When 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.