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Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland
Author Richard Hollander was devastated when his parents were killed in an automobile accident in 1986. While rummaging through their attic, he discovered letters from a family he never knew -- his father’s mother, three sisters, and their husbands and children. The letters, neatly stacked in a briefcase, were written from Krakow, Poland, between 1939 and 1942. They depict day-to-day life under the most extraordinary pain and stress. At the same time, Richard’s father, Joseph Hollander, was fighting the United States government to avoid deportation and death. Richard was astounded to learn that his father saved the lives of many Polish Jews, but -- despite heroic efforts -- could not save his family.
285 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2007
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154 people want to read
About the author
Christopher R. Browning
35 books157 followersChristopher Robert Browning recently retired as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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June 17, 2008When Richard Hollander was going through his parents’ attic after their tragic deaths in a car accident, he found a treasure. Not a monetary one, but a historic and sentimental one - letters written to his father, Joseph, from his father’s family in Cracow, while they tried desperately to escape the coming Holocaust.
Their faces greet us as we open this book. Smiling Dola, who after her estranged husband’s death finds a new love, but must leave her family to be with him. Young Genka, whose laughter on the ski slopes is stopped, whose mood turns black and empty, while her younger sister learns new skills, and “sees everything in bright colors”. Berta, the matriarch, trying to hold the family together.
The book begins with Richard’s biography of his father. And what a story! He left Europe in 1939 with his wife and a young boy whom they had taken under their wing. Their journey had not been an easy one, and they arrived in America illegally. Joseph’s determined struggle to obtain legal papers and, ultimately, U.S. citizenship led him to the highest levels - even to Eleanor Roosevelt herself. The story of the failure of the United States government, the barriers it put up to Jewish refugees, is well-known. Indeed, it was only a fluke of timing that prevented Joseph’s deportation.
This is followed by Christopher Browning’s excellent essay, “The Fate of the Jews of Cracow under Nazi Occupation”, which gives us a context for the letters that follow and explains many of the references. Editor Techama Tec provides a more academic and psychological portrait of the family and their situation, her scholarly language giving one breathing space after the emotional turmoil of Hollander’s and Browning’s writing.
Now we are given the letters themselves. The family members write, and through their everyday prose we see how the lives of Polish Jews gradually become circumscribed, become harder and harder, jobs lost, then homes, families separated, hope born, then crushed. They never knew if letters would arrive, numbered them to keep track, and sent letters through third parties. The habit of all family members adding to the letters stops, as a new regulations allows only one handwriting in each. Then, in 1941, the letters stop.
It was hard for me to read this book. I would read, then, heart full, put it down, then pick it up again when I could. The story is known, but here it is with a human face. Do not turn from this book because it is painful. We must never stop being reminded of what we humans are capable of - for evil and for good.
Their faces greet us as we open this book. Smiling Dola, who after her estranged husband’s death finds a new love, but must leave her family to be with him. Young Genka, whose laughter on the ski slopes is stopped, whose mood turns black and empty, while her younger sister learns new skills, and “sees everything in bright colors”. Berta, the matriarch, trying to hold the family together.
The book begins with Richard’s biography of his father. And what a story! He left Europe in 1939 with his wife and a young boy whom they had taken under their wing. Their journey had not been an easy one, and they arrived in America illegally. Joseph’s determined struggle to obtain legal papers and, ultimately, U.S. citizenship led him to the highest levels - even to Eleanor Roosevelt herself. The story of the failure of the United States government, the barriers it put up to Jewish refugees, is well-known. Indeed, it was only a fluke of timing that prevented Joseph’s deportation.
This is followed by Christopher Browning’s excellent essay, “The Fate of the Jews of Cracow under Nazi Occupation”, which gives us a context for the letters that follow and explains many of the references. Editor Techama Tec provides a more academic and psychological portrait of the family and their situation, her scholarly language giving one breathing space after the emotional turmoil of Hollander’s and Browning’s writing.
Now we are given the letters themselves. The family members write, and through their everyday prose we see how the lives of Polish Jews gradually become circumscribed, become harder and harder, jobs lost, then homes, families separated, hope born, then crushed. They never knew if letters would arrive, numbered them to keep track, and sent letters through third parties. The habit of all family members adding to the letters stops, as a new regulations allows only one handwriting in each. Then, in 1941, the letters stop.
