Lost Bread (Paperback or Softback)

Edith Bruck was born in Hungary in 1931, and as a young teen she was deported with her family to the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, Christianstadt, Landsberg, and Bergen-Belsen, where she lost both her parents and a brother. After the end of WWII, she briefly returned to Hungary, lived in Czechoslovakia, and then moved to Israel, where she stayed for three years. Working for a dancing troupe in 1954 she traveled to Italy where she decided to settle and where she still lives today.

Bruck is the author of more than twenty books, both prose and poetry, devoted to her life-long commitment to Holocaust testimony, starting with Who Loves You Like This (1959 in Italian and 2000 in English, published by Paul Dry Books). She has won several Italian literary awards; most recently, in 2021, Lost Bread was a finalist for the prestigious Premio Strega and winner of Premio Strega giovani (youth).

Bruck has gained national and international recognition for her writings in Holocaust testimony and, more generally, in contemporary Italian literature. Among other honors, in 2021 she received the Cavalieriato di Gran Croce, conferred by the President of Italy. Along with Primo Levi, Edith Bruck is one of the most prolific writers of Holocaust narratives in Italian. Her books have been translated into many languages including English, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, and Hebrew. 

Gabriella Romani is Professor of Italian at Seton Hall University. With Brenda Webster she translated Edith Bruck’s Letter to My Mother (2006) and Enrico Castelnuovo’s The Moncalvos (2017). She is from Rome and now lives in Philadelphia.

David Yanoff is an attorney and author from Philadelphia.