This program will be in-person and on Zoom.

Max Friedman, author of the book Painful Joy: A Holocaust Family Memoir, realized early in life that the world he lived in was very different from what most others his age would ever experience. He was born in Sweden to Sam and Frieda, Polish-Jewish parents who met and married there after their liberation from Bergen-Belsen and then emigrated to the US in 1952. Max and his sister learned very little from their parents about their parents' lives before WWII or what they had gone through during the Holocaust, and much of what they did learn from them, it would turn out, did not really happen. What was real were their parents' years of ghettos, slave labor and concentration camps like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, which Sam and Frieda endured while suffering the horrific loss of their families: spouses, parents, siblings and children. Max's family experienced the after-effects that flow from parents who have survived such horrors. When it came time to care for their elderly survivor parents, Max and his sister well understood that they too would have to become survivors. This book is the story of this family's journey of discovery, transformation and acceptance. It was a long time coming. It is a story that goes beyond his own family to explore larger questions about the nature of survival, the tricks our memories can play on us, how hate can destroy and how love can restore.