It was hard for me to read this book. I would read, then, heart full, put it down, then pick it up again when I could. The story is known, but here it is with a human face. Do not turn from this book because it is painful. We must never stop being reminded of what we humans are capable of - for evil and for good.
June 4, 2008
This is one of those rare treasures of a book that hardly seems real at first. Primary documents are the foundation of history. For me this is especially true when the documents are not official political or military papers but are instead a reflection of the average person within a certain context or era.
And that is what these are. Every Day Lasts a Year is a collection of letters from Poland to America, from a variety of family members to a young man who had emigrated not long before. These notes of various lengths and topics span from November 1939 to early December 1941. America entered the war. Joseph Hollander's family went silent.
They were Jewish.
But this isn't a book about the Holocaust or World War II or Polish history. This is a book about a family living in the midst of a crisis, trying to live as they could. It is a book about the contrasts between history on a grand scale and mundane details of daily life. In these all too often mundane details, however, the specter of Nazism is ever present, even if not mentioned.
The letters themselves take up about 180 pages of this 280 page book. They are well edited and formatted so as to make for easy reading, presented without commentary except for the occasional footnote clarifying a point of history or making note of a translation or transcription issue. These are not great literature, but that is the point. They are the kinds of letters sent by family members to one of their own far away. And they are amazing insights into life.
The first hundred pages is made up of three essays. The first by the son of the letters recipient. He tells the story of Joseph, his father. While the prose is not the best, the story is well told and quite interesting. We get to know the one who is so present and yet so silent through the later laters. It is an engaging story, not only because he was able to escape Poland but also because of the immense legal troubles he had when he got to the States. The US tried to deport Joseph back to Europe just when Europe was exploding into war.
The second two essays are much more academic in tone. The first details the Nazi rule in Cracow throughout the war. The second is broader in scope, giving a background to Jewish life in Poland before and during the war.
Overall this is an incredible book, amazing for anyone interested in World War II, Holocaust studies, social history, or Poland. My only critique, and it's a picky one, is that I felt the book was a little unsure who to target as an audience. It is very accessible to a popular audience interested in the topic, but at times the essays feel a bit too rigid and stolid. It takes a while to get to the actual letters, and at that point it is a huge shift in reading style. I almost would have liked to have the letters at the beginning with the two academic essays at the end for reference.
Again, a picky complaint. Overall, Every Day Lasts a Year is an extraordinary book, mostly because those we meet in it were not extraordinary at all but just regular men and women caught up by hell on earth.
And that is what these are. Every Day Lasts a Year is a collection of letters from Poland to America, from a variety of family members to a young man who had emigrated not long before. These notes of various lengths and topics span from November 1939 to early December 1941. America entered the war. Joseph Hollander's family went silent.
They were Jewish.
But this isn't a book about the Holocaust or World War II or Polish history. This is a book about a family living in the midst of a crisis, trying to live as they could. It is a book about the contrasts between history on a grand scale and mundane details of daily life. In these all too often mundane details, however, the specter of Nazism is ever present, even if not mentioned.
The letters themselves take up about 180 pages of this 280 page book. They are well edited and formatted so as to make for easy reading, presented without commentary except for the occasional footnote clarifying a point of history or making note of a translation or transcription issue. These are not great literature, but that is the point. They are the kinds of letters sent by family members to one of their own far away. And they are amazing insights into life.
The first hundred pages is made up of three essays. The first by the son of the letters recipient. He tells the story of Joseph, his father. While the prose is not the best, the story is well told and quite interesting. We get to know the one who is so present and yet so silent through the later laters. It is an engaging story, not only because he was able to escape Poland but also because of the immense legal troubles he had when he got to the States. The US tried to deport Joseph back to Europe just when Europe was exploding into war.
The second two essays are much more academic in tone. The first details the Nazi rule in Cracow throughout the war. The second is broader in scope, giving a background to Jewish life in Poland before and during the war.
Overall this is an incredible book, amazing for anyone interested in World War II, Holocaust studies, social history, or Poland. My only critique, and it's a picky one, is that I felt the book was a little unsure who to target as an audience. It is very accessible to a popular audience interested in the topic, but at times the essays feel a bit too rigid and stolid. It takes a while to get to the actual letters, and at that point it is a huge shift in reading style. I almost would have liked to have the letters at the beginning with the two academic essays at the end for reference.
