Inherit the Truth: A Memoir of Survival and the Holocaust - Hardcover

Lasker-Wallfisch, Anita

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312208979 ISBN 13: 9780312208974

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000

Synopsis

In the years following her liberation from the Nazi death camp, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, like most survivors of the Holocaust, struggled to build a normal life for herself. Decades later, she realized that in her efforts to achieve normality she had not spoken to her children or her grandchildren of her terrifying odyssey. Her memoir of the period between 1939 and 1945, was written for her children so that they would Inherit the Truth.

This is the story of the destruction of a talented Jewish family, and of the survival against all the odds of two young sisters. Anita and her elder sister Renate defied death at the hands of the Gestapo and the SS over a period of two and a half years, being first imprisoned as criminals and then being transferred, separately to Auschwitz, and finally to Belsen. They were saved by their exceptional courage, determination and ingenuity, and by several improbable strokes of good luck -- the greatest of which was the fact that Anita played the cello.

Lasker-Wallfisch draws from her own startlingly vivid memories of her experience, and also incorporates the letters her family wrote to one another during this period as well as other primary documents. She succeeds in conveying -- in unsentimental prose -- what it was to have been a Jew living in Germany at the time of the Third Reich and what it was to have survived.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Inherit the Truth

"Like so much in this book, the story of liberation brings a chill to the spine, and the realization of the miracle of survival. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch has given an account which, in its personal immediacy, conveys many elements of the almost unconveyable." -- Sir Martin Gilbert from the Preface

"It is my job...to read most of the current literature on the Holocaust, and if someone had the time and inclination to read only one book published recently, I would ...choose without hesitation a small book Inherit the Truth...it is precisely as a historian that I recommend this acocunt." -- Walter Laqueur, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C.

About the Author:

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was brought up in Breslau, Germany. At the age of thirteen she studied cello with Leo Rostal in Berlin, until the 1938 Kristallnacht forced her to return home. After surviving the war, she managed to emigrate to England in 1946; and in 1949 she became a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra, with which she still plays. She is married to Peter Wallfisch, the pianist, and has two children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0312208979
• ISBN 13: 9780312208974
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176