Miracles Through Hell: A True Story of Holocaust Survival And Intergenerational Healing

by Jerry M. Elman

Miracles Through Hell is an untold story of bravery, luck, guilt, redemption, intergenerational pain, and healing. Few Holocaust-related books have been written with such depth and insight. This book is hard to put down once started. Elman uncovers the details of his parents' lives before the Nazis took control of Poland. He leads us through the miracles and hell they experienced as the war raged on. The decisions and choices forced on them, the rebuilding of their lives, their emotional demons, PTSD, and finally, the trauma of second-generation survivors. By telling his family history and their experiences and fate, Elman's own story is told. Elman compares today's challenges to America's democracy with those Germany faced in the 1930s. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is destabilizing the world order. Is history repeating itself?

252 pages, Paperback

Published February 26, 2022

About the author

Jerry Elman was born in 1954 in Syracuse, NY. He has lived in the Rochester, NY area for about 50 years. Both his parents were Holocaust survivors. He is a first-generation American. Children of Holocaust survivors have been referred to as second-generation survivors. The emotional impact on the parents carried over to their children. The Holocaust was never discussed. Jerry, like other second-generation survivors, lived most of his life not knowing his parents’ stories or his European roots and family. He did not understand his own emotional issues as he grew up.

His father passed away in 1989, his mother in 2004. Jerry retired in 2021. The desire to know his parent’s story kept nagging at him. At age sixty-seven, he began searching files and documents his parents left behind. He started his research effort. Every piece of information led to other information. He connected with resources at the US Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem in Israel, YIVO, JewishGen, the USC Shoah Project and others.

Jerry successfully found all the information that became the basis for this book. This is his first book as an author. It is a work of love and closure to questions never answered most of his life. Writing this book was a cathartic experience for Jerry.

Reviews

[Mark Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this stirring, harrowing story of Holocaust survival, Jerry Elman describes the gut-wrenching details of his father's and mother's escape from a ghetto in Poland ... and eventual arrival in New York to begin a new life. As a writer, I admire Elman's determination to discover and decipher the many factual details of his family's struggle (personal accounts, letters, etc.). I'm certain it was an exhausting, but worthwhile, endeavor. I was especially moved by the latter chapters in the book. The author describes and reveals the intergenerational emotional effects of the Holocaust and his personal struggle to overcome the horrific pain his mother and father buried. In the final pages, he shines a light on the frightening social signs we currently face in the United States and pleads for a call to action to halt the spread of hate in our country and around the world.