Again, a picky complaint. Overall, Every Day Lasts a Year is an extraordinary book, mostly because those we meet in it were not extraordinary at all but just regular men and women caught up by hell on earth.
February 20, 2023
Great collection of letters that paints a poignant picture of those trying to escape the Nazis in Europe.
March 22, 2017
The book desperately needed an editor. Could have been 1/3 shorter if everything wasn't repeated multiple times.
December 13, 2012
Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family’s Correspondence From Poland, by Richard S. Hollander, Christopher R. Browning and Nechama Tec, is an extremely profound and absorbing book, a poignant and excellent documentation of family life during the Holocaust.
Richard S. Hollander’s parents were killed in an automobile accident in 1986. After their death he was looking through their attic, and came across a trunk filled with letters. The letters were from his father’s mother, three sisters, their children, and from his brother in-laws, written between November 1939 and December 1941. Richard Hollander’s father, Joseph Hollander had emigrated to the U.S. in 1939, and had overcome extreme odds in order to become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. That he saved the letters in the trunk for all of those years might have been his way of keeping his family with him, of remembering their existence within the decades past and within the Holocaust realm. He never spoke of the letters to Richard.
The letters are written in German and Polish, while Joseph Hollander’s relatives lived in the Kracow Ghetto, and they are a moving and historic family chronicle of every day life endured during the harshest and darkest of times. The firsthand accountings in Every Day Lasts a Year are intense, desperate, loving, edged with concern and fear. Joseph Hollander’s mother, especially, was concerned about whether she would ever see her son again and ever hold him in her arms. Other relatives are concerned that mail wasn’t being delivered on either end, and so the family devised a “code” that would let them know whether letters had been received.
The book is one that everyone should read. It is divided into three sections. The first section is an essay written by Joseph’s son, Richard, pertaining to his father’s emigration, and struggle to free his family, and avoid his own deportation back to Krakow. It also explains how Joseph helped to save other Jews. The second section includes essays on Jewish life in Krakow, and the last section includes the letters, which are profoundly revealing, and an emotional roller coaster, in and of themselves. The anxiety of separation, the Holocaust looming above them, the longing and love are all apparent within the framework of the letters.
The last letter on the last page of Every Day Lasts a Year (sent to Joseph, regarding his mother, Berta Hollander) is especially poignant, and I keep rereading it, and the lines continue to stay with me, fixed in my emotions and mind.
“Your dear mother died peacefully and without pain on August 28, 1942.”
She died without having to go through the horrendous and horrific circumstances, without having to perish in a death camp, like Auschwitz, and for that, Richard S. Hollander is grateful.
What makes Every Day Lasts a Year and family accounting different than most Holocaust stories is the fact it is not an actual book on the Holocaust. It is a book whose content was written through letters (180 pages of the 280 pages), letters that reveal the historical context and complexities of the daily lives of the family members in Krakow, Poland, and the crisis they were experiencing.
I was thoroughly mesmerized by Every Day Lasts a Year, the historical background of Joseph Hollander’s family’s struggles to survive on a daily basis. The book is involving, and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. The intensity of the letters, the gravity of the family situation will stay with me, lingering in the recesses of my mind. It is a beautifully written book, and a tribute to Richard S. Hollander’s family. The letters, themselves, are a firsthand accounting of their lives, and a testament to how their lives (and the lives of all Holocaust victims) should not be forgotten. The clearly written and the precisely historic accounting behind the letters are extremely invaluable in understanding the Holocaust and Jewish life in the Krakow Ghetto, and invaluable as a family history, ancestral documentation and chronology.
The poignancy is never diminished in this beautiful and extraordinary family chronicle and portrait.
I recommend this book to everyone.
Richard S. Hollander’s parents were killed in an automobile accident in 1986. After their death he was looking through their attic, and came across a trunk filled with letters. The letters were from his father’s mother, three sisters, their children, and from his brother in-laws, written between November 1939 and December 1941. Richard Hollander’s father, Joseph Hollander had emigrated to the U.S. in 1939, and had overcome extreme odds in order to become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. That he saved the letters in the trunk for all of those years might have been his way of keeping his family with him, of remembering their existence within the decades past and within the Holocaust realm. He never spoke of the letters to Richard.
