Displacement Versus Home

Contrary to many other novels that take place leading up to or during the Holocaust, this story focuses on the post-war experience of displacement, exploring what it means to regain your freedom when you have no family or home to return to.

Using the example of Gerta, the author demonstrates the greater experience of the Holocaust survivors after the camps were liberated and focusses on the question that arose afterwards: namely, where is home? Gerta had been forcibly removed from her home, and now that she has been released, she has nowhere to go. In an emotional scene immediately after the liberation, the author depicts Gerta running through the vast meadow toward the infinite-seeming boundary, recognizable by the barbed wire. She stops in her tracks though when she thinks to herself: “If I am free, how do I get home? And where is home...