ABSTRACT
Kuriloff’s book is praised for its steadfast focus on the historical and relational terrain of the Holocaust and its victims. It traces the live of Jewish European analysts and their children who escaped to America and took up their analytic practices in a foreign land. She reflects on the effects of the Holocaust, not only on their personal lives but also on their psychoanalytic theory and practice. The review concludes with an extended reflection on the social location of Jews in the United States, especially Jewish analysts. It is suggested that we are still suffering from an avoidance of certain aspects of the Holocaust and the meanings that could be derived from them. In that respect American Jews are likened to the “hidden children” of the Holocaust. Among other problems that such avoidance and lack of knowledge produces is a type of confusion about identity and politics. By drawing on a rabbinic story about the Hebrew letter “vov” and its use in a grammatical form prominent in the Hebrew Bible, the importance of collective memory and political awareness is highlighted and put forward as a way out of the profession’s and the community’s confusion. That in turn could lead to new understandings about Jewish life in the 21st century.
