In her captivating memoir, Gordon examines her family’s painful experiences in Germany during the Holocaust, uncovering the deep psychological impact it cast across generations.

It took 10 years for Karen Baum Gordon to write and publish her memoir, The Last Letter: A father’s struggle, a daughter’s quest, and the long shadow of the Holocaust, under the guidance of a friend who was an editor at McGraw-Hill. The book explores generations of her family through letters, while grappling with the ancestral trauma and psychological legacy of terror, genocide and persecution. In the latest episode of the Make Meaning Podcast, Karen speaks with host Lynne Golodner about the c

In her new book, “The Last Letter,” author Karen Baum Gordon explores the events that shaped the lives of her father and his parents — two Holocaust victims that he tried in vain to save in the early years of World War II. In this painstakingly researched, heartbreaking and inspiring page-turner, Karen reminds us that we often need to dig deeper into our pain in order to manage it, and let go of it in order to move on.

TW: This episode discusses the Holocaust and suicide Karen devoted years of research to her newly published book, The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. As a result of intergenerational Holocaust-related trauma, Karen’s 86-year-old father attempted suicide. Spurred by this, Karen had the courage to undertake decades of investigative research into the underlying trauma and its impact on her family, and write this moving and well-documen

Tonight we will have a short service to leave time for our guest . . . We're thrilled to have author and part-time Vermonter Karen Baum Gordon talk with us, during our in-person and zoomed Shabbat services on Friday, November 18th, about her recently published book The Last Letter: A Father's Struggle, a Daughter's Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. Through archival documents, correspondence and photos, she has focused on the long shadow of the Holocaust, which took the lives of her g

On Friday, January 28, at 7:30 p.m., Karen Baum Gordon will virtually attend Shabbat services at the Garden City Jewish Center to discuss her book, The Last Letter: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust.

Book Review: The Last Letter: A Daughter Explores Her Inherited Trauma from the Holocaust

Book Fest In Your Living Room Presents Karen Baum Gordon, The Last Letter: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust Price: FREE to attend Location: Temple Emanu-El Time: The program will run from 4 to 5:30 pm and will be followed by a book signing and reception. This Yom Ha Shaoah program features Karen Baum Gordon speaking about her book as well as a short concert featuring the Temple Emanu-El Choir. Born a German Jew in 1915, Rudy Baum was eighty-

Many books explore Holo­caust survivor’s guilt, a cost­ly mal­a­dy that has a vic­tim silent­ly ask why he or she lives while oth­ers died. The Last Let­ter is a unique vari­a­tion on this theme, in that its main sub­ject is not a Holo­caust sur­vivor, but one who nev­er­the­less lived with an unbear­able degree of survivor’s guilt. Rudy Baum, a nat­u­ral­ized Ger­man-Jew­ish Amer­i­can, had upper mid­dle-class par­ents in Frank­furt, Ger­many. Their lives were cru­el­ly stolen by the Nazis in

Born a German Jew in 1915, Rudy Baum was eighty-six years old when he sealed the garage door of his Dallas home, turned on the car ignition, and tried to end his life. After confronting her father’s attempted suicide, Karen Baum Gordon, Rudy’s daughter, began a sincere effort to understand the sequence of events that led her father to that dreadful day in 2002. What she found were hidden scars of generational struggles reaching back to the camps and ghettos of the Third Reich. In The Last L

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Rudy Baum was 86 when he tried — but failed — to take his life by sealing the garage door of his Dallas home and letting his car idle inside. His daughter, Karen Baum Gordon, has spent years trying to piece together the details of the 2002 attempted suicide and found arms of the story stretching back to Hitler’s Germany. Baum was born a German Jew in 1915 and left his native Frankfurt for the United States in 1936, Gordon said. After becoming a U.S. citizen, he joined the Army and, back in Eu

Children of Holocaust survivors, also known by many as the "Second Generation," are now in their 60s and 70s. Many of them are grappling with this legacy as their parents reach the end of their lives. Author Karen Baum Gordon's father, Rudy Baum, who fled Nazi Germany, was an enthusiastic volunteer at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, an honored speaker at events held in Germany, and an active member of his local synagogue. But the depths of his wartime trauma remained unknown to hi

A tortured soul has come to rest,” read Rudy Baum’s suicide note. The note, and the failed attempted suicide of an 86-year-old certainly left his daughter Karen Baum Gordon with many questions. Her book, The Last Letter: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust, explores not just her father’s story, but the story of grandparents she never met and the generational trauma of the Holocaust. “If you met him, he was the most extroverted guy in the world,” Gordon

Karen Baum Gordon knows how to tell a story, and most of all, how to begin one. From the moment you open her memoir, The Last Letter, you’re hooked. “My father tried to kill himself when he was 86 years old” are the words that launch this remarkable journey, which is best summed up in the subtitle: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust. Now 66, Gordon grew up in Dallas and graduated from Hillcrest High School before ascending to Harvard. She will be in

Karen Baum Gordon is coming home to Dallas to share her book — “The Last Letter: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust” — the result of her search for her family’s history. Beginning at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 24, at Temple Emanu-El, the Margot Rosenberg Pulitzer Jewish BookFest will host Gordon and commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. “I’m excited to come back to Dallas, [my] home, where, with my book I can share the story of my father so ma

Imaginary Peaks, by Katie Ives ’99 (Mountaineers Books, $26.95). Riffing on the infamous Riesenstein Hoax (about an unscaleable, indeed imaginary, set of peaks in British Columbia), and drawing on her concentration in literature and her M.F.A., the author probes what mountains mean in the human imagination. Roaming widely through the literary topography of exploration, Ives, editor in chief of Alpinist magazine (“dedicated to the art of ascent in its most powerful manifestations”), takes the arm

Time isn’t real anymore, and I hate to break it to you, but it’s Hanukkah this month. Yes, we’re basically getting another Thanksgivukkah (here in the U.S., at least) — which means if you’re looking to give books as your Hanukkah gifts, now is the time to start purchasing them. While some of these November Jewish books may not be out in time for the holiday, check out all our previous Jewish book coverage right here. As always, this list is shoppable on Bookshop, a platform supporting independen