A History of the Grandparents I Never Had

"Ivan Jablonka is a tremendous writer-compassionate and searching, intimate and ambitious-and A History of the Grandparents I Never Had is a painstakingly researched and profoundly heartfelt book that teaches us new and necessary things about family, history and the extraordinary power of storytelling. It's one of the most beautiful books I've read in years."-Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans "This is history at its best, a combination of rigorous scholarship and impassioned autobiography. Meticulously retracing the lives and times of his Polish-Jewish grandparents, who fled to France in 1938 only to lose their lives under the Nazi regime, Ivan Jablonka miraculously resurrects-for himself and for the reader-the grandparents he never knew."-Irvin D. Yalom, Stanford University, and author of The Spinoza Problem "A History of the Grandparents I Never Had is an extraordinary book-at once a breathtaking work of historical investigation and a deeply personal meditation on the possibilities and limits of historical knowledge. By uncovering the traces left behind by people who literally vanished into thin air, Ivan Jablonka sheds new light on the Holocaust as well as on our own desire to grasp what cannot be grasped."-Maurice Samuels, Yale University "Outstanding"-Caroline Broué, France Culture "A masterpiece"-Jean-Louis Jeannelle, Le Monde "A beautiful, unforgettable book"-Gilles Heuré, Télérama Perhaps no moment in modern history has been written about as much as the Shoah. Historians and memoirists, in particular, have striven to re-create or retell this event. While the two genres are distinct, the dividing line between them - objectivity lying to one side, subjectivity to the other - is often breached. In the best of cases, such as Saul Friedlander's When Memory Comes this brackish confluence makes for brilliance. To this select company we must now add Ivan Jablonka's A History of the Grandparents I Never Had." -Robert Zaretsky, The Forward "This book is a thriller, as compelling as any work of fiction...This book is both poignant and penetrating; gruesome and horrifying. We experience the extremes of human interactions. Recommended for all adult and senior high school Judaica collections."-Marion Stein, Association of Jewish Libraries