Life goes on

A reminder that, before it was a battlefield, Utah Beach was just a beach....

Arnhem 19 September 1944/2014

Last night, I finally watched 'A Bridge Too Far'.  Less than three weeks ago, I stood on the John Frost Bridge over the Rhein, watching as the Band of The Southern Highlanders piped the standards of No 1 Para and some very elderly paratroopers across.   What started out as a discussion 6 months ago regarding visiting the battlefields of WW1 became a visit to Arnhem and the commemorations to remember Operation Market Garden, the Battle for Arnhem, 17-21 September, 1944.

There were hundreds of active and retired British servicemen here, mainly paratroopers but also RAF.  We were there to honour the bravery of No 1 Para who were dropped behind enemy lines and, unsupported, fought for the best part of a week to firstly secure the bridge and, later, just to survive long enough for reinforcements to arrive.  Their story is told in A Bridge To Far. That any survived to tell it amazes me.

Of course, the Battle for Arnhem isn't just the story of No 1 Para.  A Polish airborne regiment were dropped on the opposite bank of the Rhein and were thwarted in their attempts to break through.  (Sadly, the commemorative parachute drop was also thwarted by the weather.). 

Ultimately, though, the story belongs to the people of Arnhem, since after the battle, the Germans raised the city in retaliation. 

Oops!! I slipped

I'm knitting a Five Hour Baby Sweater out of Stylecraft Baby Aran in the shade Baby Lemon for the newborn daughter of one of DH's colleagues. With 20 rows to go on the body, I know I will run out of yarn. I always knew it would be tight, even after inserting the reminants of some white aran yarn into the yoke to pad out the yarn as a styling detail. (Photo below.)  I can't do another stripe of the white - I've used all that I had - so this morning, I unwillingly went searching online for some more. 

(I really didn't want to go yarn shopping. Even with the Fashion on the Ration challenge, my stash is approaching epic proportions.) Below, is the exact transcript of a conversation I had with with DH…

  ME: Just to let you know that I've ordered some more of the baby yarn from a shop on line. It'll arrive over the weekend (probably).

  DH: Cool. So I assume you order lemon/yellow? 

ME: Yes, same shade. Probably a different dye-lot, though, so I'll have to wait for it to be delivered and then alternate rows in order to ensure the change in dye lots doesn't show up.

 [ cough ] 

In order to get free P&P, I had to buy some other wool. Some 4-ply in French Navy. [ cough ] And it made sense to buy 12 balls because a) I don't know how much I'll need to knit the jumper I want (I'll be knitting "off-piste"), and b) it got me an extra discount. (I only paid for 11.) 

[ cough ]

 I'm sure it'll squish down into nothing.... 

[ / cough ] 

DH still hasn't responded.

-  Pam (another 16 coupons spent)

66 Coupons? Not a problem.

I am feeling a bit like a fraud.  You remember my fashion on the ration experiment?  I've just been updating  the box on the right to include all my purchases since I last wrote about it.  And it's left me feeling rather fraudulent.  Why?  Because, a) I have a lot of clothes in my wardrobe, and b), when I have made purchases, they've been second-hand from a charity shop which doesn't cost coupons (5 balls of Sirdar Calico, an M&S t-shirt with the tags still on but labelled "donated goods").

So why does that make me feel fraudulent? Unlike my WW2 sisters, I'm not suffering for my fashion.  To be fair, I gave up on trying to be fashionable a long time ago, when the fashions stopped suiting my body type, so I am not desperately chasing the next big thing.  I don't care if my suit is 6 years old, as long as it still looks smart and fits in with my late-1930's/WW2 fashion style.  Additionally, in Wartime terms, I have quite an abundance of clothing, yarn and fabric stashed away.   Even shoes.  I suspect that level of abundance puts me in the league of the Wartime upper-middle class.

(On the shoe, thing.  After a conversation with Tall, when he claimed his wife had over 150 pairs of shoes - turns out she has 154 pairs and a database of them(!) - I went home and counted my pairs of shoes.  Before I tell you the total, please remember that I am a woman who generally wears the same pair loafers to work, lives in sandals in the summer and trainers in the winter.  So.... You'd expect me to have maybe a dozen pairs of shoes, right?   I have 35 pairs of shoes.  And I probably missed a pair or two in the counting.  And that includes my site boots, my gardening shoes, several pairs of boots, my slippers, etc, etc.  There were even pairs I'd forgotten I had.)

