Last Wednesday, November 25, the renowned journalist and KSI member, Alexandra Ciniglio de Cohen-Henriquez, presented to our congregation her second biography, The Secret Papers of Pape.
This book tells the story of the family of Mrs. Eva Leitman-Bohrer, a woman born in Budapest in the middle of World War II to a Jewish family, who, while cleaning out the apartment of her recently deceased adoptive father, finds a safe full of documents in Hungarian, German and Spanish, as well as photographs, postcards and manuscripts, which reveal to Eva a history she did not know.
Alexandra then becomes the investigator who helps Eva piece together – and finally learn – the true story of her family, survivors of the Shoah. “Doing this book was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Ciniglio said.
To achieve this, the journalist spent three years translating and verifying the veracity of documents, such as the certificate issued to Eva’s mother stating that she had been liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Although Eva was unaware of this fact, she made sense of some of her experiences: “Eva told me that her mother was right not to throw food away; everything was saved. And her grandmother, even when she was very old, always carried a piece of bread in her purse,” she shared.
In addition, in accordance with Eva’s demand that the book should be historically accurate, Alexandra received the support of the publisher and historians, such as the renowned Spanish expert José Antonio Lisbona, who motivated her to hold on to the Pape papers as a means to learn about the history of this family.
Below is the complete recording of this presentation so you can learn more about this interesting book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNlc876ug5I
