I recently heard the question asked: Do we need more literature about the Holocaust? A new book, Inheritance: Love, Loss, and the Legacy of the Holocaust by Charlie Scheidt with Kat Rohrer, makes it clear why the subject is still (and will always be) a necessary and vital part of history. In a few years, the last direct witnesses of the Shoah will be gone, but we still have access to the voices of survivors. As James Waller writes in the foreword to Inheritance, “First-person accounts are textual spaces that not only humanize the darker sides of our collective history but also offer the opportunity to put a face to the people who were ostracized and persecuted and killed because of their group identity.” It is this need for humanization of our darkest collective past and present that makes this book both timely and relevant.
The author of Inheritance, Charlie Scheidt, is the son of Jewish parents who fled from Europe to the United States in 1939. As in many families like his, the experiences of his parents and extended family were rarely discussed as Scheidt was growing up. Scheidt did not begin to inquire into their past until after his mother left him a trove of letters and other documents that testified to his relatives’ experiences in Europe under the Nazis, and later as immigrants and refugees.
Social trauma is passed on through generations, leaving its inheritors to cope with the aftermath — the fears, secrets, and wounds of their progenitors. Inheritance isn’t just a story of traumatic times under the Nazis; it is also the story of the refugee and immigrant experience, of countries that turned away those fleeing the Nazis while using quotas to justify their inhumanity, and of families who made it to a new country who were faced with all they left behind — relatives, friends, possessions, businesses, and all that the term “home” entails. It is a book about loss and the challenges of rebuilding. How timely these stories feel in 2026.
Perhaps the most fascinating detail of Inheritance is the wealth of documents Scheidt’s mother gives him, some of which are reproduced in the book. Particularly notable were the excerpts of letters between Scheidt’s father, Bruno, in the United States, and Bruno’s brother Max, who was still in France. Their sibling relationship is evident through these letters: they squabble, they write of vacations and of more serious matters, such as visas and transportation to safe havens. The book is fascinating in all these small details and in how the author relates to his family stories as he researches his history and travels to places his family lived.
Inheritance is a book of witnessing and learning. As Scheidt says of his research: “It is the asking of the questions, the process of facing the past and reconstructing as much of it as possible, that matters most.” Scheidt has produced a moving reconstruction of his family history and his book is a worthy addition to the literature of the Holocaust and of the generations who are still dealing with its aftermath.
