Stumbling Blocks
by Jennifer Krebs
My book was published in July 2025
Stumbling Blocks: A Second Generation Holocaust Memoir
Paul, Jennifer’s father, was born in Germany in 1928. At age ten, his parents sent him and his older sisters to Belgium just after Kristallnacht. There, they lived for two years with relatives they barely knew. In 1941, Paul’s parents reunited with the children and fled Germany. When Jennifer was born in the 1950s, she was called a lucky girl. She was born at a time of relative peace and safety. But she felt the presence of the people left behind, whose incomplete histories were told in fragments. Was this because no one knew what happened? Or was someone trying to protect her? Stumbling Blocks is Jennifer’s journey to find truth and meaning from the legacy of the Holocaust.
Jennifer Krebs is the author of Stumbling Blocks, a second-generation Holocaust memoir that braids together Jennifer’s story with her father’s. It is a journey to find truth and meaning in the Holocaust legacy. Jennifer has written stories and articles professionally for over a long time. She lives part-time in California and part-time in New York.
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Stumbling Blocks
by Jennifer Krebs
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From On Being Jewish Now: My Father Grew Up on Hitler-Strasse
From JNS: My father may have escaped the Holocaust, but it was me who got stuck.
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Jennifer Krebs’ additional professional and personal interests:
Bookworm Musings
Small Fry, by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
All I can say is TMI on Steve Jobs. Yes, he's an interesting character...but I didn't realize that he'd appear on every other page of this memoir. Next time, a book more about actual small fry or French fries or who Lisa Brennan Jobs is without her dad.
Savage
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, a fantastic counterpoint to Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday. Both in 3 parts. Both about the process of writing, dialogs/beefs/paeans to other writers, and both set in a variety of locales. While Bolaño is, at times, coarse &...
Hark, by Sam Lipsyte
I wonder if I would have enjoyed this book better had someone other than Sam Lipsyte read it. I can understand an author wanting the extra royalty, and so committing to read a work to be published as an audiobook. Maybe some have told Lipsyte that he’s a great...
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