Perhaps I'd better keep this challenge going for a few years, instead of one?

- Pam

How many meals?

This morning, I skived off work*, scooped up the contents of the meat fund and went to the kosher butcher.  It had been six months since my last visit, I had £230 to play with and a freezer that looked half full.  In the end, I spent £199.35 and bought the following:-

2kg roasting chicken - 3 meals plus stock
3 x 350g packets of chicken livers - 3 meals
2kg rolled turkey leg roast - 3 meals
marinated Tuscan lamb roast - 1 meal
1lb marinated stir-fry beef - 2 meals
4lb minced (ground) beef - 8 meals
Shoulder of lamb - 2 meals
5lb cubed steak - 5 meals
9 chicken breast fillets - 9 meals
Lamb spare ribs in honey - 1 meal
2 packs beef sausages - 2 meals
700g turkey schnitzels - 2-3 meals
6 packets stock cubes

So that's 41 or 42 meals where each meal feeds a minimum of 4.   The only thing I didn't buy was steak.  (I forgot.)

Let me restate it:  that's four roast dinners plus leftovers; three pre-prepared Chinese meals (just add veg and rice); nine large chicken breasts (250g each) which will make nine stir-fries/ risotto/pasta dishes or curries; five assorted beef stews or curries; 8 meals of minced beef and other possibilities; three of chicken livers; plus a bag of "I don't feel like cooking what have we got to eat?".

It will take us through to December by my reckoning.  Sometimes my ability to stretch out food amazes even me.  Of course, we eat the odd vegetarian meal - less frequently than you'd think - and a reasonable amount of fish (maybe 2lb a month if you include tinned tuna and pilchards), but we don't go hungry by any stretch of the imagination.  Nor do we eat out a lot.

Hmmm..... Do you remember back in October when I was toying with doing a Wartime Experiment but wondered about whether we could survive the food rations?  Dealing with the meat ration was really what was putting me off trying the experiment.  Well, www.whatsthecost.com's  UK inflation calculator tells me that £200 today is the equivalent of £3/17/9 in 1941 money (£3, 17 shillings and 10 pence).  In 1941, the meat ration was 1s2d per week.  Therefore, I reckon I've just bought 15 weeks' worth of meat ration for two people.  Food for thought.

- Pam








* More to the point, since I have done at least 40 hours unpaid overtime since the start of May, which includes unwilling working 5 hours on Saturday and our timesheet week runs Saturday to Friday, I told my bosses that I was booking that time in my regular 40 hours and not working today.  (At my grade, I can't claim paid overtime.)

PipneyJane's Wartime Experiment - Fashion on the Ration

As mentioned in my New Year's Day post, I've been toying with the idea of implementing some type of WW2 wartime experiment.  (I first mentioned the idea in this post back in October.)  So far, what I've decided to do is Fashion on the Ration.   Anyone willing to join me?

The 1941 clothing ration was 66 coupons, which had to cover everything:  underwear, stockings, socks, hats, shoes, skirts, jackets, shirts, trousers, coats, knitting yarn, etc.  The idea behind the ration was that it would enable everyone to buy one new complete outfit per year, nothing more, nothing less. Second hand items were exempt.

 Government announcement in the Times, June 3, 1941

In larger print:

Item Of Clothing	Women	Girls
Lined mackintosh or coat over 28"	14	11
Under 28" short coat or jacket	11	8
Frock, gown or dress of wool	11	8
Frock, gown or dress of other fabric	7	5
Bodice with girls skirt or gym tunic	8	6
Pyjamas	8	6
Divided skirt or skirt	7	5
Nightdress	6	5
Dungarees or overalls	6	4
Blouse, shirt, sports top, cardigan or jumper	5	3
Pair of slippers, boots or shoes	5	3
Other under garments including corsets	3	2
Petticoat or slip, cami knickers or combinations	4	3
Apron or pinafore	3	2
Scarf, gloves, mittens or muff	2	2
Stockings per pair	2	1
Ankle socks per pair	1	1
1 yard wool cloth 36"wide	3	3
2 ounces of wool knitting yarn	1	1

Assumptions for the challenge:-

• 1 metre of fabric equals 1 yard.  No penalty for width.
• 2 ounces of wool knitting yarn equals 50g of any knitting yarn.
• Based on the quantity of fabic and work involved, a "corset" is the equivalent of two bras.
• Ditto one pair of Cami-knickers would equal two pairs of modern bikini-style knickers or thongs.
• Bodice with skirt = shirt/blouse/t-shirt purchased at the same time as a matching or co-ordinating skirt or trousers = 8 coupons.
• Dungarees = jeans = 6 coupons.
• Divided skirt = trousers = 7 coupons.

