, visit the former sites of concentration camps, she helps her father write his memoir, and she continues to track down missing pieces of their family's past that were taken from them. She beautifully recounts how she rediscovers her own history as she shares her parents’ brave and remarkable story.
Thank you @otrpr and @annasaltoneisen for a spot on tour and a gifted copy of this incredibly moving book.
March 25, 2022
A touching story about one woman’s experience living with parents who were Holocaust survivors. Anna Eisen had a comfortable childhood but was obsessed with Learning about the Holocaust. She aided her father in his research and writing his story. The whole family made a pilgrimage to Poland to retrace the parents’ steps. A must read for any person with an interest in Holocaust literature.
Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the advance read.
Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the advance read.
November 6, 2022
Loved this book. I actually felt your trip to Poland & the concentration camps. You saved me a trip. I cried along with u. My grandparents are American but this book opened my eyes to a diff viewpoint. Now I want to read your fathers book.
May 24, 2022
An excellent memoir detailing the journey back to visit the concentration camps where the author's father was held. Deeply moving.
August 17, 2022
I received this book as a Goodreads Giveaway
I’ve been in a book rut lately, and this one pulled me right out. I was pulled in immediately, and the only reason I didn’t finish it sooner was because I had a hard time seeing the words through my teary eyes. Calling this book “beautiful” and “touching” doesn’t begin to cover it. A wonderful tribute.
I’ve been in a book rut lately, and this one pulled me right out. I was pulled in immediately, and the only reason I didn’t finish it sooner was because I had a hard time seeing the words through my teary eyes. Calling this book “beautiful” and “touching” doesn’t begin to cover it. A wonderful tribute.
April 28, 2022
Double review with Into the Forest: A Holocaust Story of Survival, Triump, and Love by Rebecca Frankel.
Remembering millions through two different Holocaust survival journeys (Poland, early 1930s to after the end of WWII; Maryland and Connecticut, late 1940s to late 1990s, & afterwards): The world needs saints and miracles.
Here’s how Mother Teresa explained the psychology of numbers – how monumental catastrophes in the millions don’t affect us like individual ones:
“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
Is that why we’re in a golden era of memoirs? If we share our personal Herculean hardships, the world might be more compassionate?
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Anna Salton Eisen in her first-hand account of her parents, especially her father’s, Holocaust stories in Pillar of Salt, and Rebecca Frankel’s second-hand telling of the story of the Rabinowitz family’s Holocaust survival in Into the Forest want us to never forget what happened to six million Jewish people humiliated, terrorized, tortured, and murdered in the darkest of times.
You’ll feel emotionally pained by both, and praise both since greater awareness can lead to increased activism and public outcry. Unknowingly, they also intensify the world’s shared pain aghast at the emptiness of the “Never Again” chant watching in horror the atrocities perpetrated on the Ukrainian people by another brutal dictator. Putin chillingly seems hell-bent on doing what Hitler did to millions – wiping Jewish people “from the face of the earth.”
As we remember the millions of lives lost that we cannot fathom but do so through the lives of two Jewish families, Eisen wants us to also remember another five million more wiped out: non-Jewish people, including ethnic groups like the Romani and Slavic peoples; religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses; essentially anyone they deemed “socially aberrant”; and enemies of the State.
Poland is the country where the greatest number of Jewish people were erased: three million. Poland is also the Holocaust setting of both books. In two small villages and two ghettos near each, and concentration camps spread out.
One, Zhetel, was “once a very happy little Jewish town” in northeastern Poland where Miriam, Morris, and their daughters Rochelah/Rochel (Ruth in America) and Tania (Toby) happily lived (surrounded by their large extended families) until they were driven out to live under intolerable conditions at the Zhetel ghetto. The other, the Salton family (Eisen’s father George, brother Manek, and their parents) lived in southwestern Poland in Tyczyn, the region known as Galicia (which extends into western Ukraine including Lviv), until they were forced into the Rzeszów ghetto.
Ghettoization was the first collective step towards dehumanizing the Jewish people. Many families crammed into the same tiny living spaces, never knowing when the Nazis would come and deport them to concentration camps: six extermination camps and over 1,000 labor camps. It’s from the ghettos that the Rabinowitz and Salton stories dramatically diverge.