The letters are written in German and Polish, while Joseph Hollander’s relatives lived in the Kracow Ghetto, and they are a moving and historic family chronicle of every day life endured during the harshest and darkest of times. The firsthand accountings in Every Day Lasts a Year are intense, desperate, loving, edged with concern and fear. Joseph Hollander’s mother, especially, was concerned about whether she would ever see her son again and ever hold him in her arms. Other relatives are concerned that mail wasn’t being delivered on either end, and so the family devised a “code” that would let them know whether letters had been received.
The book is one that everyone should read. It is divided into three sections. The first section is an essay written by Joseph’s son, Richard, pertaining to his father’s emigration, and struggle to free his family, and avoid his own deportation back to Krakow. It also explains how Joseph helped to save other Jews. The second section includes essays on Jewish life in Krakow, and the last section includes the letters, which are profoundly revealing, and an emotional roller coaster, in and of themselves. The anxiety of separation, the Holocaust looming above them, the longing and love are all apparent within the framework of the letters.
The last letter on the last page of Every Day Lasts a Year (sent to Joseph, regarding his mother, Berta Hollander) is especially poignant, and I keep rereading it, and the lines continue to stay with me, fixed in my emotions and mind.
“Your dear mother died peacefully and without pain on August 28, 1942.”
She died without having to go through the horrendous and horrific circumstances, without having to perish in a death camp, like Auschwitz, and for that, Richard S. Hollander is grateful.
What makes Every Day Lasts a Year and family accounting different than most Holocaust stories is the fact it is not an actual book on the Holocaust. It is a book whose content was written through letters (180 pages of the 280 pages), letters that reveal the historical context and complexities of the daily lives of the family members in Krakow, Poland, and the crisis they were experiencing.
I was thoroughly mesmerized by Every Day Lasts a Year, the historical background of Joseph Hollander’s family’s struggles to survive on a daily basis. The book is involving, and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. The intensity of the letters, the gravity of the family situation will stay with me, lingering in the recesses of my mind. It is a beautifully written book, and a tribute to Richard S. Hollander’s family. The letters, themselves, are a firsthand accounting of their lives, and a testament to how their lives (and the lives of all Holocaust victims) should not be forgotten. The clearly written and the precisely historic accounting behind the letters are extremely invaluable in understanding the Holocaust and Jewish life in the Krakow Ghetto, and invaluable as a family history, ancestral documentation and chronology.
The poignancy is never diminished in this beautiful and extraordinary family chronicle and portrait.
I recommend this book to everyone.
August 8, 2013
In 1986, Richard Hollander's parents died together in a tragic car accident in NY. Among the items he inherited was a box containing letters sent from Poland, the former home of Hollander's father. At first Hollander ignored the letters but at some point as his grief for his parents receded, he realized what he had found. These were letters from his aunts and uncles sent to his father during the the period from 1939 to 1942 from Poland. Since Hollander's Polish relatives were Jews living in Nazi occupied Poland, the value to history of this correspondence became apparent. None of Hollander's relatives survived the war but they live on in these letters. Dora, who found romance in the Krakow ghetto; Klara who held on through her faith in God; Genka who saw no hope but only blackness ahead; Luisa who held her optimism through it all; as well as many others letter writers.
The first part of the book tells the story of Hollander's father fleeing Poland and escaping to the US, followed by his attempts to avoid deportation as an illegal alien. We also learn of his attempts to get exit visas for the family still in Poland. When the war breaks out, he joins the service and is sent to Germany, first to fight and later to serve as a translator. While there he finds little more about his family other that it is highly likely they are all dead.
Two essays follow that give some information about the Krakow ghetto and life within the ghetto. Then the letters follow. There is something quite haunting reading these letters, many quietly hinting at there author's desperate need to be rescued by their brother in America. The letters are from the grave and reading even the trivial ones can't help but make you think more about these people who suffered and died in the Nazi machine to kill Jews. But this opens up a question that is ignored, what did happen to all of these people? Surely at least some small information could have been found, a place of execution, a hint at a year, a final word. The book doesn't reveal if Hollander made any effort but in post-USSR Eastern Europe, surely some information, some person, something must recall one of the 20 people in Hollander's family who died. Ignoring that I think the book is well worth reading. Just be sure to have tissues nearby.
