The Watchmaker's Daughter
by Sonia Taitz
 

THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER is the story of the child of two Holocaust survivors, a watchmaker who saved lives at Dachau, and his wife, a gifted concert pianist, who was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp. We first meet Sonia living in a small, dark apartment in an immigrant community in Washington Heights with her brother, parents, and grandmother. Sonia grows up speaking Yiddish and learning the lessons of her faith. Nonetheless, as a young girl, the “American Dream” she learns about every day on the television beckons her, even while it baffles her parents.

Growing up under the shadow of catastrophe, Sonia, is driven to achieve the highest educational success. Her coming of age takes place in the heyday of the youth revolution in New York: sexual freedom, political rebellion, and cultural experimentation run up against the deep caution and conservatism of Taitz’s parents. Her ambitions take her from Barnard to Yale Law School to Oxford University, where she meets a man outside her faith who will change her life–and her family’s–in ways she would have never imagined.

With the final passing of her parents Sonia’s story comes full circle with an appreciation of both her parents’ teachings and how far she has ventured, happily, to form a life of her own and heal the past.