The four Rabinowitzs run into the forest. George Salton’s parents are sent to the “death camps.” He also got separated from his brother, never seeing his family again. Being with your immediate family during horrific trauma and upheaval provides inner strength, but hiding out in a forest for several years and surviving is remarkable. Also stunning is that without any family George Salton endured TEN labor camps. (He hadn’t met Eisen’s mother Ruth until after the war; she was sent to Siberia.) Both family survival stories are mind-boggling.
The forest is the Białowieża Forest. “One of the earth’s last remaining primeval woodlands,” split between Poland and Belarus, today a UNESCO World Heritage site. They managed to survive in an “underground village” dug four feet into the ground called zemlyanki, a Russian word that means “dugout.” Morris Rabinowitz had been in the lumber business so he knew woods, so many people followed him there. Who, though, could prepare anyone for the massacres and living-on-the-edge with barely anything? Miriam was resourceful too, having owned a drugstore that carried a little of everything. Still, it’s a miracle their daughters sustained a “remarkable amount of childlike wonder in the brutal forest reality.”
As a whole, Holocaust survivors didn’t talk about what they went through. The Rabinowitzs also stand out because they “talked about it all the time,” whereas Salton Eisen lived in a silent home with “undercurrents of mourning” sensing her “gloomy heritage” but not being told. Until one day in her twenties, she cries out, “For G-d’s sake, Dad. What did they do to you?”
Which may help to explain why Eisen’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood come across as more psychologically devastating than daughters Ruth and Toby. By the time Eisen was about eight, she’d internalized the silence and pain she saw in her father’s eyes into nightmares, fears of “separation” and “abandonment,” and “isolation” as she didn’t know any family like hers. Although her father rose to a senior position at the Defense Department, and her homemaking mother was an extraordinary cook making sure her family was always well-fed and turning her skills into a catering business – fitting the sixties and suburban Maryland – when she discovers something of her father’s (no spoilers) in his nightstand she confirms his sinister wartime experiences. Instead of acting like a typical middle school kid, she delves into researching the Holocaust but tells no one. Her memoir tracks her awakening, deepening, and growing activism that continues today.
So much stuns in these memoirs, including discovering that Eisen is the founder of the synagogue in Texas (where she lives now) in the news a few months ago when an anti-Semitic terrorist held four members of the Congregation Beth Israel including the rabbi hostage.
We may want to look away from all of this, but how can we? Eisen points out these stories must be told “for the sake of history and the future of humanity.” Morally and existentially, she continues to say that “with freedom comes responsibility.” Her memoir may be spare on words (less than 200 pages), but she doesn’t spare the emotions. Frankel’s approach consumes more than twice as many pages (374, plus another seventy pages of detailed notes), describing relatively unknown history that also emotionally affect us.
Another difference between the two memoirs is that Frankel’s is a second-hand account told to her through daughters of Holocaust survivors who survived with them. How she connects with them is fascinating and miraculously coincidental, along with another amazing coincidence. Into the Forest, then, reads more story-like in the sense that there’s a Prologue, a before the war, a during the war, an after the war, and an Epilogue – the full arc of a novel in that respect. Frankel’s lyrical descriptions of the beauty of the forest are so discordant with what happened in the forest.
Eisen’s memoir of the during-the-war years would have been blank had her pleas to her father gone unanswered. He not only opens up but returns to Poland for the first time with his family. Her prose is more sorrowful in its rawness, less embellished although sometimes she expresses her profound emotions poetically. (Her Holocaust poems have been published.)
Into the Forest describes two relatively unknown underground resistance movements in the ghettos and after the war. Eisen makes reference to these but she concentrates on, “how it must feel to carry so much pain”? Today she’s a mental health therapist specializing in trauma. Her activism continues as her memoir is being adapted into a documentary planned for release this summer, In My Father’s Words. No doubt her father’s memoir, The 23rd Psalm, will also feed into it.
Both memoirs exemplify Eisen’s dedication. How vital for history and humanity is “the importance of memory.”
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
Remembering millions through two different Holocaust survival journeys (Poland, early 1930s to after the end of WWII; Maryland and Connecticut, late 1940s to late 1990s, & afterwards): The world needs saints and miracles.
Here’s how Mother Teresa explained the psychology of numbers – how monumental catastrophes in the millions don’t affect us like individual ones:
“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
Is that why we’re in a golden era of memoirs? If we share our personal Herculean hardships, the world might be more compassionate?
