One Family

Reviews / Votes

One Family: Before and During the Holocaust tells the moving and complex story of one Jewish family who lived in Poland for generations, who were scattered throughout Europe and the US as anti-Semitism gripped Europe. It is both deeply personal and also broadly relevant, offering tantalizing capsule histories of Jewish socialist organizing in Poland, Jewish communities in Copenhagen and Paris, and even far right attacks on American Jews between the wars. The author has undertaken an extraordinary excavation project that sheds new light on the Jewish diaspora and the tragic history of the twentieth century. -- Arlene Stein, Rutgers University An intensely moving and meticulously researched account of how one Jewish family lived and died in Poland and France. A powerful and compelling work of social and cultural history. -- Zoe Waxman, University of Oxford Andrew Kolin is to be applauded for his scrupulous investigation in unearthing his family history in Poland and France before and during the German occupation during World War II. The minute details discovered by Kolin will be of interest to readers who want to know about the efficiency of the Nazi machinery in the deportation and systematic murder of Jews and dissidents. Kolin's narrative is gripping, filled with depictions of survival under grotesque barbaric conditions. His description of the ability of family members who survived in overcoming enormous challenges is both heartrending and inspirational. The attentiveness to detail in his exploration of family history by second-generation members-such as the author himself-will be a role-model for others in the post-Holocaust generation. -- Eva Fogelman, Pulitzer Prize nominee for Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust