The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich

Takes us on a son's journey to understand his mother's illness, and uncovers the secrets of her past, and a little-known phenomenon called late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a story of a mother and a son, a haunted past, and the irony of what may happen when that often repeated admonition to "never forget" becomes a curse.

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This work takes us on a son's journey to understand his mother's illness uncovers the long-hidden secrets of her past, and a little-known phenomenon called late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. On the evening of February 15th 2001, Howard Reich's mother, Sonia, packed some clothes into two brown shopping bags, put on her grey winter coat, locked the door to her home in Skokie, Illinois, and fled. Someone was trying to kill her, "to put a bullet in my head", Sonia told anyone who would listen. Polish and Jewish, Sonia Reich had survived the Holocaust by staying always on the run. She and Howard's father Robert, also a Holocaust survivor, had fled to America, moved to Chicago and raised their young son to tell no-one that they were Jewish. It was only after moving to Skokie, a town filled with Holocaust survivors, that his family would live as Jews. Still, his parents told Howard almost nothing about their past.
"The First and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich" is Howard Reich's moving and bittersweet memoir of growing up in Skokie, discovering an odd and personal American freedom in jazz, and his riveting, revealing investigation into his family's past and the nature of his mother's illness - late-onset Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is a poignant story of a mother and a son, a haunted past, and the irony of what may happen when that often repeated admonition to "never forget" becomes a curse.