LIVE ANOTHER DAY

A Holocaust survivor reflects on his extraordinary escape from the Nazi death machine and his successful new life in America in this debut memoir.

Munye Engelbach, who would later change his name to Michael Edelstein, was born in 1931 in Skala, a small border city in Polish Eastern Galicia/Western Ukraine with a vibrant Jewish community. A happy and mischievous childhood came to an end in 1939 when the Soviets invaded Poland and began “snuffing out the Jewish community’s religious life.” But, of course, a more diabolical enemy surfaced in 1941, when the Nazis invaded Poland and marched east into Skala. Edelstein’s moving memoir, with a first-person narrative, is the product of a collaboration between him and his co-authors, the Ruby brothers, who did much of the research and writing. It was inspired by Edelstein’s 1999 visit to Skala, where he retraced the steps of his youth and his miraculous getaway. When the Nazis rounded up Skala’s Jewish population, 10-year-old Edelstein, with his mother’s permission, escaped under a barbed-wire fence a few hours before the group was loaded onto box cars headed for a concentration camp. His father, a tinsmith, was spared transport at the last minute because his skills were considered useful to the military. His mother was murdered the next day. This is the riveting story of how father and son, reunited shortly afterward, subsisted, living in hand-dug bunkers in the woods and then in a small, freezing crawl space behind a kitchen wall in an abandoned building, depicted through graphic prose: “We endured cold and hunger through those first weeks in town. Every day, all day—from before dawn to after sundown—we stayed holed up in our coffin-like crawlspace.” Page after page, readers are offered a detailed inside view of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before, during, and after the war, including the years spent in displaced persons’ camps in Poland and Germany. Albeit occasionally repetitious, the book contains a treasure trove of historical information, focusing on the lesser-told struggles of Holocaust survival, ending with Edelstein’s rise from penniless immigrant in America to real estate tycoon and philanthropist.

An important addition to the Holocaust genre; horrific, poignant, and ultimately triumphant.