Help me find this short story please!

September 14, 2008 5:28 PM

Please help me find a short story I think I read in The New Yorker a couple of years ago.

So, I am looking for a short story I have only a vague recollection of reading. I believe it was in the New Yorker summer fiction issue sometime between 2002 and 2006. The story was told by a female narrator who had been switched at birth during the Holocaust. I remember little else, except that the remains of the other little girl are eventually found behind a false wall. I have tried searching the magazine's archives but to no avail, so perhaps I am misremembering where it was published. It was definitely in a mainstream periodical, and it was definitely fictional. Thanks!

posted by katie to Writing & Language (1 answer total)

I tried my copy of The Complete New Yorker, which runs thru early 2005, and the only story involving a baby and the Holocaust in this decade was in the Dec 20/27, 2004 issue - which happens to be the Winter Fiction Issue.

It was called "The Woman from Hamburg" by Hanna Krall, and it's about a couple who takes in a Jewish woman, who then becomes pregnant by the husband. They pretend the baby is their own. The narrator is baby, now a grown woman. There's no second baby, though, so I don't know if it's what you're after, but there are a lot of similarities. The Jewish woman is hidden in the couple's home behind a false wall of sorts.

It's not online in the New Yorker's archives, but Hanna Krall has published a collection of short stories with the same name.
posted by donnagirl at 4:00 PM on September 17, 2008