Letters from the Afterlife: the Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson
New Publication
Event: Jul 17, 2025 | 08:17 AM (EDT)
My new book, Letters from the Afterlife: the Post-Holocaust Correspondence of Chava Rosenfarb and Zenia Larsson, was published last month by McGill-Queens UP. It is an exchange of letters between my mother, the Yiddish-language novelist, poet and short story writer, Chava Rosenfarb, and her best friend in Sweden, who became a well known novelist there in the 1960s and 70s under the name of Zenia Larsson. The two women survived the Holocaust together, then parted after their liberation at Bergen-Belsen when Zenia accepted a Swedish government offer of asylum for Holocaust survivors. Chava married Henry Morgentaler and immigrated to Canada. The letters begin in 1945 and end in 1971. Along the way, they chronicle the difficulties of life after the trauma of the war years, as well as the problems of having immigrated to new homes in new countries where they do not speak the language and are not familiar with the customs. The letters have been translated from Polish and Swedish. I am the editor.
Posted: Jul 16, 2025


