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After college, Noah, a travel writer, roamed the world for fifteen months with just one rule: avoid Poland. A few missteps in Europe, however, landed him in his grandparents' country. When he returned home, he cautiously told Grandma about his time in Warsaw, fearing that the past would bring up memories too painful for her to relive. But, instead, remembering the Holocaust unexpectedly rejuvenated her, ending five years of mourning her husband. Together, they explored the memories—of Auschwitz and a half-dozen other camps, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the displaced persons camps—that his grandmother had buried for decades. And the woman he had playfully mocked as a child became his hero.
I was left with the stories—the ones that had been hidden, the ones that offered catharsis, the ones that gave me a second hero, the ones that resurrected a family, the ones that survived even death. Their shared journey profoundly illuminates the transformative power of never forgetting.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 7, 2017 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781442267442
- File size: 9063 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781442267442
- File size: 9063 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 1, 2017
As a youth, Lederman was only vaguely aware of the history of his grandparents as Holocaust survivors. In Lederman's close, loving extended family in America, questions to his grandparents on the topic were usually deflected. As an adult, a trip to Holocaust- related sites in eastern Europe triggered an intense interest in Lederman for his family's experiences. His now-widowed grandmother, perhaps as a form of therapy, slowly but with vivid detail finally revealed her story, and the result is this harrowing and deeply shocking if sometimes uplifting account. This is a wide-ranging memoir, covering the vibrant, prewar Jewish life in Poland, the Nazi-imposed Jewish ghetto and subsequent extermination camps, the postwar confinement in displaced person camps, and the move to America. In passionate and sometimes hate-filled invective, his grandmother lashes out at her Nazi persecutors but also at many goyim, Poles whom she describes as viciously anti-Semitic. If there is a hero here, it is Lederman's grandmother, who consistently displays remarkable courage and resilience in the face of horrible traumas. This is a vital contribution to Holocaust collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
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