"The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell," a self-published book, has only been available for 3 months but the first run is virtually sold out, a second printing is in progress and a cover change is planned.
This "Australian Book," previously published only in Melbourne in Yiddish in 1948, is Australia's first Holocaust memoir. It has lain dormant for 60 years, and has never before been published in English. It is already proving to be of great interest to many readers, to non-Jews surprisingly even more so than to Jews. How it came to be translated into English is an amazing human interest story in itself and occupies the first 30 pages of the book. Rafael Rajzner, whose personal testament this is was one of the counterfeiters, as in the recent academy award winning movie "The Counterfeiters," and his book is the earliest written account of those events. The book has only been in print for a few weeks and was launched at the Melbourne Writer's Festival on August 24th by Arnold Zable, a prominent Australian Jewish writer. However, as a result of 4 journalists reading the manuscript prior to publication the book has already been the subject of a 5 page article in "The Weekend Australian" (Australia's only national newspaper); a 3 page article and a separate book review in "The Australian Jewish News"; (these articles can be accessed by putting "Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell" into Google and doing an advanced search); the ABC TV series Compass has dedicated a program to it, ("The Sleeping Book" will be aired nationally on ABC1-Channel 2 on October 12th); and the ABC Radio National program "First Person" will serialise the book nationally on the radio from Monday 29th September (5 quarter-hour episodes). There is even some talk that the "Compass" program may later be offered to Jewish Film Festivals at home and abroad. The book has already been acquired by Holocaust Museum libraries in Jerusalem, Berlin, Washington, Sydney and Melbourne, the Kean University Library in New Jersey and the Yivo Library in New York. I have even had an enquiry from the Indian Trail Library in Wheeling, Illinois and Sir Martin Gilbert when notified of the book requested a signed copy.
The book is also I am told about to be reviewed in the Melbourne Age, where it will be compared and contrasted with Diane Ackerman's prize winning book, "The Zookeeper's Wife."
Henry R. (Harry) Lew.