Examining my wardrobe-crystal-ball for 2013, I know that I'll need to acquire at least the following:-

1. Underwear.  At 4 coupons a pair of cami-knickers, new underwear will be very expensive.  However, I will argue that one pair of 1940's cami-knickers uses the same fabric as two pairs of modern bikini-style knickers, giving the equivalency of 2 coupons per pair of knickers.  So, lets say I'll buy 5 new pairs at a cost of 10 coupons.
2. A navy blue suit.  Currently, this is the one thing my work-wardrobe is missing.  The question is: do I make or do I buy?  I reckon I could make an entire suit:  jacket, trousers and skirt with 5 metres of woollen cloth and 3 metres of lining fabric, if I line it. Purchased is 25 coupons while home-made is 24 coupons.  Of course, if I find one in a charity shop, that will be coupons saved.
3. New loafers.  I get through a pair a year so that's 5 coupons gone.
4. Ditto another pair of trainers.  Another 5 coupons spent.

So that's 44 or 45 coupons spent before I consider t-shirts, blouses, jeans, knitting yarn, etc.  Hmmm......

- Pam

Ramblings

Lurgy

 I'm so tired.  I'm carrying some sort of cold bug that just won't go beyond the first few, throaty symptoms.  I'll feel rough for a few hours and then it eases back for a while.   This has been going on for over a week.

Last Monday, my throat was so swollen, I skipped rehearsal and went to bed early.  Gradually felt better on Tuesday, rough on Wednesday and OK by Friday.  This Monday, I spent most of the day with a splitting headache, partially masked by painkillers.  Couldn't miss another rehearsal, but felt more and more knackered as the evening wore on.  I yawned my way home, went to bed fairly quickly and promptly woke up at 4am.  Couldn't get back to sleep.   Felt like a zombie for a large part of yesterday then, at 3pm, my Commercial Director bought me a cappacino.  The caffeine kicked in around 5 and didn't wear off until  midnight.  Today, I was woken by the rain but felt human until just before I left work.

Right now, I'm peering at the computer, feeling slightly feverish with a sore throat.  I haven't had an on-off, dragged-out illness-in-stages like this since the winter before I got diagnosed with hypothyroidism.  I just wish the damn thing would either develop or go.  I'm sick of it.

==========================
Channel 4

Last night, I watched 27 Dresses on E4 (one of the TV stations controlled by Channel 4).  Good film.  Very funny. Cute leading man, James Marsden.  Almost totally ruined by Channel 4's insistence that they insert 5 advertisements every 10 minutes, cutting scenes in the middle, without sensitivity to the story line.  They do it by the clock.  You can set your watch by it.

I hate Channel 4 for this!  I remember the night they totally ruined The Elephant Man.   They don't care about the film or their audience, just about their advertising revenue.  I rarely watch programs on Channel 4 - wonder why?

==========================
Eye Candy

 Talking about James Marsden, I spent a considerable part of the film thinking he looks a lot like the poster-boy of English cricket, Alistair Cook.

 Alistair, when you cricket career finishes, I hope Hollywood comes calling.

========================

Toying with an idea - PipneyJane's Wartime Experiment


World War 2 is back on our screens in the form of the Wartime Farm on the BBC.  The thread discussing it on MSE got me thinking.  Five years ago, Thriftlady did a ration book challenge - feeding her family for (I think) 2 weeks on the same quantity of rations they'd have got in 1942.  Could we do something similar?  Who would be willing to pretend it's September 1939 again? War has just been declared and rationing is imminent.

