Condition: BRAND NEW
ISBN: 9781863952538
Format: Paper over boards
Year: 2004
Publisher: Black Inc
Pages: 320


Description:
They have no graves, they have no markers of ever having existed. The millions of people who were murdered by the Nazis live on only in the memories of the survivors, those that had survivors.

In his 79th year, Andor Schwartz was driven to record the lives of his family and friends who perished. He writes of getting- 'a strong message . . . what you have to do is bring back your beloved ones, one by one, make them alive for a short time'.

Over a period of 3 months, he wrote these memories in long-hand. He writes that- 'It was a miracle. My pen was pushing ahead with full speed. I didn't have to think, names and dates were coming back with the speed of fire. Sentence after sentence, all making sense, all of them correct. It was written with my tears, I broke down many times . . . All my hear family, one after the other, all came back to me.'

Writing with the instincts of a born storyteller, Andor takes us back to the world of his childhood in rural Hungary, in the years leading up to Second World War. Unlike most orthodox Jews, they lived on the land. His father was a Talmudic scholar and a born entrepreneur who owned enormous estates.

He paints a vivid picture of his life at the Yeshivas where he boarded as a child and he brings to joyous life the end of term, when he would return home to the country, to his beloved family. His love of nature and country life, his friendships with the children of the farmhands, the harvests, the Jewish festivals, the age-old customs, now lost, are all evoked with uncanny vibrancy.

But then the dark clouds of evil obliterated the sunshine of his arcadian childhood.