Summary
"This book tells the story of Miriam Frankel, née Grünglas, a Holocaust survivor born in Tyachiv (then Slovakia, now Ukraine) but raised from infancy till age thirteen in Trieste (Italy) where her parents ran a kosher guest-house. In the wake of Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 Miriam and her family were deported from Italy back to Tyachiv. Here the family fell victim to the Nazis and was taken, with the town’s entire Jewish community, to Auschwitz. After surviving Auschwitz, the war, and a crippling physical ailment, Miriam, now an orphan, emigrated to Canada where she started life anew. Today Miriam is a beloved matriarch who devotes herself to her new family and to talking to school children and community groups about the Holocaust as she experienced it. This book is based on a series of interviews with Miriam Frankel and other survivors of Nazi concentration camps, as well as on extensive research in Trieste in both the State Archive and the Jewish Archive. The result is a riveting story of survival enriched by the author’s own meditations, in conversation with the protagonist, on the violence wrought by intolerance and on the perils of that come from remaining silent."-- Provided by publisher.