Irena's Gift: An epic World War II memoir of sisters, secrets and survival - Karen Kirsten clutch were forced to escape Nazi

were forced to escape Nazi Germany by fleeing to Shanghai - one of the only havens left for them and 18

Kar-Ben Publishing 2005

Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection

a cadre of Jewish women in Poland – some still in their teens – became the heart of a wide-ranging resistance network that fought the Nazis

and Ben comes back empty-handed

Irena's Gift: An epic World War II memoir of sisters, secrets and survival - Karen Kirsten clutch were forced to escape NaziIf we seal off the past, how will we ever know the truth? In 1942, in Nazi occupied Poland, a Jewish child was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. That child was Karen Kirsten's mother, but she knew nothing about this extraordinary event until one day a letter arrived from a stranger. After Karen eventually discovered the grandparents she loved dearly were in fact not her biological grandparents, she travelled the globe to uncover her