I'm always a sucker for memoirs, and especially memoirs written about experiences or periods of time that capture some of the essence of what it meant to be a Jew at that time and in that place.

Hava Ben-Tzvi's memoir, called 'We Who Lived, Two Teenagers in World War II Poland' packs a lot of poignant detail into some deceptively simple and easy-to-read prose - I read the book in one sitting. The story begins in Poland, transverses the horrors of World War II and the holocaust, and then skips...