Amidst Latvians During the Holocaust

"ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2011" (Kirkus Reviews). Edward (15) survived the Holocaust by an audacious lie invented by his father: his mother, Erica, would claim to be a German foundling raised by a Jewish family. The ploy didn’t save his father, who was shot along with 98% of the Jews in Latvia, but it gave Erica the provisional status of an Aryan and her two sons that of half-Jews. The scheme became a cat-and-mouse game with skeptical Nazi officials; the family gleaned one temporary reprieve after another as they amassed bogus documentation of German ancestry—the author used his knowledge of chemistry to alter identity papers—always aware that one false step could land them in a mass grave. He tells this harrowing story with absorbing lucidity, with a simple moral vision—“I met enough decent, brave, and noble Germans and Latvians during the war to be immunized against prejudice”—that resonates. A testament of remarkable clarity and humanity, wrung from dark experience. (Condensed from Kirkus Reviews).