Rosemary Schonfeld grew up as the daughter of a Czech immigrant in post-war Canada. She was unaware of her father's Jewish identity and of what really happened to his absent relatives. After her father's death, she felt compelled to discover the truth about his family. Tracing her aunt Relly, who had emigrated to Australia after surviving Auschwitz, was a significant turning point in her life. Eventually finding Relly was a pivotal and life-changing event.



Over a ten year period, from 2000 to Relly's death in 2010, she visited her regularly in Sydney. Through conversations with her the author started to understand not only what happened to her father, grandparents and uncles, but also began to understand the many impacts on herself, and therefore others, of being a child of the Holocaust.



The number of Holocaust survivors is steadily diminishing, and many of the second Generation feel a deep responsibility to give the Holocaust a contemporary relevance. Finding Relly explores the impact of the Holocaust in both the past and present, revealing how its insidious presence threatened to completely derail her life.