A Redhead By Any Other Name

Is even sweeter

Hi everyone! I hope you had a nice summer. I cannot believe I am writing about summer in past tense. It flew by for me, (hence the late newsletter – I’m sorry!)

Yesterday I picked up a package sent to me by my amazing publisher, Amsterdam Publishers. It was some of my grandmother’s book translated into other languages. I can’t describe the feeling of opening that cardboard box and seeing my book produced by foreign publishers around the world. Because here is the thing – when I tried to publish my book, many people told me that no one is interested in Holocaust stories anymore. This was one of my grandmother’s greatest fear; people’s refusal to remember what happened. She feared people’s apathy would not allow change. She feared that not knowing our history is the clearest path to repeating it. She feared the rise in antisemitism which she had to face yet again in her life after she saw what it had the power to do. She feared her story would be forgotten.

But my grandmother had a hope that was bigger than her fear. She always did. She had a dream to share her story and a belief in a world that would know what to do with it.

She told me to keep trying to get her story published.

To me, that is a remarkable thing. The world showed her their worst of human nature and she still believed in the best. They murdered her brother, her mother, her entire town and six million of her people, and she believed in rebuilding. She believed in progress. She believed her story was important to share, not to share the horrors, but to share her hope for a future where that would never happen again.

I almost gave up trying to get the book out but then I said, if my grandmother fought to survive Auschwitz, the least I can do is get her story published! Thank God it was.

Today I held the physical copy of the book not only in English, but in seven other languages (three more coming this year!). Today I held evidence of people in America, Italy, Germany, Czech, Slovakia, Romania, The Netherlands, and Portugal, who believe her story is worth reading and remembering, no matter how uncomfortable that can be.

Thanks to all of you for receiving it the way you did.  You read it and reached out and shared it and loved it and told hundreds of thousands of others to read it too. My grandmother left this world with so much hope thanks to you. She saw the worst of man and still fought for and believed in the best of man. Thanks to you, I can believe that too.

To me this is a comfort and I hope it can be a comfort to you too.  

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it please subscribe. If you read her story, leave a comment and tell my what language you read it in!

Wishing you all the best,
Nechama

And now for my book recs:

Novel: This summer I read and enjoyed BABEL by RF Kuang. It is an apropos book recommendation for a newsletter about translation of my book because it is a book about the study of languages and what we lose in translation. I thought the topic was interesting so I enjoyed it.

Picture Book: Meet the Dullards by Sara Pennypacker. This is just one of my favorite picture books. It makes me laugh every time. I beg my kids to choose it at bedtime.