The reasons for researching the works of Yugoslav author Magda Bošan Simin are several: (1) her novel When the Sour Cherries Bloom (1958) was probably the first literary representation of the Holocaust written by a woman author in Yugoslavia; (2) Bošan Simin represents the Holocaust in multiple formats (documentary prose, memoir, autobiographical novel); (3) the book Why They Said Nothing: Mother and Daughter on One and the Same War (2009, English edition 2015) is a narrative comprised of texts written by both Magda Bošan Simin as a Holocaust survivor and her daughter Nevena Simin as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. The research focuses on Holocaust survivors and their post-Holocaust children, issues of memory in Holocaust representation, types of memory, memory mediation, author’s intentionality, gender and identity issues.
