cover image Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland

Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland

, . . Cambridge Univ., $28 (285pp) ISBN 978-0-521-88274-3

Sustained personal documentation from those who lived and died in the Holocaust is rare. That makes this collection of letters a precious gift to historians. Written from November 1939 to December 1942, the letters collected here are from nine members of the Hollander family in the Kraków ghetto to Joseph Hollander, who had emigrated to the U.S. in 1939. Discovered by Joseph's son Richard in 1986, these vibrant letters—written in German and Polish—are helped enormously by an essay by the younger Hollander about his father's life and relationship to his family. From Joseph's 74-year-old mother wondering “Can I still hope to take you in my arms?” to his brother-in-law Salo's worry that the mail is not coming through, the letters evoke intense feeling, as we know that almost all of the correspondents died in the Holocaust. That many of these letters—co-edited and put into historical context by Browning and Tec, two leading Holocaust scholars—do not mention the increasingly dangerous political situation in Kraków but rather dwell on personal matters makes them all the more moving. (Nov. 5)