Letter from My Father

Description

In Letter from my Father, Dasia Black, a mental health psychologist, looks back upon her life as a four-year-old child in Nazi occupied Poland and then subsequent life events in order to make sense of the losses and grief she has experienced. Born in Poland at the outset of WWII, she was named Ester by her father at a naming ceremony in his synagogue. A few months later Hitler's troops marched into Poland. Her name was taken away from her as she was given to a Christian family to survive as a non-Jewish child. At the age of four she was told that her parents had been killed. During her life's journey she was compelled to have many other names and it is only with this book that she reclaims her given name. She was adopted and travelled with her adoptive parents to Stuttgart, Germany where she spent her formative years in a DP camp. She subsequently migrated to Australia where again she found herself a foreigner, a New Australian. Through grittiness, hard work and an inbuilt zest for life Dasia gained an education, married and had a family. As an adult she has had to face further traumatic bereavements. The book tells of her resourcefulness in overcoming adversity and moving beyond survival towards fulfillment. Her father's letter of hope written from the abyss of destruction has been her guide and anchor.

Dasia Black was born in Poland in 1938, survived the Nazi occupation of her country and at the end of the War escaped with her adoptive family to West Germany. At the age of twelve she arrived in Sydney, where she completed her schooling and university studies. She has lectured on Child and Adolescent Psychology, Intercultural Education and the Psychology of Racism at the Australian Catholic University, Sydney for most of her professional life. She considers her seven-year involvement in teacher education programs for indigenous students in remote communities a most rewarding part of her professional life. She is now a psychologist in private practice.