THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF GIDON LEV

In this elegantly conceived memoir, a Czechoslovakia-born Holocaust survivor works with an LA editor to write his life story, and a tender friendship ensues.

Gidon Lev was born in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, in 1935. When he was 6, he and his mother were ordered by the Nazis to board a train to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he remained until the age of 10. Lev lost 26 members of his family in the Holocaust. In 1959, he immigrated to Israel and served in the Six-Day War. His marriage to his first wife “fell apart incrementally but dramatically”; Lev found a note on her door saying she had gone to America, taking their children with her. A two-time cancer survivor himself, he lost his second wife to lung cancer months before Gray moved to Israel in 2012. Lev sought out Gray as an editor, but while collaborating on his book project, they spent “almost every day together” and realized they made “great life partners.” The memoir later recalls their visit to the West Bank and Lev’s horror that the “fenced-in” Arab villages remind him of Theresienstadt. Gray’s narrative voice—which fills in historical detail and offers personal commentary on moments such as when she returned to Theresienstadt with Lev—is delicately balanced with transcriptions of interviews with Lev. Lev’s vivid recollections of the concentration camp are haunting: “We didn’t really know that there were gas chambers. But there were rumors of things like that.” Lev casually throws in tantalizing nuggets of information about his family history (“The truth is, my grandfather owned a Stradivarius viola”), and Gray’s descriptions augment scenes, like when she recalls entering a torture room at Theresienstadt: “Starlings were swooping in and out of nests….Diving up, under the eaves on the outside of the buildings, they pulled bits of string and straw in after them.” Some readers may question the juxtaposition of Gray’s and Lev’s very different voices, but they blend together well, informing each other, and Gray ensures that Lev remains the central focus. Illustrated with Lev’s family photographs, this is a remarkable tale of survival and unexpected kinship.

A vitally important Holocaust story eruditely captured.