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Anna Salton Eisen in her first-hand account of her parents, especially her father’s, Holocaust stories in Pillar of Salt, and Rebecca Frankel’s second-hand telling of the story of the Rabinowitz family’s Holocaust survival in Into the Forest want us to never forget what happened to six million Jewish people humiliated, terrorized, tortured, and murdered in the darkest of times.
You’ll feel emotionally pained by both, and praise both since greater awareness can lead to increased activism and public outcry. Unknowingly, they also intensify the world’s shared pain aghast at the emptiness of the “Never Again” chant watching in horror the atrocities perpetrated on the Ukrainian people by another brutal dictator. Putin chillingly seems hell-bent on doing what Hitler did to millions – wiping Jewish people “from the face of the earth.”
As we remember the millions of lives lost that we cannot fathom but do so through the lives of two Jewish families, Eisen wants us to also remember another five million more wiped out: non-Jewish people, including ethnic groups like the Romani and Slavic peoples; religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses; essentially anyone they deemed “socially aberrant”; and enemies of the State.
Poland is the country where the greatest number of Jewish people were erased: three million. Poland is also the Holocaust setting of both books. In two small villages and two ghettos near each, and concentration camps spread out.
One, Zhetel, was “once a very happy little Jewish town” in northeastern Poland where Miriam, Morris, and their daughters Rochelah/Rochel (Ruth in America) and Tania (Toby) happily lived (surrounded by their large extended families) until they were driven out to live under intolerable conditions at the Zhetel ghetto. The other, the Salton family (Eisen’s father George, brother Manek, and their parents) lived in southwestern Poland in Tyczyn, the region known as Galicia (which extends into western Ukraine including Lviv), until they were forced into the Rzeszów ghetto.
Ghettoization was the first collective step towards dehumanizing the Jewish people. Many families crammed into the same tiny living spaces, never knowing when the Nazis would come and deport them to concentration camps: six extermination camps and over 1,000 labor camps. It’s from the ghettos that the Rabinowitz and Salton stories dramatically diverge.
The four Rabinowitzs run into the forest. George Salton’s parents are sent to the “death camps.” He also got separated from his brother, never seeing his family again. Being with your immediate family during horrific trauma and upheaval provides inner strength, but hiding out in a forest for several years and surviving is remarkable. Also stunning is that without any family George Salton endured TEN labor camps. (He hadn’t met Eisen’s mother Ruth until after the war; she was sent to Siberia.) Both family survival stories are mind-boggling.
The forest is the Białowieża Forest. “One of the earth’s last remaining primeval woodlands,” split between Poland and Belarus, today a UNESCO World Heritage site. They managed to survive in an “underground village” dug four feet into the ground called zemlyanki, a Russian word that means “dugout.” Morris Rabinowitz had been in the lumber business so he knew woods, so many people followed him there. Who, though, could prepare anyone for the massacres and living-on-the-edge with barely anything? Miriam was resourceful too, having owned a drugstore that carried a little of everything. Still, it’s a miracle their daughters sustained a “remarkable amount of childlike wonder in the brutal forest reality.”
As a whole, Holocaust survivors didn’t talk about what they went through. The Rabinowitzs also stand out because they “talked about it all the time,” whereas Salton Eisen lived in a silent home with “undercurrents of mourning” sensing her “gloomy heritage” but not being told. Until one day in her twenties, she cries out, “For G-d’s sake, Dad. What did they do to you?”
Which may help to explain why Eisen’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood come across as more psychologically devastating than daughters Ruth and Toby. By the time Eisen was about eight, she’d internalized the silence and pain she saw in her father’s eyes into nightmares, fears of “separation” and “abandonment,” and “isolation” as she didn’t know any family like hers. Although her father rose to a senior position at the Defense Department, and her homemaking mother was an extraordinary cook making sure her family was always well-fed and turning her skills into a catering business – fitting the sixties and suburban Maryland – when she discovers something of her father’s (no spoilers) in his nightstand she confirms his sinister wartime experiences. Instead of acting like a typical middle school kid, she delves into researching the Holocaust but tells no one. Her memoir tracks her awakening, deepening, and growing activism that continues today.
So much stuns in these memoirs, including discovering that Eisen is the founder of the synagogue in Texas (where she lives now) in the news a few months ago when an anti-Semitic terrorist held four members of the Congregation Beth Israel including the rabbi hostage.
