Letter from Vienna: A Daughter Uncovers Her Family's Jewish Past

Norman Ravvin is the author of Café des Westens (which won the Alberta
Culture New Fiction Award) and Sex, Skyscrapers, and Standard Yiddish.

The absence of knowledge of one’s own ancestral heritage is the
central concern in this excellent memoir. Born in Shanghai in 1948,
Claudia Cornwall was brought up with little knowledge of the
circumstances that led her parents to leave their homes in central
Europe. A letter from a European relative informs her that her
grandmother “died in a concentration camp.”

Cornwall makes fine use of a trove of family documents—diaries,
poems, letters, and immigration papers—all of which sat in a trunk,
apparently unexamined, throughout most of her parents’ postwar life in
Vancouver. From these, as well as from interviews and trips to Germany
and Austria, she conveys not only the family history her parents kept
from her, but also the experience—with its attendant mixture of
excitement, fear, and ambivalence—of discovering this history for
herself.

Letter from Vienna is written in a compelling, intimate voice, and
Cornwall has a satisfying habit of asking questions about the past she
is exploring, often without being able to answer her own queries. The
effect is a provocative meditation on the role of history in our daily
lives. Cornwall offers no pat conclusions about the effects either of
her parents’ decision to hide their past or of her own struggle to
uncover it: “What would my life have been like if I had always been
aware of my family’s history? Would it have been better? Or harder? I
don’t know.” Recommended.