The first part of the book tells the story of Hollander's father fleeing Poland and escaping to the US, followed by his attempts to avoid deportation as an illegal alien. We also learn of his attempts to get exit visas for the family still in Poland. When the war breaks out, he joins the service and is sent to Germany, first to fight and later to serve as a translator. While there he finds little more about his family other that it is highly likely they are all dead.
Two essays follow that give some information about the Krakow ghetto and life within the ghetto. Then the letters follow. There is something quite haunting reading these letters, many quietly hinting at there author's desperate need to be rescued by their brother in America. The letters are from the grave and reading even the trivial ones can't help but make you think more about these people who suffered and died in the Nazi machine to kill Jews. But this opens up a question that is ignored, what did happen to all of these people? Surely at least some small information could have been found, a place of execution, a hint at a year, a final word. The book doesn't reveal if Hollander made any effort but in post-USSR Eastern Europe, surely some information, some person, something must recall one of the 20 people in Hollander's family who died. Ignoring that I think the book is well worth reading. Just be sure to have tissues nearby.
July 8, 2015
To a historian, the best source is a first-hand account, and in Joseph Hollander's trove of letters, written by family members lost in the Holocaust, is a new and valuable addition to the history of that war. Moreover, this book gives voice to people - to an entire people - the Nazis had sought to remove from all memory. That their words survive is enough: it makes this book a value.
This book is more than a collection of letters from the Krakow ghetto; the editors have thoughtfully provided three essays. One is a thoughtful introduction by Richard Hollander, Joseph's son, about his father's precarious arrival in the U.S.A. and attempts to free his family. The other editors wrote two well-footnoted essays on the fate of the Jews of Krakow, and on the fate - and surviving sources - of other Jews there. They are helpful to future historians, quite consciously so.
Richard Hollander's essay perhaps should have been footnoted as well, but no matter: he makes enough reference to the INS and other records of the time, and Joseph Hollander was enough of a cause celebre in immigration court that historians should have little trouble finding his record.
It's also helpful that Joseph Hollander had the foresight, and his son the wisdom, to keep all the other paperwork of his day-to-day life at that time: receipts, photographs, passports, financial records, and so forth. Richard Hollander was able to put the letters into this context, and it enriches his own account.
The essays are lucid and helpful; the correspondence is well translated and poignant - and the editors have helpfully annotated them. Though the letter-writers had to be circumspect, even cryptic, in their letters through the Nazi mails, the editors have helped us understand.
Not to be missed, by those interested in the fate of Europe's Jews, or that dark period in general, or in original works of history.
This book is more than a collection of letters from the Krakow ghetto; the editors have thoughtfully provided three essays. One is a thoughtful introduction by Richard Hollander, Joseph's son, about his father's precarious arrival in the U.S.A. and attempts to free his family. The other editors wrote two well-footnoted essays on the fate of the Jews of Krakow, and on the fate - and surviving sources - of other Jews there. They are helpful to future historians, quite consciously so.
Richard Hollander's essay perhaps should have been footnoted as well, but no matter: he makes enough reference to the INS and other records of the time, and Joseph Hollander was enough of a cause celebre in immigration court that historians should have little trouble finding his record.
It's also helpful that Joseph Hollander had the foresight, and his son the wisdom, to keep all the other paperwork of his day-to-day life at that time: receipts, photographs, passports, financial records, and so forth. Richard Hollander was able to put the letters into this context, and it enriches his own account.
The essays are lucid and helpful; the correspondence is well translated and poignant - and the editors have helpfully annotated them. Though the letter-writers had to be circumspect, even cryptic, in their letters through the Nazi mails, the editors have helped us understand.
Not to be missed, by those interested in the fate of Europe's Jews, or that dark period in general, or in original works of history.
January 27, 2011
This is a unique compendium of one side of one Jewish family's correspondence in Poland to their son/brother/brother-in-law who had gotten to New York before the Nazi/Soviet Union invasion of Poland. The correspondence shows the family full of love and humanity -- never complaining despite the ever greater repression that they are subject to. The collection of letters shows the the regularity and ordinariness of these people's lives which is remarkable under the circumstances. Of course, it is an extremely sad and poignant exercise to read these letters since the reader knows full well that there is a horrible end to the story.
