Bon­nie Such­man’s father-in-law, who emi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca from Nazi Ger­many in 1937, shared very lit­tle with his fam­i­ly about his for­mer life in Ger­many. So it came as quite a sur­prise to dis­cov­er long after his death that he had lost a grand­moth­er and two aunts, as well as oth­er rel­a­tives, in the Holo­caust. This dis­cov­ery led Bon­nie to research the family’s his­to­ry to learn why. Bro­ken Promis­es tells the sto­ry of the rise of the family’s for­tunes, begin­ning in the late sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, and the fates of indi­vid­ual fam­i­ly mem­bers after the Nazis came to power.