Werner Gundersheimer explores why his mother tried to shield him from the past:
Some survivors can talk freely about their experiences; others prefer silence. Whether you fall into the first or second group has nothing to do with wanting to get on with your life after the trauma is past. Everyone wants to get on with life, even though the trauma is never past. Mother read Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, but she couldn’t imagine doing what they did—talking and writing about the experience of having survived, or evoking and re-presenting the attendant losses. Those were her private, even secret, griefs.
The Dish 