Description
In 1933, high-school sweethearts Yanosh and Eva carved their names on a tree and dreamed of a better world. Now, as they emerge from hiding into the rubble of what was Warsaw, they must confront the destruction of everyone and everything they knew and loved – except each other. For them, nurturing a new life means rejecting ideologies and journeying to a faraway land. On their way, they meet and are helped by Bora, a Zionist partisan, whose war will not end until he makes sure justice is done to those who murdered the Jews.
Yehiel Grenimann describes the revival of Jewish life in the refugee Displaced Persons DP camps of central Europe through telling Yanosh and Eva’s story. With sensitive prose, the author captures the courage and tenderness of their relationship as these young survivors overcome challenges, marry and journey toward hope and healing.
- Paperback: 234 pages
- Author: Yehiel Grenimann
- ISBN-13: 978-1936778898
“Based both on a reading of history and on family experience, this novel presents in compelling form the lives of people who suffer through the Holocaust and then find a way to keep going in the face of national and personal tragedy.”
Dr. Yisrael Cohen, co-editor (1990-2007) of “Jews in Russia and Eastern Europe” of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Incredible story, combining Holocaust romance as the need for life to go on despite the horrors of the Germans. As a semi-unique benefit, adds the concept of post-Holocaust revenge/justice to the romance. Book is great…
Perhaps the most important lesson of this book for us today is the way it conveys what should be obvious: times have changed. The Jewish people is no longer recovering from the immediate trauma of slaughter, fear, deprivation, and doubt, although our collective loss remains beyond words. The constraints that dictated the decisions made by Eva, Yanosh, Bora, and the other characters in Yehiel’s book have dissipated. The survivors’ pain – the loss of family and friends, the destruction of the world they had grown up in, the traumatic burden that the war left in their souls – is largely in the past. We are the second, third, and fourth generations after the Holocaust. We remember, but we remember what we have heard and read, not what we have experienced ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us have not yet developed a world view consistent with the historical changes that have taken place.
Margalit
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2022
This novel is a treasure, as it depicts a historical period from which there are so few survivors remaining to tell the tales. Grenimann, as a second generation survivor had the opportunity to hear many stories from his father as they happened. As a result of this background, and his skill as a storyteller, this novelist brings a feeling of immediacy to the tensions he describes in this post Holocaust, post World War II young romance. The young couple begin their life together from a place of indescribable loss and despair. Yet the story is one of hope and redemption.
I highly recommend this book to those of us who cannot read enough of these stories to ever compensate for the loss.
Margalit Jacobi-Frutkopf , author (on Amazon)
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2022
This novel is a treasure, as it depicts a historical period from which there are so few survivors remaining to tell the tales. Grenimann, as a second generation survivor had the opportunity to hear many stories from his father as they happened. As a result of this background, and his skill as a storyteller, this novelist brings a feeling of immediacy to the tensions he describes in this post Holocaust, post World War II young romance. The young couple begin their life together from a place of indescribable loss and despair. Yet the story is one of hope and redemption.
I highly recommend this book to those of us who cannot read enough of these stories to ever compensate for the loss.