These are the ration quantities per person, per week:-
Meat –this was rationed in money not by weight but it was roughly equivalent to 12 oz mince/stewing steak. Chicken was scarce. Offal and sausages were not rationed but hard to get. Wild game such as rabbit was not rationed.
Milk - 3 pints
Sugar ½ lb
Butter – 2 oz
Margarine – 4 oz (for this challenge can up the butter ration to 6 oz instead of using margarine)
Cooking fat (dripping/lard) – 3 oz (for this challenge can substitute up to 3 fl oz oil)
Cheese (English hard cheese) – 3 oz
Bacon and ham - 4 oz (or have an extra 4oz of meat instead)
Eggs - 1 Dried egg -¼ packet (equivalent to 3 eggs so use 3 eggs)
Sweets and chocolate - 2 oz
Jam- 3 oz Tea - 2 oz (18 teabags) (need an equivalent for coffee)
There was a points system - 16 per person per month – which allowed you to buy tinned goods, orange juice, cereals, rice and pulses. Off ration were: bread (finally rationed in 1947), potatoes, oats, fresh fish, and homegrown fruit and veg.

As to the rules for the game, so far, I've come up with these:-

• All mod-cons are allowed if you already own them (freezers, food processors, microwaves, etc). 
• You don't have to buy a whole week's ration every week.  If you routinely only shop once a month, then buy a month's worth then.
• You can eat out of the freezer or the pantry but limit your weekly quantities to those of the ration.
• You can stockpile a week's ration, but you can't spend one in advance, i.e. you can save up your chocolate ration for several weeks in order to purchase the chocolate needed to make coconut rough for Easter.
• You don't have to eat wartime recipes, just adapt what you normally eat to fit the restrictions of the rations.  (However, the various recipe collections such as Marguerite Patten's Victory Cookbook are a very good resource if you need ideas.)
• Petrol/gasoline rations.  Since I'm dependent on a car for work, I was thinking 1 tank of fuel per car per week.
• Clothing rations.  How about throwing in a Fashion on the Ration challenge as well?  The 1941 clothing ration was 66 coupons. (Yarn and fabric already owned doesn't count towards your ration.) This is what your coupons could buy according to Fashion Era:-

Item Of Clothing	Women	Girls
Lined mackintosh or coat over 28"	14	11
Under 28" short coat or jacket	11	8
Frock, gown or dress of wool	11	8
Frock, gown or dress of other fabric	7	5
Bodice with girls skirt or gym tunic	8	6
Pyjamas	8	6
Divided skirt or skirt	7	5
Nightdress	6	5
Dungarees or overalls	6	4
Blouse, shirt, sports top, cardigan or jumper	5	3
Pair of slippers, boots or shoes	5	3
Other garments including corsets	5	2
Petticoat or slip, cami knickers or combinations	4	3
Apron or pinafore	3	2
Scarf, gloves, mittens or muff	2	2
Stockings per pair	2	1
Ankle socks per pair	1	1
1 yard wool cloth 36"wide	3	3
2 ounces of wool knitting yarn	1	1

I'm still not sure I'll go through with this.

- Pam

For Amy

We're on holiday in Normandy for the week.  On Tuesday,  we visited the American Cemetery Normandy, high on the bluffs over Omaha Beach.

It is a peaceful but windswept place.  The edge of the cemetery looks down over the dunes and cliffs onto the beach.  While there couldn't be a more fitting place for the American cemetery than the bluffs over Omaha Beach, it is amazing that anyone survived. Looking down, you wonder how anyone could have made it off the beach alive.

Standing on the beach, you marvel at the peace and the lack of ghosts, after the horrors that were the D-Day landings.

We weren't alone at the Cemetery.  Everywhere were small groups of people come to pay their own respects.  One was a small party of veterans and their wives doing a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial.  Their shoulders had that certain stiffness people have when they're trying not to show they're crying.  (We didn't photograph them - that would have been intrusive, but you can see their wreath in the photo below.)

 

 

 We were there to pay respects of our own. The great-uncle of a friend, Amy, is buried there.  He died on D-Day, 6th June 1944, a young man who gave his life and his future so that Europe would be free of the tyranny that was the Nazis.

 

Putting flowers on his grave is the least that I could do, Amy.


- Pam

 

Normandy

I have spent much of the last few days close to tears.  Nothing bad has happened to me - no family disasters or work related nightmares - and I am not depressed about anything.  It's just that we took a long weekend and spent it in Normandy, in the middle of the American section of the D-Day Landings just outside St Mere Eglise.  We were only a few miles from Utah Beach.

I suppose it is possible to avoid reminders of D-Day when one goes to Normandy, but we couldn't.  St Mere Eglise was probably the first town captured by the Americans after the landings began, when paratroopers were dropped on the village and surrounding countryside.  Their casualty rate was about 50%. 
 
