A legacy written in love

When Daniela Torsh welcomed her first child into the world, she felt an overwhelming urge to share the news with someone who could never hear it – her father, Paul Torsh (born Pavel Thorsch), who had died when she was just eleven years old. That profound moment of loss and longing became the catalyst for her deeply personal memoir, Crying in the Archives.

“I realised that my grandkids would possibly like to read about my life and family when they are older. So I wrote it for them,” Torsh explains.

With six grandchildren aged between eight and fifteen, her motivation was clear: to create a bridge between generations, ensuring the stories of survival and resilience wouldn’t be lost to time.

The book delves into the extraordinary love story of her parents, Holocaust survivors who found each other in the darkest of circumstances. Her mother Mimi endured four years in concentration camps, while her father Paul survived three months of imprisonment. They met in Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in 1945, both married to other people at the time. “They fell in love and began their relationship in the shadow of death,” Torsh writes, capturing the complexity of love born from trauma.

Born in Prague in 1946, Torsh emigrated to Australia with her parents in 1948. Yet the family’s Jewish identity remained hidden – a secret that only emerged after her father’s death.

“My parents never told me they were Jewish. I only found out when Dad died and I was 11,” she reveals, highlighting the profound silence that often surrounded Holocaust survival in post-war families.

The psychological impact of this inherited trauma led Torsh to seek professional help through her involvement with the Women’s Liberation movement. Under the guidance of counsellor Marjorie Pizer, a Jewish feminist of Polish background, she began to understand her identity as a second-generation survivor living with PTSD.

The memoir’s impact extends beyond her immediate family.

“My children having read my book now understand why I am so meshuggah,” Torsh notes with characteristic candour.

The book has also resonated with readers seeking to understand the survivor experience, with many telling her it has helped them “appreciate survivors more having read a personal story of a survivor’s child.”

Crying in the Archives stands as both a personal reckoning and a gift to future generations – a testament to the enduring power of storytelling in healing intergenerational wounds and preserving vital Jewish memory.

Crying in the Archives is published by The Sydney Jewish Museum