Lily Oh Lily

What if the dead – our dead – never feel to us that they have gone? If family stories, fragments of their lives, continue to nag and haunt us? Lily Hasenburg was just such a figure in Holman’s growing years. She was whispered into his ear by grandmother Eunice – in memorable stories of her older sister, who married and moved to Germany at the turn of the 20th century, and was later caught up in the Nazi web spun by Adolf Hitler. Unable to shake loose this story, Holman pursued her to Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden. Here, we have an account of his pilgrimage; the kind of family history we might bury, and forget – to our loss.