When Time Stopped
A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
-
-
4.5 • 6 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this astonishing story that “reads like a thriller and is so, so timely” (BuzzFeed) Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: “Like Anne Frank’s diary, it offers a story that needs to be told and heard” (Booklist, starred review).
In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews. He was transported to Auschwitz. Eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book.
Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo’s eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened.
When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. Ten years later Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.
A “beautifully told story of personal discovery” (John le Carré), When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. Neumann brings each relative to vivid life, and this “gripping, expertly researched narrative will inspire those looking to uncover their own family histories” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Neumann, a former foreign correspondent for Venezuela's Daily Journal, debuts with a deeply moving account of her father's life during the Holocaust. Growing up as a girl of privilege in Caracas, Venezuela, Neumann formed a Nancy Drew type sleuthing club with friends. By accident, she came across a box containing papers and other documents for a man named Jan Sebesta, but with a photo of her father, Hans. Soon, though, the box disappeared. It would be decades before Neumann rediscovered the photo, and it proved to be the springboard for a spy-worthy story of her now-deceased father surviving the Holocaust by living in plain sight in Berlin under an assumed identity. By poring over letters sent to her father from Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp near Prague, Neumann learns that of 34 members of the Neumann family living in Czechoslovakia during WWII, 25 were killed by the Nazis. Using the letters as well as those written by her father she searches for and meets cousins she didn't know existed, who help fill in details, such as that her "father was a valued member of the fire brigade" in 1944. This gripping, expertly researched narrative will inspire those looking to uncover their own family histories. Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated the author's mother hid the box containing documents the author found as a child.
