The Useless Daughter

An urn rests on an empty grave in a section of the Jewish cemetery designated for suicides and ambiguous deaths. Elena wished for her ashes to be scattered in the Moselle River, but her family chose otherwise.

Years later, Elena uncovers a secret surrounding her death, a rewriting of memory. Born into a family of Russian exiles who had left her with a wet nurse in France, Elena grew up rebellious and non-conformist, despotic, a woman full of contradiction.

At the heart of her identity were the Dresners, their patriarch Giulio, and a successful assimilation in Italy, where they became involved in Zionism, befriending important families, like Mussolini. With the racial laws in 1938, the Dresners were once again forced into exile. Their unwritten history tells a story that spans the 20th-century diaspora.