One lucky man (it does depend on how you look at it), John Steele, got caught on the church steeple during his landing and had to play dead while watching his unit being shot to pieces in the square below.  Steele survived.  Today, a permanent reminder hangs from the church tower.

And the museum is dedicated to the 82nd Airborne.

We hadn't planned the trip to be a tour around the memorials but how could we ignore them? The idea was to spend a long weekend staying with a friend in the farmhouse his parents partially own.  Thursday morning, we caught the early ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg.

The only "site" on my list was Bayeux - I wanted to visit the Tapestry.  Apart from that, I planned to sleep, laze around, visit a market or two and possibly cook a meal with the results.   Oh, and find a yarn shop (I succeeded and failed at that - the only one I found was closed on Monday afternoon when we visited).

We made it to Bayeux on Friday, saw the Tapestry, and drove to Arromanches afterwards for a picnic lunch.  I was sitting on the sea wall, looking out over the remains of the Mulberry Harbour when it hit me that this is where it all happened.  Gold Beach.  We were at the heart of D-Day and couldn't avoid it.  For much of the battle in France, Arromanches was the Allies only real harbour, towed in pieces across the Channel hours after the landings began (40% of the components were lost at sea); its sister harbour at Omaha Beach destroyed by bad weather days after it was built.

(I wish I had DH's camera handy to raid.  Among the pictures he took at Arromanches is a plaque commemorating the engineering companies involved in designing/building the harbour.  I've worked for two of them.  We used a couple more on my Project, including one of the fabrication companies.)

Once I started looking, I couldn't stop.  We visited the museum at Arromanche and back in St Mere Eglise.  I learned about the markers at the side of the road.  There are two types:  the D-Day Route markers which are numbered, start in St Mere Eglise and follow the route the troups took to liberate France.

Far sadder are the memorial markers which name a stretch of road after a soldier who died nearby.  In some places, so many men died that they're lined up side by side.

I went round the museums with tears in my eyes but didn't truly break down until we went to Utah Beach.  The beach was empty and windswept.

Behind the dunes on the left are the remains of a gun emplacement captured from the Germans.  These days it is the hub of one of the memorials.  Upstairs are flagpoles and monuments.  Downstairs, is a corridor leading to a bunker.  In the corridor a simple plaque said "in memory of our fallen comrades" and listed the names of the men from the unit who died during its capture.  It had been placed there by the survivors; it was personal.  That's when I lost it completely. I went outside and sobbed my heart out.

I cried for all the men who died before their time; for their family members whose hearts were broken as a result; and for the men who survived but were injured and had to suffer in agonised silence so as to not give their position away.  Such a waste.

I'm crying now, as I type this.  I can barely see the screen.   

- Pam

Stepping back in time

Tonight, my mind is on events of nearly 70 years ago. For most of the last two hours, I have been a lifetime away, focused on the day to day events of the first year of the Second World War. In reality I'm in the middle of North Lincolnshire, staying at my regular hotel, on my monthly visit to Site, but it doesn't feel that way.

I have been attempting to finish Simon Garfield's excellent collection of diaries from the Second World War, We Are at War. I know I've written about it before, but I have to comment again about the power of the writing. The diarists are so eloquent as they chronicle their personal War: the privations; the sky-rocketing food prices; the crippling taxes; their fears over being bombed and the possible invasion. The War was hard on the civilian population, particularly those who were struggling to begin with. Once again, I find myself marvelling at how people survived and how they "made do".

I was so completely absorbed tonight that it took an effort to refocus my mind on my life, on the present day, on the waiter who brought my drink and the waitress who cleared the plates away. I'm looking forward to reading the other two books in this series: Private Battles, covering 1941 to 1945, and Our Hidden Lives, covering the post-War period 1946 to 1948.

- Pam


(If you're curious as to why this book wasn't finished months ago, the answer is simple: I don't get much reading time at home. It's too noisy or there are other things demanding my attention. I tend to do most of my reading when I'm travelling for work.)

Book Review: We Are At War

This is just a quick post before bed-time. I'm at Site for the week; for once, I don't have any colleagues staying in the hotel with me. This means I got a chance to read over dinner. The book I'm reading at the moment: We Are At War, a collection of five diaries from the Mass Observation Project collected and edited by Simon Garfield.

(If you've never heard of Mass Observation, it was/is a social history project started in 1937 which aimed to record everyday life in Britain for future generations. The majority of participants answered surveys; a few submitted diaries.)

