An Evening with Ruth Finkel-Wade and Rita Benn, PhD

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event.

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How do you talk about and make sense of your life when you grew up with parents who survived the most unimaginable horrors of family separation, systematic M**der and unending encounters of inhumanity? Sixteen authors reveal the challenges and gifts of living with the aftermath of their parents’ inconceivable experiences during the Holocaust.
The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of the Holocaust provides a window into the lived experience of sixteen different families grappling with the legacy of genocide. Each author reveals the many ways their parents’ Holocaust traumas and survival seeped into their souls and then affected their subsequent family lives – whether they knew the bulk of their parents’ stories or nothing at all.
Several of the contributors’ children share interpretations of the continuing effects of this legacy with their own poems and creative prose. Despite the diversity of each family's history and journey of discovery, the intimacy of the collective narratives reveals a common arc from suffering to resilience, across the three generations. This book offers a vision of a shared humanity against the background of inherited trauma that is relatable to anyone who grew up in the shadow of their parents’ pain.
Awards: Foreword Indies Gold Award for Anthologies, 2022 and Nautilus Silver Award for Heroic Journeys, 2023

Ruth Finkel Wade is co-editor and contributing author to the award-winning, recently published anthology, "The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of the Holocaust." A retired training and development executive, she currently volunteers at the Florida Holocaust Museum as a speaker and docent. Ruth also assists her Holocaust survivor father, Sidney Finkel, with his school talks and book Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die. Ruth grew up in Chicago, spent more than twenty years living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now lives in Largo, Florida. She has one son, Ike, named after her father Sidney’s brother Izzy. Ike and his wife Natalie are data scientists living in Chicago.
Rita Benn, PhD is co-editor and contributing author to the award-winning, recently published anthology, "The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of the Holocaust." She was trained as a clinical/school psychologist and served on faculty at the University of Michigan for over 20 years where she taught and developed curriculum programs for students and faculty in integrative medicine as well as published numerous academic papers and chapters. As a founder of the non-profit, Michigan Collaborative for Mindfulness in Education (MC4ME), she trains educators and other professionals in mindfulness meditation practice. She also leads weekly meditation practices for the Cancer Support Community of Ann Arbor. Rita has three adult children and lives in her Ann Arbor home with her husband and golden retriever. In her spare time, she enjoys practicing yoga, painting, writing poetry and playing with her grandchildren.

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