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The State of Dark
Judith Mok was born in Holland to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. She trained as a classical singer and travelled the world performing as a soloist, while publishing poetry and novels in Dutch.
The State of Dark is a memoir and detective story. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, she was raised with the emotional trauma of having no other family members, while her parents tried to rebuild their lives in postwar Europe. Despite the constant, and occasionally intrusive presence of the past – Anne Frank’s father Otto makes an emotional visit to her father to hand over some letters – she had little concrete information about the hundreds of members of her family who had died. All the same, the Holocaust and its consequences continued to haunt her life.
As a classical singer, she was a student of the great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. It was only years later that she discovered the full extent of Scwharzkopf’s collaboration with the Nazi regime. Not only was she a full member of the National Socialist Party, but was also the mistress of Hans Frank, the notorious ‘Butcher of Poland’. There turns out to be a bizarre and horrific coincidence involving Schwarzkopf and some of Mok’s murdered family. A chance phone call made from her Dublin home in search of information, unleashes a whole process whereby Mok disovers, in shocking and intimate detail, the terrible fate of her family.
The State of Dark is a highly original, moving, and beautifully written memoir of the so-called Second Generation trauma, which documents how the Holocaust continues to be a living issue in European life and culture, including in Ireland.
The State of Dark is a memoir and detective story. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, she was raised with the emotional trauma of having no other family members, while her parents tried to rebuild their lives in postwar Europe. Despite the constant, and occasionally intrusive presence of the past – Anne Frank’s father Otto makes an emotional visit to her father to hand over some letters – she had little concrete information about the hundreds of members of her family who had died. All the same, the Holocaust and its consequences continued to haunt her life.
As a classical singer, she was a student of the great German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. It was only years later that she discovered the full extent of Scwharzkopf’s collaboration with the Nazi regime. Not only was she a full member of the National Socialist Party, but was also the mistress of Hans Frank, the notorious ‘Butcher of Poland’. There turns out to be a bizarre and horrific coincidence involving Schwarzkopf and some of Mok’s murdered family. A chance phone call made from her Dublin home in search of information, unleashes a whole process whereby Mok disovers, in shocking and intimate detail, the terrible fate of her family.
The State of Dark is a highly original, moving, and beautifully written memoir of the so-called Second Generation trauma, which documents how the Holocaust continues to be a living issue in European life and culture, including in Ireland.
176 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2022
About the author
Judith Mok
11 books9 followersBorn in one country , raised in different languages .Started writing in my late teens and got my first ( well paid)stories published age 19 by the Nieuw Vlaams Tijdschrift. A Flemish literary magazine.Already i was crossing borders from my native country ..Then followed books of poetry and my novels published in Holland ,mostly written in other countries though as I am the travelling type earning my living as a classical singer.And then came a move to this green Island called Ireland and I was encouraged to write for the RTE radio in English and finally ..now a good 15 years ago I started writing prose and poetry and subsequently publishing( UK and Ireland) in English .A big and scary step , but I came to love living and struggling with the English language in my work in a very different manner from the way I express myself in Dutch. I have been asked many times by collegues and in interviews about the challenge and the boldness of this change . Quoting Nabokov or Conrad amongst those who did not write in their native tongue ..helps only a little ..I live now of course..and I am a woman ..and a soloist /musician... and alas..much as that would enhance a male author ..it does not always do it for me.But ,there it is .In the end my work must speak for itself.
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