What is interesting is that the editor is the son of the son who escaped to New York. And, he never knew about the correspondence (which was collected in an old suitcase in his parents attic) or of his extended family's story until he was an adult (after his elderly parents died suddenly in an automobile accident). His father had told him none of this story. One imagines that the pain would simply have been too great - both in the telling and in the hearing.
Because the book contains only letters received from Poland and not those sent from the son in New York, one is left to imagine what the son must have been writing. It seems that he was very diligent and certainly did a great deal to stay in touch by letter with his relatives -- as well as constantly send them packages.
This book is a solid reminder that many millions of good people who should have lived full and vibrant lives had them violently cut short out of insane hatred.
What is interesting is that the editor is the son of the son who escaped to New York. And, he never knew about the correspondence (which was collected in an old suitcase in his parents attic) or of his extended family's story until he was an adult (after his elderly parents died suddenly in an automobile accident). His father had told him none of this story. One imagines that the pain would simply have been too great - both in the telling and in the hearing.
Because the book contains only letters received from Poland and not those sent from the son in New York, one is left to imagine what the son must have been writing. It seems that he was very diligent and certainly did a great deal to stay in touch by letter with his relatives -- as well as constantly send them packages.
This book is a solid reminder that many millions of good people who should have lived full and vibrant lives had them violently cut short out of insane hatred.
July 27, 2011
A book that will haunt you, EVERY DAY LASTS A YEAR covers time spent in the ghetto of Krakow, Poland during the Nazi era through the letters one family sent to the US and the son who got away. There is a cumulative effect to the letters that is hard to deny, and a mysterious repetitiveness to the information that drills away at you as you read this correspondence. The letters were discovered decades after they had been sent, and there are no responses, so the reader is left to piece together not only what the response might have been, but more importantly, what kind of life this family was REALLY living while writing these impossibly upbeat letters. Were they avoiding censorship to get as much information out as possible while appearing to be happy, or trying to not upset their son/brother/uncle as they wrote to him? We will never know. But I would venture a guess that you will find yourself tossing and turning as you try to figure it out. Though the book lacks some of the immediacy and power of the best writing of this era (Primo Levi's writings should be essential reading for all human beings), EVERY DAY LASTS A YEAR packs a punch that is hard to deny.
March 23, 2016
M'Kaylee-5th book review)
This book tells us a story of a man burning the holocaust who escapes. Now it also tells the story of his family. Now this book didn't really interest me that much when I started reading it in the library I thought that it was a good find but as I read I had to force myself to read the book. Now don't get me wrong the story was interesting especially how the story progressed with the letters, I just wish it had been more emotions and feeling to it. Now I know that it couldn't happen scens the author didn't experience it him self it was his father who was in the situation. There is something about aliens in here where I never got that. Is it something about actual aliens or is it a reference to him, his wife and the kid there taking care of or what but any way that is my thoughts on Every Day Last a Year.
This book tells us a story of a man burning the holocaust who escapes. Now it also tells the story of his family. Now this book didn't really interest me that much when I started reading it in the library I thought that it was a good find but as I read I had to force myself to read the book. Now don't get me wrong the story was interesting especially how the story progressed with the letters, I just wish it had been more emotions and feeling to it. Now I know that it couldn't happen scens the author didn't experience it him self it was his father who was in the situation. There is something about aliens in here where I never got that. Is it something about actual aliens or is it a reference to him, his wife and the kid there taking care of or what but any way that is my thoughts on Every Day Last a Year.
March 31, 2008
Pretty hard to review this book. It is what it is, a compilation of letters written from Cracow by a Jewish family to a son in America. It is an historians goldmine, but takes patience to read through. It is heartbreaking, maddening, and frustrating to read. Much of the story is between the lines, and the editors have made a valiant attempt to fill in some of that for the reader. It might have benefited from more commentary and historical perspective intermingled between the letters, rather than in individual essays as presented.
March 23, 2008
A collection of letters which gave some depiction of life in Poland for Jews during the second world war. Most of the letters weren't all that interesting to me. The first part of the book told of Joseph's (the son to whom the letters were written) attempts to determine what happened to the rest of his family after the letters ceased to come which was also of some interest although it could have been written in a more readable style. On the whole I was expecting more from the book, but it didn't deliver.
November 6, 2010
Interesting but tedious.
March 13, 2008
Sad, you wished that the letters would have continued to a happier ending.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews