When Time Ran Out: Coming of Age in the Third Reich

This unpretentious Holocaust memoir has a powerful impact. Based on diaries kept by sculptor Zeller as a boy, it tells of a young German Jew's coming-of-age in a world of increasing anti-Semitism, culminating in Kristallnacht in 1938. Written without rancor--rather, with a sense of astonishment--the book offers a devastating picture of what life was like for the Jewish middle-class as persecution intensified from verbal assaults and graffiti to beatings and deportations. Zeller and his sister escaped to Holland, virtually the only country accepting refugees at the time, and from there to England. Their parents perished in the camps. Photos not seen by PW. Paperback rights to Berkley. (May)