I DIDN'T KILL JESUS

Haber, a first-time author and child of Holocaust survivors, memorializes the hardships her family faced during World War II.

Beginning by lamenting the loss of the fading generation of Holocaust survivors, Haber frames her story as a plea to never forget the atrocities of the war. By the end, however, it’s apparent that Haber wrote this book for her father, both as a comfort to him in his old age and as assurance that his story would not be forgotten. But more than focusing on her father’s suffering, Haber details her parents’ deep love for each other, her mother’s long and complicated process of Jewish conversion, and the consequences of her parents’ decision to stay in Germany after the war. Their lives, Haber writes, were poisoned not only by post-traumatic stress from surviving genocide, but also by Germany’s unextinguished anti-Semitism. For the family, staying in Straubing after the war meant living as outsiders. Haber recalls being bullied not just by the kids in her class, but also by teachers and her friends’ families. Yet even as she catalogs her vexed upbringing in postwar Germany with interfaith parents, Haber describes growing up in what ultimately registers as a very loving though insular home. In describing her parents’ relationship, Haber writes, “They were like Adam and Eve,” repopulating their lives and families with loved ones. “I’m still resentful of what happened to my father,” she says, and even as an adult, after moving overseas to build a new life away from the land where such violence undid her family, “I also feel that I am being held hostage by the Holocaust,” illustrating the cycle of paranoia and emotional damage she unwittingly passed down to her own children. Especially moving is the inclusion of old photographs of Haber’s family who perished in concentration camps. Rather than overstating what was already strikingly described in the writing, the photos take on symbolic meaning as the feeble remains of lost relatives. Unapologetic and unconcerned with gracefulness, Haber’s writing spares not a moment in burrowing to the core of multigenerational trauma. Her account itemizes the suffering not just of her family, but of all those touched by the brutalities of Nazi Germany.

An elegy, a gift, a poignant record.