Handful of dirt

We knew only silence

My maternal grandparents never talked about their experiences during World War II. And we have formed our own legends around them: He was a teacher in the concentration camp and helped the children fill the time until their turn came; she was able to carry the railway sleepers, under the weight of which other Jews found death. And that was enough, we knew not to ask any more questions. And these stories, after they died just a month apart, entered the family memory without further examination. But after a while, cracks began to appear in them. A newspaper article claiming to be based on an interview with him. A photograph of her holding a strange man's arm. Emails from an English octogenarian who claimed to have been his pupil. A pile of letters in a shoebox hidden in her sister's closet. And the story of their lives suddenly began to change before our eyes. Bram Presser has built an immensely compelling novel about love, memory, the past and identity based on real facts and fragments of history