This is Home Now

A look at the lives of nine Jewish Holocaust survivors after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps, when they settled in rural Kentucky.

At the end of World War II, many thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors immigrated to the United States from Europe in search of a new beginning. Most settled in major metropolitan areas, usually in predominantly Jewish communities, where proximity to coreligionists offered a measure of cultural and social support. However, some survivors settled in smaller cities and rural areas throughout the country, including in Kentucky, where they encountered an entirely different set of circumstances. Although much scholarship has been devoted to Holocaust survivors living in major cities, little has been written about them in the context of their experiences elsewhere in America.

This Is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak presents the accounts of Jewish survivors who resettled outside of the usual major metropolitan areas. Using excerpts from oral history interviews and documentary portrait photography, author Arwen Donahue and photographer Rebecca Gayle Howell tell the fascinating stories of nine of these survivors in a unique work of history and contemporary art. The book focuses on the survivors’ lives after their liberation from Nazi concentration camps, illuminating their reasons for settling in Kentucky, their initial reactions to American culture, and their reflections on integrating into rural American life.

Praise for This is Home Now

“Until Donahue and Howell turned their recorders and cameras on these well-chosen survivors living in Kentucky, no one had taken the time to ask how these solitary transplants made new lives for themselves and their children in rural middle America. The stories and images reproduced in this book are both moving and arresting. We owe Donahue and Howell a great debt for rescuing them before they disappeared down the trapdoor of historical memory.” —Lawrence N. Powell, author of Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

“Each of the stories can stand on its own as a fascinating example of what has transpired for Jews outside of New York City.” —David Wallace, Community (Jewish Community Association of Louisville)

“This Is Home Now focuses on the overlooked stories of Holocaust survivors who relocated to the commonwealth.” —Lexington Herald-Leader