A house fire in 2011. A box survives. Its contents became the catalyst for a quest whose seeds were planted in 1983 – the day Linda learned her Catholic father was Jewish, and what little family history she knew was a lie.
Searching for truth, Linda pieced together the story of eight generations of her Jewish ancestors —the Politzer family — their remarkable lives lost to her father’s secrets. Linda learned of their resilience in surviving religious persecution, wars, epidemics, and economic upheavals. Their stories became her book, The Politzer Saga.
The Hungarian sociologist who helped Linda trace her family wrote, “I hardly know any non-fiction sagas to better exemplify Hungarian Jewish fate of the past 300 years …. All that fantastic talent and readiness to act for the birth of modern Hungary. All the suffering they went through …”
For this reason, the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives mounted a permanent exhibit, The Politzer Saga, in the Rumbach Synagogue in Budapest based on the stories in the book.
