Spellbinding

I started listening and simply could not stop. This story is so fascinating and engaging. Hadley has done such a superb job researching and narrating her family history.
And I found it truly uplifting at the end.

It also informed some gaps I had on anti Semitic Austro Hungary during WW1 (and later in Poland).
Hadley’s brilliant explanations of the different forms of antisemitism have already been used in explanation with my History students.

Thank Hadley for this amazing book. I will be recommending it to EVERYONE!

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Fascinating and relevant story.

This took some getting into - at first, I thought oh no, not another misery memoir and was resistant though curious. Was I in the right place to hear what in many ways was bound to be a traumatic story? I'm very glad I persisted, though there were many stops and starts. It is a fascinating story of survival and loss over the 20th century. Tactfully told and I think one of those stories that needs to be told - so many people had the same experiences. We need to hear these tales to remember the past properly and learn from it. Sadly, in the vicious and rabidly xenophobic UK brought into being by this vile Tory government it is a story of increasing relevance to this country.

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A bit long

If Freeman had intended it to be mostly about her grandmother then she didn’t achieve that because Alex was such a strong character and had led such a remarkable life. It was an interesting book. If it had been a physical book I wouldn’t have read it. The historical material, particularly between the wars and wartime France, was very interesting.

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1 person found this helpful

Extraordinary story of 20th century Jewish family

Author and journalist Hadley Freemen has written this remarkable book after looking through the shoe box archive containing her own family history and nearly twenty years of research. Many of the stories here will be similar to those of other Jewish families in the early twentieth century who migrated to escape persecution first in Eastern Europe and then from the Nazis in World War Two. It is a story of adaptation and survival and the seemingly perennial issues of keeping traditions and culture alive and the degree which it is appropriate to assimilate to survive.

The story covers Hadley Freeman's grandmother Sara and her three brothers Alex, Jacques and Henri and compares and contrasts their lives based on the decisions they made. It is Freeman's grandmother Sara who emigrated to the US who appears to have the least adventurous life and it was her brothers who stayed in the France, fashion designer Alex in particular, who forged remarkable lives meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso and Christian Dior. Family myths are explored and verified too with the aid of researchers from TV's Who do you Think you Are including an escape from a train destined for the camps, the French Foreign Legion and the Resistance movement.

Hadley Freeman's family are certainly remarkable but there are thousands of unpublished family stories many of whom were less fortunate and paid the ultimate price and we should never forget them or the horrors from this terrible era.

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Astonishing

This book is tremendous. The characters are amazing and although the men can be action heroes its the women who fascinate more. Loved it.

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Fascinating

I found this book deeply moving but fascinating at the same time. I wasn’t aware of Vichy France & Polish pogroms. Freeman highlights number of deeply concerning similarities between the current and the early 20th century political climate - let’s hope identify politics ends with Trump, Farage & Polish PIS government.

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A beautiful book

It just got better and better as the book progressed. You can’t believed so much happened to one family. Hadley Freeman also gives some excellent insight into the wider context of race and identity in 20th century France and USA.

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A moving yet true story of survival

Well researched and written. A brilliant insight into the horrors the Glass family went through before, during and after WW11.

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A wonderful book

This is a fascinating and well written book on immigration, families and the turmoil of the Second World War in particular. And the knock on effect this trauma and sacrifice had on the generation who lived through it and also the generations that have come after.
I found it so interesting and quickly became absorbed in the Glass family.
My only criticism is I would have preferred another narrator. I found Hadley hard to listen to as she sounded like she had a heavy cold throughout.
But I would absolutely recommend this book....but perhaps to read rather than to listen to.

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A fantastic, evocative book

I learnt so much from this book and enjoyed the rich tapestry of Hadley’s ancestors. An extraordinary family and surely written & read by Hadley. The horrors they faced, the sacrifices they made and their accomplishments. I found the book so absorbing and learnt so much about the treatment of Jews at the hands of the French, something I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about. Thank you Hadley for the twenty years of research you have poured into this book.

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