The book opens in 1939, just prior to the start of the Second World War and covers a little over a year in the lives of its diarists:-

• Pam Ashford - lives in Glasgow with her mother. Strong sense of fairness and common sense. Works in a shipping company and worries about her contacts in occupied Europe.
• Christopher Tomlin - lives in Preston on the North-West coast of England. Runs his own business selling stationery. When the war commences he is the financial support for his parents. He worries about dwindling sales, the massive hikes in taxes pushing up prices, how to pay the bills.
• Eileen Potter - works as a social worker in London. Responsible for evacuating children and mothers during the early stages of the war. Later, she is involved in planning for housing evacuees.
• Tilly Rice - mother of three. Lives in Surrey near where I used to work. Has nightmares about being bombed.
  
• Maggie Joy Blunt - writer. Very "chattering classes". Hospitable - seems to run an open house for her friends and family. Lives on the outskirts of London near Windsor. Comments on the political events of the day as well as everyday life and the war. Knitter.

The diary entries are woven to paint a canvas of the privations and fears they lived through. Their writing is compelling. I keep wanting to read their next entry and then the next and not wanting to stop. They speak openly and honestly about their lives, how they cope, the struggle to maintain normality. They chronicle the minutiae: Maggie Joy Blunt describes her embarrassment at living in her kitchen, laundry drying by the fire, knitting and the cat on her lap when a neighbour comes to call (characteristically, she brazens it out with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude).

I'm fascinated by World War 2 and life on the Home Front. This is one of those books that, on every page, leaves you wondering: how would I have coped? What would I have done in their circumstances? They are just ordinary people, like you and me, and yet they live bravely through some frightening and extra-ordinary times.

This book gets 10 out of 10.

- Pam

Book review: The Lost, by Daniel Mendelsohn

I stumbled across The Lost when I was at a loose end in Schiphol airport; it was just before Christmas, I was waiting for my flight home from a visit to the Dutch office and I'd run out of books to read. The bookshop had a table full of English-language books and the cover caught my eye:


Something made me pick it up. I don't normally read Holocaust literature. I've read a The Diary of Anne Frank and a couple of autobiographies but, on the whole, my World War 2 reading is driven by an interest in the Home Front - that is where the experience of my family lies (and in the POW camps of the Japanese, but I digress). I may be Jewish but I'm also sixth generation Australian and if we had family murdered by the Nazis, the connection was so distant that nobody knew who they were. On my father's side, we don't even know which shtetl they left behind.

How do I summarise The Lost to give you a flavour of the story? It is simplistic to say that The Lost is the story of Daniel Mendelsohn's search for information on what happened to his maternal great-uncle Schmiel Jaeger, his aunt Ester and their four daughters who were murdered by the Nazis. There is so much more to this book than that. Perhaps the best thing I can do is direct you to Andrew Mendelsohn's website where he details the photos they took on their first trip to Bolechow, the town from where their mother's family had emigrated to America. Schmiel had made the journey to New York and then changed his mind, returning to Bolechow to build his life there.

In deciding to find out what happened to this branch of his family, Daniel Mendelsohn had set himself a difficult task: within his family, there had always been a wall of silence about pre-war Schmiel, as if the memories were too painful and the survivors felt guilt at not being able to do more to get Schmiel's family out of Poland. Then, of course, the Holocaust had eliminated so many of the people who had known the Jaegers and time was taking it's toll on the rest. Daniel set out to interview as many survivors as possible, giving the reader their stories as well as their recollections of the Jaegers. He also fleshes out the actions of the Nazis, turning historian to provide the reader with information on how they decimated the Jewish population of Eastern Poland, in the "Aktions" and the casual daily brutalities they inflicted.

One by one, Daniel identifies how the Jaegers died. But that isn't the only thing he wants to know, part of his quest is to get the answer to the more difficult question: "What were they like?", to learn about their personalities and to give voices to the faces in the family pictures. When it comes to Ester, he never gets a satisfactory answer.

This is a writer's book, beautifully written and a pleasure to read. One minute, you are in the room with Daniel and his interviewees; the next, you have stepped with them into the past as their histories are told. It was compelling and very hard to put down. It is also a multi-layered, multi-faceted book since Daniel uses Talmudic commentaries to illustrate family interactions and the nature of memory, although I found myself skipping those in order to get back to the main narrative.

I'd give this book a rating of 10 out of 10. Read it. It will change your life.

- Pam