The Terrible Truth About ‘The East’

In this exclusive extract from her new book, The Writing on the Wall, Juliet Rieden searches for the Czech relatives she never knew she had and uncovers a personal family massacre of epic proportions.

By Juliet Rieden

Books

By Juliet Rieden

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I’d never believed I would make the journey to Auschwitz. This place wasn’t part of my story, or so I thought. But as soon as I discover that after so nearly making it to the end of the war, Felix Rieden, my father’s uncle, had been sent to Auschwitz, I knew I had to go.

Then, as the truth about my family tumbles out of the archives ‘Osvětim’ – the Czech name for Auschwitz – appears with a deafening finality on dossier after dossier, I realise how intrinsic this dark, dark town in Poland is to our family footprint.

This is an edited extract from The Writing on the Wall by Juliet Rieden, foreword by Magda Szubanski, published by Pan Macmillan Australia. On sale now.