Viviane Aline Grabik is a Swiss author and publisher dedicated to reconstructing lost identities and exploring the power memory against the weight of silence.
About
Born and raised in Switzerland, it was my grandfather’s decades of silence that eventually led me on a journey into the archives of Poland and as far as Tel Aviv. What began as a personal search evolved into the work of a determined researcher, piecing together the fragments of a stolen identity. Today, I am dedicated to the task of arranging these fragments into a literary narrative and returning their names to the lost voices of my family. Guided by this devotion to profound storytelling, I am also the founder of the independent boutique publishing house Clio & Quill.
About the book
“Halinka!” - A shout on a Tel Aviv beach breaks a decades-long silence. Who was the woman who vanished in Treblinka? Why did the Edelmanns become the Grabiks? What Silence Left Behind reconstructs a stolen identity from Lodz to the Warsaw Ghetto. A story about the power of truth and the search for one’s own roots.
“The soul knows what the mind cannot yet grasp.” I grew up in Switzerland with a deep, inexplicable sadness. After years of searching, I finally found them in the archives of Lodz: Benjamin, Perla, Julek, and Joziek. This book is my mission to break the silence and return the names and dignity to my family.
Current work
After 1945, life for Joziek and Greti becomes a dangerous balancing act in communist Poland. Traveling as a diplomatic courier between Warsaw and Switzerland, Joziek finds himself caught in a web of suspicion: a Jewish survivor to some, a suspected communist agent to others. My current project explores this era of uncertainty, the life led under the name Grabik, and the final escape to Switzerland in 1968. It is the continuation of a journey for home that nearly shatters between the front lines of the Cold War.