Buried Rivers: A Spiritual Journey into the Holocaust

Winner of 4 Book Awards including: 2018 SILVER NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD, 2019 INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER BOOK AWARD BRONZE MEDAL, 2019 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD FINALIST, and 2019 BEST BOOK AWARD FINALIST “ . . . provides a fresh take not only on the Holocaust, but also the proper response to the seemingly inerasable stain left by profound anguish . . . A moving and original contribution to an inexhaustible body of literature.” —Kirkus Reviews To the chagrin of her parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, the author became a Buddhist at the age of 19. More than three decades later, on a German train, Ellen felt the presence of spirits who had died in the Holocaust and had lost their trust in basic goodness. Sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, their plea for help sent her on a series of life-changing journeys to Poland to reconcile the Holocaust with basic goodness. Would years of Buddhist meditation prove helpful to her people instead of a betrayal? In 2006, she travels to Poland, the Holocaust’s largest graveyard, and to her mother’s city of Łódź, to reconnect with her family's tragic history and later moves to Łódź to study Polish at a language school called “Babel,” where she is the sole American. With no living elders to consult, she relies on an account dictated by her uncle, an Auschwitz survivor, for clues to her family’s past. As she retraces her mother’s and uncle’s steps through Europe and walks in places where her ancestors lived for centuries, she stumbles into a mysterious stream of love—if only she can receive it. Increasingly aware of her own traumatic imprints, she realizes that helping the dead is inseparable from healing herself. Opening to events previously hidden, and to the darkness we avoid, brings a transformation that widens our perception and changes us forever. Beyond recovering her family’s lost history, "Buried Rivers" reveals powerful connections between spirituality and trauma, Judaism and Buddhism, and intimately explores family loyalty, religious boundaries, and the invisible blessings of ancestors.