Judy Batalion: Trauma Moves Through Generations—But So Does Strength

To Be Continued Podcast
August 10, 2026

New York Times bestselling author Judy Batalion grew up in a house in Montreal that was filled to the brim: her mother and grandmother had suffered from compulsive hoarding. It could in part be attributed to years they spent as nomads, fleeing from the impact of the Holocaust.

"One of the metaphoric poetic real reasons that I instinctively feel with my mother was that her stuff was security. It was safety. She literally formed barricades around her with stuff. She was holding on to something."

In this conversation with Rabbi Jeff Salkin, Judy Batalion pieces together what she knows of her grandparents' survival and her mother's childhood. She also discusses her own lifelong anxiety along with her interpretation of her father's belief that anxious people were the ones who survived the Holocaust.