The Second Scar

Nechama Goldberg's powerful memoir, The Second Scar, begins in the years before World War II disrupts her family's peaceful Latvian home-town. Caught between the Soviet occupiers and the Nazi invaders, millions of Jews across the Baltic States, Goldbergs' family among them, have no choice but to flee for their lives. Because she was an infant when her family initially fled, Goldberg chooses to tell her story in the third person, weaving together her mother's recollections with bits of her own memories, as the child gradually becomes conscious of her surroundings. When we first meet Nechama, known as "Ama," in the book's Prologue, she is barely more than a toddler, but already she knows to fear abandonment. Cheated out of a childhood that should have been rooted and peaceful, little Ama comes to a consciousness of herself-of her identity and where she belongs as a displaced person. Ama leaves her hometown as a babe in arms, losing her father before she could even begin to know him. Her mother, Lena, is the only constant in her life. By the time Ama can begin to think and form memories for herself, she understands that anyone she loves can disappear in the blink of an eye. She learns not only that the world is not rational, but that it is full of arbitrary tragedy and determined evil. Lena, who has already experienced too much traumatic loss in her young life, wanted to emigrate to the Jewish homeland with her elder brothers well before the Nazis arrived, but, as a daughter, she was expected to stay and care for her parents and younger brother. As Lena pursues her dangerous travels with her child, Israel is always in her thoughts as a perfect refuge, a utopia that seems out of reach but even this ideal does not live up to her or Ama's needs and hopes for a new home. Lena, irreparably damaged by her ordeal, is unable to bond with the daughter she loves so intensely. After so much sacrifice, Lena cannot let go of the unyielding control that allowed her to save both their lives. Joy and affection have become difficult for her. Even when a person survives it, such deep suffering leaves it's scar. This story of courage, of harrowing loss, and of a mother's fierce determination to keep her child safe, is told with a clear-eyed recognition of human strength and weakness, cruelty and kindness, at times with humor, but also with the lasting bitterness of refugees who arrive at what they think is a safe haven, only to discover that, as refugees, they are not welcome.