The article examines Anna Wiśniewska-Grabarczyk’s Porzeczkowy Josef (Currant Josef), which was nominated for the 2019 Witold Gombrowicz Literary Award, from the epigenetic perspective. The novel tells a story of coping with the difficult memories of a concentration camp. Those experiences and the anxiety that they produce were ‘inherited’ by the granddaughter from her grandmother. In the suppressed memories, love merges with hatred and the victim’s attachment to the perpetrator – with shame. As the article argues, what plays an important role in coping with this trauma are richly described sensory impressions (scents, flavours, tactile impressions).