MY CITY OF DREAMS

A Holocaust survivor’s daughter offers a powerful memoir.

Gruenberg’s book will make readers question their assumptions about what it means to be a Jewish person who survived persecution by the Nazi regime. She grew up hearing her father reminisce about his wonderful childhood in Vienna; it was only in 2003, when she was in her 40s, that her father, then in his 80s and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, began to open up about the murder of his parents during the Holocaust; the disappearance of his sister, Mia; and his own escape from Vienna in 1939 as a teenager, after Germany annexed Austria. She hadn’t expected this from him because, unlike other survivors who chose not to go back to their native countries, he had visited Vienna many times as a tourist. As such, her book explores the mysterious nature of memory. She was surprised, for instance, to hear her father speaking German fluently, as he had only rarely, and haltingly, spoken the language before: “His German was melodious, as if it came from a part of his brain that was beyond the grasp of his Parkinson’s.” She also mentions that her dad’s nightmares and flashbacks stopped soon after she finished videotaping interviews with him. Her insights into how people process grief are thought-provoking; for example, she points out that her father could not articulate his suffering for a long time because the tragedies that befell him seemed much smaller than those of people sent to concentration camps. The author also lays bare her research process, giving readers an intimate look at how she put her book together. Apart from accounts of interviews with her father, she recalls looking through material in archives in the United States, Germany, and Austria after his death in 2005. The emotional impact of her prose is heightened by the addition of family photographs, maps, letters, and official documents. The memoir cannot be classified neatly as nonfiction, however, as Gruenberg offers two parallel narratives: one in her own voice, and the other in the voice of her aunt Mia—a creative approach to honoring the deceased, catalyzed by the author’s experience of feeling called by her aunt to write down her words.

An insightful remembrance and a formidable contribution to Holocaust literature.