Legacies, Lies and Lullabies

The secret is out---the post-WWII Baby Boomers crave Holocaust survival stories for literary sustenance. In times of economic strife, terrorism and natural disasters, histories and biographies soothe and solace, and remind us of our resiliency.


Legacies, Lies and Lullabies: The World of a Second-Generation Holocaust Survivor is a smorgasbord of history, memoir, sociology, poems, recipes and cultural tidbits. The centerpiece of this delectable concoction is an interview with the author's beloved mother, Miryam Sapsovic Levy, one of the estimated one hundred children who survived the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp.


The book transports you from the rise of Hitler to the perils of daily life in Terezin, to the soap opera of Eastern European relatives, to the second generation who have invisible numbers on their arms.


This book is precise and poignant, with a drop of schmaltz (chicken fat). It is a riveting must-read for anyone who hungers for a slice of the resilient human spirit.


Author Bio: Esther Vivien Levy is an accomplished artist of classic oils and pastels, a poet, and a creative soul who was reading and writing incessantly from earliest childhood, from the time her mother bought her a wooden easel at age three and she listened at her grandmother's knee to her Holocaust stories. This story has been inside her for her whole life, seeking expression. She always felt different from other Jewish American girls and American girls in general, growing up in Riverdale, NY with European parents and other greenhorn relatives, and living with beloved grandparents. She has traveled to Prague and to Terezin twice, putting together her legacy and validating her feelings of belonging to a vanished world, so that she could paint--with words--the story of her family's dark history.