Overview

Mariette is only five years old when the Nazis invade her hometown of Brussels, Belgium, in 1940. Soon her family is torn apart, and Mariette and her siblings are scattered, hiding with non-Jews and in convents and orphanages or working for the resistance. Seeing violence and death all around her, Mariette learns the skills she needs to survive, especially how to stay silent. Mariette emerges from the war quick-thinking and fiercely independent. As she navigates the transition to an identity as Marie, an industrious and resourceful community member in North America, Mariette, the silent child, begins to find her voice.

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9781989719978

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Marie Doduck's memoir is an extraordinarily moving and unconventional account of a small child's survival in the Holocaust and her gradual return to life in postwar Canada. Based on a collaboration with the historian Lauren Faulkner Rossi, A Childhood Unspoken collects the fragments of memory, many quite horrifying, of young Mariette during the war and follows her transformation in her new Vancouver home into Marie, an activist for Holocaust remembrance. At the core of this gripping memoir is the fraught relationship between the child who never recovered from her trauma and the grown woman who becomes a symbol of the ability to build a rich and meaningful life in the wake of catastrophe. --Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University Mariette has always been a reluctant but powerful educator. Her memoir, A Childhood Unspoken, considers the nature of childhood memory, and follows Mariette's transition from a hidden, silenced child, confronted with unimaginable loss, to a passionate community builder and leader. With candour, and at times with humour, Mariette speaks to the enduring effects of trauma and offers compelling insights into the capacity for resilience. Her reflections on the significance of documentation, education and remembrance in the aftermath of genocide are inspiring. --Nina Krieger Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre

Author Information

Marie (Mariette) Rozen Doduck was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1935. She immigrated to Canada in 1947 as a war orphan with three of her siblings and settled in Vancouver. In 1955, she married her husband, Sidney, and raised three children. Marie has received awards for her community leadership work and activism. She is actively involved in Holocaust education and is a cofounder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Dr. Lauren Faulkner Rossi is an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She has taught modern German history and Holocaust and genocide studies courses in the United States and Canada. Dr. Faulkner Rossi has been involved with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University for more than a decade and the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre for more than five years. She is currently researching child survivors of the Holocaust, the significance of their memoirs to Holocaust studies, and the shared language of trauma among child survivors of different genocides.

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