A Piece of Her Heart: The True Story of a Mother & Daughter Separated by the Russian Revolution & the Lives Their Families Built While Apart Book

My bubbe's house was filled with photos of all the children and
grandchildren she would not count. The photo gallery was a mirror of
the life cycle of the family ...

The lost family, the family in Russia, was frozen in the moment of the
only portrait we had. That photo stood by itself on a small window sill
at the right corner of the dining room. To us, they were always a little
girl, a little boy, and two young parents, all of them staring somberly at
us. None of them were included in the count of not one, not two, of my
grandmother's children and grandchildren.

Why didn't my mother and her siblings talk about their lost sister in
all the years of my childhood? How could my grandmother have tucked
away the memory of the daughter who was her first child? How could
she see that photo every day and yet never speak of Frayda? They,
especially my grandmother, must have buried her deep within their
hearts so that they could cope with the sorrow, the loss, and the guilt of
being safe in America.