We may want to look away from all of this, but how can we? Eisen points out these stories must be told “for the sake of history and the future of humanity.” Morally and existentially, she continues to say that “with freedom comes responsibility.” Her memoir may be spare on words (less than 200 pages), but she doesn’t spare the emotions. Frankel’s approach consumes more than twice as many pages (374, plus another seventy pages of detailed notes), describing relatively unknown history that also emotionally affect us.
Another difference between the two memoirs is that Frankel’s is a second-hand account told to her through daughters of Holocaust survivors who survived with them. How she connects with them is fascinating and miraculously coincidental, along with another amazing coincidence. Into the Forest, then, reads more story-like in the sense that there’s a Prologue, a before the war, a during the war, an after the war, and an Epilogue – the full arc of a novel in that respect. Frankel’s lyrical descriptions of the beauty of the forest are so discordant with what happened in the forest.
Eisen’s memoir of the during-the-war years would have been blank had her pleas to her father gone unanswered. He not only opens up but returns to Poland for the first time with his family. Her prose is more sorrowful in its rawness, less embellished although sometimes she expresses her profound emotions poetically. (Her Holocaust poems have been published.)
Into the Forest describes two relatively unknown underground resistance movements in the ghettos and after the war. Eisen makes reference to these but she concentrates on, “how it must feel to carry so much pain”? Today she’s a mental health therapist specializing in trauma. Her activism continues as her memoir is being adapted into a documentary planned for release this summer, In My Father’s Words. No doubt her father’s memoir, The 23rd Psalm, will also feed into it.
Both memoirs exemplify Eisen’s dedication. How vital for history and humanity is “the importance of memory.”
Lorraine (EnchantedProse.com)
January 8, 2023
Such a good book …I read her fathers story first , 23rd Psalms….
Both very good books , to read and remember history and what the Jews went through
It’s amazing that anyone survived…. I’m glad their shared their stories so history is not lost ‘great read …
Both very good books , to read and remember history and what the Jews went through
It’s amazing that anyone survived…. I’m glad their shared their stories so history is not lost ‘great read …
May 6, 2022
To say I was moved by this book would be an understatement. When I read my first book about the Holocaust I became addicted to learning more. With each book my heart broke a little more. I am not Jewish but I am a human and anyone with a pulse should be affected by these stories. I know many people who say they can't read stories about tragic events because they are simply to hard to read. For me I feel obligated to read these stories and honor the people who suffered. It's not easy and I've shed a lot of tears but it's important. I've had the privilege of vising two Holocaust museums and listening to one survivor tell her story. She had her daughter with her who shared what it's like growing up with a Holocaust survivor and I was thinking about her as I read this book.
So many children of survivors explain that they either grew up never knowing what happened to their family, or that they knew but it was never discussed. For so many victims they chose not to ever speak about what they went through, and others decide to share their stories to educate people so we never forget. Author Anna Salton Eisen has beautifully written a book about growing up desperate for answers from her father. She knew she was named after her grandmother but her mother and father would not speak of the horrors of what happened to their family or themselves. Anna turned to books, movies, anything she could find to educate herself. What she read gave her debilitating nightmares and a strong urge to get out there and help, to do something, anything to educate others and help the survivors as well.
After special training Anna was chosen to work with survivors recording their stories. As she was listening to a man tell his heartbreaking story she realized she needed to talk to her father and ask him to tell her his story. Her father agreed to take the whole family to Poland so they could experience everything together. They visited the camps and were confronted with the full reality of what happened. This experience brought clarity for Anna and brought her whole family closer together.
I feel so honored to have a glimpse into this families experience and that Anna and her father were willing to share their story with us. I always feel weird saying I "enjoyed" a book that has such a heartbreaking story but I really felt all the emotions while reading this book and thankful to have read it. Please read the hard books, please.
So many children of survivors explain that they either grew up never knowing what happened to their family, or that they knew but it was never discussed. For so many victims they chose not to ever speak about what they went through, and others decide to share their stories to educate people so we never forget. Author Anna Salton Eisen has beautifully written a book about growing up desperate for answers from her father. She knew she was named after her grandmother but her mother and father would not speak of the horrors of what happened to their family or themselves. Anna turned to books, movies, anything she could find to educate herself. What she read gave her debilitating nightmares and a strong urge to get out there and help, to do something, anything to educate others and help the survivors as well.
