Why Didn’t They Leave?

“A powerful family saga begins in Prague. 1939: the Nazis invade Czechoslovakia”

The title of the book – Why Didn’t They Leave? – asks a question that so many people – both within Jewish families and others – must have asked, and continue to ask, and it’s question that’s asked with the benefit of hindsight as no-one could have imagined how the situation in Nazi-occupied Europe could have deteriorated so rapidly and so devastatingly.

Very much based on the experiences of her own family, the author, – Eva Hnizdo – draws on memories, feelings and anecdotes, and places them in the wider historical context. We start the story in an deeply uneasy and chilling chapter of history, at a time when Jewish families were still living in relative safety at home, but at a time in which their rights were being run roughshod over, and the opportunity to leave (escape) was becoming vanishingly small.

At once a story that is so familiar to readers of 20th century history, it is also unique and so important to be told. Eva’s story recounts the lives of a young Jewish girl, the dramatic change in her circumstances from being an ordinary Czech, to being imprisoned in Theresienstadt, her emergence into the outside world at the end of the war, and her relationship with her daughter, born in the early 1950s. Key to the story is the mother-daughter relationship, one that in this instance is extremely tense, even toxic, leading to the daughter, age 19, escaping Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia, and the negative influence of her mother.

The book closes with the daughter’s journey of research and reconciliation, to find out more about her family, both those who were murdered in the 1940s, and those who managed to escape and survive.

A deeply reflective book – as the author reconsiders her own views, behaviour and relationship with her mother, through the telling of her biographically inspired account; it may also make you reflect on your own family. What would you have thought, felt and done had you been in those circumstances eight or so decades ago?

• Published by The Book Guild Ltd. £9.99. (paperback). ISBN 9781913913366. HT