Tessa, who never met Gilda, said her father’s death was a constant presence in her life.
Growing up, her mother gradually told her more and more about him until she was old enough to learn the brutal details of his death.
But the lack of official recognition and the fact that the family did not have time to bury him had a strong impact on her.
“His absence, the absence of his body raised a number of questions,” Tessa told BBC News.
“As a child, I thought that maybe he wasn’t dead. I had this fantasy that he managed to escape, and I’m not sure that my mother knew about it.”
Now, as an adult, she said she still feels like something inside her is “broken.”
For years, she experienced nightmares, could not sleep in the dark, and when she became a mother, she struggled with panic thoughts that something would happen to her children.
“I have a physical memory of this fear,” she said.
“It may seem strange to people, like something supernatural, but it’s not.
“It’s an injury. I was born with it.”