After special training Anna was chosen to work with survivors recording their stories. As she was listening to a man tell his heartbreaking story she realized she needed to talk to her father and ask him to tell her his story. Her father agreed to take the whole family to Poland so they could experience everything together. They visited the camps and were confronted with the full reality of what happened. This experience brought clarity for Anna and brought her whole family closer together.
I feel so honored to have a glimpse into this families experience and that Anna and her father were willing to share their story with us. I always feel weird saying I "enjoyed" a book that has such a heartbreaking story but I really felt all the emotions while reading this book and thankful to have read it. Please read the hard books, please.
June 6, 2022
Really enjoyed Anna’s story and her struggle to unveil the truth of the history. This is so important! Looking forward to re-release of 23rd Psalm as my copy disappeared!
August 21, 2022
It took me a while to read this, being that I had to take some breaks from the utterly heartbreaking yet stunningly beautiful writing as it just tore me to pieces. Having just finished, I feel like I need some additional time to process it all before writing more.
All I can say with certainty right now is: Read this book.
Thank you to Anna Salton Eisen for the copy via Goodreads giveaway.
All I can say with certainty right now is: Read this book.
Thank you to Anna Salton Eisen for the copy via Goodreads giveaway.
February 5, 2022
The book describes the efforts of Anna Salton to rediscover her parents’ past. As a second generation Holocaust survivor, Anna finds the experience of Holocaust as a way to connect to her parents, George (Lucjan Salzman) and Ruth Salton. However, as Holocaust and related terms are forbidden subjects for little Anna, she finds the memories about her family’s past like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. Her discovery of two watercolour paintings when she is about eight or nine, triggers a secret Holocaust education in her middle school.
A Pillar Of Salt narrates Anna’s quest for those missing pieces which she strongly feels the need to obtain. In 1998, she takes an arduous journey to Poland with her parents and brothers. It is only when she visits the concentration camps, ghettos and the hometowns of her mother and father, that she finds the closest bond of attachment between herself and her parents. She also feels emotionally attached and connected to her grandparents, especially her grandmother, whom she is named after. As the trip lets loose a floodgate of memories, her father writes his memoir, The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir along with Anna, which she promotes and cherishes.
With a meticulous blend of autobiography and memoir, the book describes Anna’s journey of breaking the glass shackles in which her parents had confined themselves along with their past.
Similar to Lot’s wife, Anna finds herself looking back at her parent’s past only to become aware that there is much more than a pillar of salt!
A Pillar Of Salt narrates Anna’s quest for those missing pieces which she strongly feels the need to obtain. In 1998, she takes an arduous journey to Poland with her parents and brothers. It is only when she visits the concentration camps, ghettos and the hometowns of her mother and father, that she finds the closest bond of attachment between herself and her parents. She also feels emotionally attached and connected to her grandparents, especially her grandmother, whom she is named after. As the trip lets loose a floodgate of memories, her father writes his memoir, The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir along with Anna, which she promotes and cherishes.
With a meticulous blend of autobiography and memoir, the book describes Anna’s journey of breaking the glass shackles in which her parents had confined themselves along with their past.
Similar to Lot’s wife, Anna finds herself looking back at her parent’s past only to become aware that there is much more than a pillar of salt!
June 18, 2024
An excellently written, page turner Holocaust memoir told from the perspective of a grown daughter of a Holocaust survivor. I think that what stood out most for me was the author's ability to grieve while still maintaining her faith. I am not a religious person, but I admire her flexibility of thinking and her capacity to heal through grief. Some Holocaust survivors die or kill themselves after revisiting the concentration camps; others are able to express their grief and heal. I'm sure a psychologist would have a lot to say about the difference, and it's no judgment on either. It's simply an observation and perhaps a lesson for us all for how to survive a world with so much cruelty and injustice in it.
May 9, 2022
𝘔𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭!
I have no words, what a heartbreaking, remarkable and beautiful book, this is a story that will stay with me for a long time.
Thank you Over the River Public Relations and MVP Mandel Vilar Press Diversity + Conservation in Publishing for this tour invite.
A Pillar of Salt by Anna Salton Eisen, Author released April 1, 2022.
https://www.instagram.com/booksandcof...
I have no words, what a heartbreaking, remarkable and beautiful book, this is a story that will stay with me for a long time.
