Our Holocaust

Amir and Effi collected relatives. With Holocaust survivors for parents and few other "real" relatives alive, relationships operated under a "Law of Compression" in which tenuous connections turned friends into uncles, cousins, and grandparents. Life was framed by Grandpa Lolek, the parsimonious and eccentric old rogue who put his tea bags through Selektion, and Grandpa Yosef, the neighborhood saint, who knew everything about everything, but refused to talk of his own past. Amir and Effi also collected information about what happened Over There. This was more difficult than collecting relatives; nobody would tell them any details because they weren't yet Old Enough. The intrepid pair won't let this stop them, and their quest for knowledge results in adventures both funny and alarming, as they try to unearth their neighbors' stories. As Amir grows up, his obsession with understanding the Holocaust remains with him, and finally Old Enough to know, the unforgettable cast of characters that populate his world open their hearts, souls, and pasts to him.

Translated by Jessica Cohen from the Hebrew Shoah Shelanu.

Amir Gutfreund was a multi-award-winning Israeli novelist. Born in Haifa in 1963, he studied applied mathematics at the Technion, joined the Israeli Air Force, and then went on to become a clinical psychologist and novelist. His honors include the Sapir Prize, the Buchman Prize from the Yad Vashem Institute, the Sami Rohr Choice Award from the Jewish Book Council in 2007, the Prime Minister's Prize for Creative Works in 2013, and the Ramat-Gan Prize for Literature in 2015 for his novel The Legend of Bruno and Adela.