This book is about the long-term implications of socio-political trauma as experienced by descendants of Holocaust survivors and refugees. As they recount their actual journeys of discovery in search of ‘home’, where their parents, grandparents lived, they often tell us about an accompanying emotional journey.

It contains twenty accounts by Second-Generation authors of journeys to places connected with family history. These include Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia and Romania. A third of the chapters involve journeys accompanied by a survivor or refugee parent, a third without a parent, and a third in connection with a commemorative event. Each chapter reflects on how making such a journey changed perceptions of parents and family history and impacted their identity and life choices. Another aspect touched upon is the mourning and grieving process these journeys entailed and facilitated. The book dwells on the search for belonging and identity, rendered all the more urgent and immediate by the reality of Brexit and all that entails.

The epilogue draws on a body of work that suggests that as socio-political trauma is suffered within a social, cultural and political context, it requires society’s attention and acknowledgment beyond the individual.