Absence of Closure

Absence of Closure by Gustav Schonfeld is an incredible memoir torn from the pages of history. Written in clear, forceful prose, this amazing story begins in Czechoslovakia, when Schonfeld was a boy and the Nazis came to power. A survivor of the concentration camps, with half of his relatives dead, Schonfeld came to the United States and struggled to create a new life. Although he became a doctor, married and had children, he couldn’t forget the horrors of the past and began to chronicle his life on paper. Deeply moving and heartfelt, Absence of Closure reveals the bravery and heroism of a wrongly despised people, the love of a son for his father, and the burning need to survive. But more than that, Schonfeld stresses that remembrance is essential so that Nazi atrocities might never happen again. A stunning historical record and a gripping memoir of a remarkable man, Absence of Closure is also an important new work in Holocaust literature.

Dr. Gustav Schonfeld was born in Czechoslovakia and endured the horrors of the Nazis during World War II. He survived the concentration camps to come to the United States where he became a doctor. He often lectures and speaks about the Shoah and is currently the SE Schechter professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.