Our Holocaust: Shoah Shelanu by Amir Gutfreund | 9781592641390 | Hardcover

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Some books are so easy to read, the pages practically turn themselves. Then there are books of a different sort: books that require a bit more concentration, with text that invites readers to return to the same lines over and over again to gain a deeper understanding. Gutfreund's brilliant and complex novel, Our Holocaust, is just such a book.

For the last 60 years or so, literature has sought to reveal the atrocities of the Holocaust from numerous devastating perspectives. Readers imagine themselves hiding in an Amsterdam attic as they make their way through The Diary of Anne Frank or journey to Russia in search of lost history in Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated. Making its own contribution to this body of work, Our Holocaust is told from the perspective of two Israeli siblings desperate to break through the silence that frustrates them.

Amir and Effi were born to Holocaust survivors. Few of their relatives survived, yet their parents have cobbled together a family of friends from those who have sought refuge in Israel. The children ask the usual questions prompted by growing minds yet are repeatedly told they are not old enough to know. However, as he chronicles their growing maturity, Gutfreund juxtaposes the natural inquisitiveness of childhood with the grim awareness of adulthood, to haunting effect. (Summer 2006 Selection)

The Seattle Times

"Gutfreund's writing is brilliant, his teasing narrative mesmerizing, and the thought behind it subtle and extraordinarily limber in its shadings of Jewish life under the Nazis. This is no beginner's effort, but a powerhouse accomplishment rivaling Gunter Grass' THE TIN DRUM or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE."

Library Journal

Israeli author Gutfreund's work is now available to English-speaking readers in this thinly veiled autobiographical debut novel. Amir and Effi are two Israeli children growing up in the Haifa suburbs and trying to make sense of a world in which all their elders and others they know have been damaged by the Holocaust. As with Israeli writer David Grossman's See Under Love, in which a child named Momik is determined to understand the nature of the Nazi "beast," here Amir and Effi struggle to ascertain what went on "Over There" and are repeatedly told that they are not old enough to learn about it. A gaggle of adopted grandparents, all wild eccentrics, surround the pair: Grandpa Lolek is a penny-pincher, for instance, and Grandma Lolek appears to be a saint. The collage of almost-family is presented as a colorful, eclectic bunch rather than a dysfunctional unit. Humanity wins out in this highly recommended book for all libraries.-Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

One man's lifelong struggle to live with the Holocaust, after the Holocaust. Born in Haifa in the early 1960s, Amir and his close cousin Effi were raised by Holocaust-survivor parents in a community of survivors. Most were not relatives but were nonetheless known as Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt and Uncle, a post-Holocaust family phenomenon Gutfreund refers to as the "Law of Compression." In addition to his single living blood grandfather, Amir called at least four other men by that affectionate title. From an early age, Amir and Effi were obsessed with the Shoah, an ever-present entity they actually knew nothing about because they were deemed "Not Old Enough." Determined, they read library books, asked questions, snooped around, read old letters, piecing together whatever they could. As time passed, Amir and Effi pursued their own lives. Amir was married with a son of his own when one of his "grandfathers" had a stroke; suddenly, he was "Old Enough" and the stories poured in from every direction, refueling his Shoah obsession with a new intensity. Gutfreund's book is categorized as fiction but is in fact part autobiography-in the afterword, Gutfreund explains which sections are which. Particularly unsettling here are the statistics scattered throughout that concern Nazis who got away with horrific crimes. Translated from the Hebrew, Gutfreund's brief, unembellished sentences may, at first, keep some readers at arms length even while drawing them deep into the intricacies of each character's personality and story. A moving and informative exploration of the thoughts and experiences of a young person surrounded by survivors.

Our Holocaust: Shoah Shelanu

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