Thank you Over the River Public Relations and MVP Mandel Vilar Press Diversity + Conservation in Publishing for this tour invite.
A Pillar of Salt by Anna Salton Eisen, Author released April 1, 2022.
https://www.instagram.com/booksandcof...
October 9, 2023
This was a beautiful but heartbreaking book. I’ve read the story of Anna’s father in 23rd Psalm, and this was an amazing companion story of Anna’s journey of learning about her father’s past and encouraging him to open up despite how horrible it was to relive this past. Thank you, Anna and Aaron, for telling this story so we don’t forget.
January 2, 2025
Just finished this fascinating tale of the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who encouraged her father to tell his story. Anna explored the way things in the past, especially traumas, can so affect the future. What happened to the Jews during the horrible World War 2 years must never be forgotten. But what impressed me was the resilience that came from relying on your faith.
May 21, 2023
This slim volume, written by the daughter of the Holocaust survivor who wrote "The 23rd Psalm," serves as an excellent companion to that book and shows that the horrors of the "Final Solution" are not some part of distant history - they continue to cast shadows over the generations. Never forget.
December 26, 2023
Great read, enticed me to buy The 23rd Psalm. We must never forget the horrors a rogue government can inflict.
October 14, 2025
One of the most moving books that I have ever read or listened to!!
June 3, 2022
From the start of Pillar of Salt, I was captivated by Anna Salton Eisen’s heartbreaking memoir about being a daughter of Holocaust survivors. Anna’s parents didn’t speak about this time in their lives. However, at a young age, she discovers two of her father’s Holocaust paintings.
The author shares some of these paintings in her book. As hard as it was for me to look at them as an adult, I wondered what it felt like for this child, a second-generation survivor, to witness what she labeled “vivid and grotesque” scenes. From that point on, Anna began what she called “my secret Holocaust education” and read everything she could about this period. I appreciated her openness in discussing the impact that this research had on her, to the point of causing depression and difficulty focusing on schoolwork. Since she couldn’t speak about what was troubling her, she stated, “I swallowed my secrets and lived two uncomfortable lives—the outside me and the truer frightened inner self.”
But the author’s father does eventually tell his story, and in Part Two of the book, the family takes a trip to Poland, where both her parents visit their hometowns and the concentration camps. The author does such a thorough job describing locations and the emotions expressed during their visit that I felt I was taking this trip with the family and shedding tears with them. In this section, Anna’s father reveals his history and how he survived after time in ten concentration camps, and his liberation by the 82nd Airborne.
I was also surprised to learn how Anna’s mother was part of the Bricha (Escape) Movement in Poland and Germany. They helped Jewish survivors leave Europe and worked on finding and gathering Jewish orphans who survived.
Although I’ve read several books about the Holocaust, I’ve only read a little about second-generation survivors. This memoir helped me better understand what it is like for the children of survivors, how they cope, and how they try to understand and connect with their parents’ experiences. I thank the author for opening her heart and allowing me to be part of this journey.
The author shares some of these paintings in her book. As hard as it was for me to look at them as an adult, I wondered what it felt like for this child, a second-generation survivor, to witness what she labeled “vivid and grotesque” scenes. From that point on, Anna began what she called “my secret Holocaust education” and read everything she could about this period. I appreciated her openness in discussing the impact that this research had on her, to the point of causing depression and difficulty focusing on schoolwork. Since she couldn’t speak about what was troubling her, she stated, “I swallowed my secrets and lived two uncomfortable lives—the outside me and the truer frightened inner self.”
But the author’s father does eventually tell his story, and in Part Two of the book, the family takes a trip to Poland, where both her parents visit their hometowns and the concentration camps. The author does such a thorough job describing locations and the emotions expressed during their visit that I felt I was taking this trip with the family and shedding tears with them. In this section, Anna’s father reveals his history and how he survived after time in ten concentration camps, and his liberation by the 82nd Airborne.
I was also surprised to learn how Anna’s mother was part of the Bricha (Escape) Movement in Poland and Germany. They helped Jewish survivors leave Europe and worked on finding and gathering Jewish orphans who survived.
Although I’ve read several books about the Holocaust, I’ve only read a little about second-generation survivors. This memoir helped me better understand what it is like for the children of survivors, how they cope, and how they try to understand and connect with their parents’ experiences. I thank the author for opening her heart and allowing me to be part of this journey.
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