MJH | Stories Survive: “Irena’s Gift” Book Talk

A 2025 National Jewish Book Award Finalist that judges described as “reads like a thriller” and winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, Irena’s Gift explores how reckoning with family betrayal, moral complexity, and hidden histories can reframe our identities—and why excavating these truths matters at a time when Jewish identity itself is under scrutiny.

In 1942, in German-occupied Poland, a Jewish baby girl was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That baby, Karen Kirsten’s mother, Joasia, knew nothing about this extraordinary event until she was thirty-two, when a letter arrived from a stranger. She also learned that the parents who raised her were actually her aunt and uncle. Joasia kept the letter hidden from her own daughter, Karen—until an innocent question revealed the truth.

Determined to help heal her mother’s pain, Karen set out to piece together a war-torn history. From the glittering concert halls of interbellum Warsaw to the vermin-infested prison where a Jewish woman negotiates with an SS officer to save her sister’s child, to the author’s upbringing in a Christian home, this is a story of resilience, sacrifice, intergenerational trauma, and the secrets we keep to protect ourselves and those we love.

Karen will be in conversation about her book with award winning author, Professor Robin Judd.

A former business executive, Karen Kirsten is an Australian-American author and Holocaust educator. She is the author of Irena’s Gift, a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama and Best Story of Overcoming. Karen’s essay, “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Her writing has also appeared in Salon.com, Huffington Post, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, Boston’s National Public Radio station, The Boston Herald, The Christian Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, and more.

Robin Judd is Distinguished Professor of History at The Ohio State University where she directs the Hoffman Leaders and Leadership Program in History. She is the author of Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and German-Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843-1933 and Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust, which garnered two National Jewish Book Awards and was named a finalist for the 2024 Ohioana non-fiction award. She currently chairs Ohio’s Holocaust and Genocide Memorial and Education Commission and the Faculty Advisory Board of the Leo Baeck Institute (US).

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