When his beloved wife Eve­lyn was dying, Sol Lurie (né Sza­ja Lur­je), a Holo­caust sur­vivor from Kovno, Lithua­nia, told his daugh­ter Bea about his fear that his expe­ri­ence would die with him if he did not tell it to oth­ers. Eleven years lat­er, in 2004, he decid­ed to tell his sto­ry in order to warn oth­ers about the dan­gers of hate; Sol would go on to tell his life sto­ry to thou­sands of school chil­dren. And thanks to Life Must Go On, writ­ten by Bea Lurie her­self and his­to­ri­an Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs, Sol’s account will con­tin­ue to reach read­ers of all backgrounds. 

The book weaves togeth­er the broad­er his­to­ry of the Nazis’ per­se­cu­tion of Europe’s Jews, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Jews of Lithua­nia, with Sol’s per­son­al expe­ri­ences before, dur­ing, and after the Holo­caust. Each chap­ter is divid­ed into two sec­tions: one that explains the his­tor­i­cal con­text sur­round­ing Sol’s expe­ri­ences, and one that recounts his per­son­al mem­o­ries of those events. The his­tor­i­cal por­tions pro­vide detailed por­traits of impor­tant actors and insti­tu­tions that inter­sect­ed dur­ing the Holo­caust, from con­cen­tra­tion camp guards and doc­tors to coura­geous vic­tims and resis­tance orga­ni­za­tions. The detailed accounts of the var­i­ous con­cen­tra­tion camps in which Sol was impris­oned expose the chill­ing effi­cien­cy with which the Nazis indus­tri­al­ized mass mur­der. The authors also pro­vide var­i­ous per­spec­tives, includ­ing those of schol­ars, and archival doc­u­ments to add depth and nuance to the his­tor­i­cal episodes they recount. 

In the por­tions of the book ded­i­cat­ed to Sol’s mem­o­ries, read­ers gain insight into the psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal toll on some­one who wit­nessed some of the most grotesque forms of evil imag­in­able at a young age (Sol was eleven when the Nazis invad­ed the Sovi­et Union). Through­out the Holo­caust, despite his impris­on­ment in mul­ti­ple con­cen­tra­tion camps, Sol remained coura­geous in his hopes to out­live Hitler, which he did. Though Sol’s resilience and lov­ing nature are appar­ent through­out Bea’s anec­dotes and in the var­i­ous pho­tographs of him and his fam­i­ly that appear in the mid­dle of the book, we also learn how the Holo­caust con­tin­ues to impact him. To this day, he wakes up instant­ly when he hears noise, haunt­ed by the voic­es of Nazi guards that he used to hear in the mid­dle of the night. It is clear that Sol lives with his past, striv­ing to use it to edu­cate oth­ers, while also liv­ing in the present. Even in his old age, he still enjoys spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly, lis­ten­ing to and singing Yid­dish music, and befriend­ing new peo­ple with his sense of humor and knack for storytelling. 

Though lan­guage can­not tru­ly cap­ture the depth of the suf­fer­ing inflict­ed on Holo­caust vic­tims by the Nazis, this book offers a haunt­ing approx­i­ma­tion. Writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of a Holo­caust survivor’s daugh­ter, the book also reminds us of the impor­tance of Jew­ish sur­vival through l’dor v’dor, or inter­gen­er­a­tional con­nec­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Fur­ther, this book suc­ceeds in shed­ding light on the suf­fer­ing of Holo­caust vic­tims with­out reduc­ing them to mere sym­bols of tragedy or pas­sive fig­ures stripped of their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. Read­ers will like­ly fin­ish this book hop­ing to meet Sol. Despite what he went through, Sol’s pos­i­tiv­i­ty and love for oth­ers make you feel good about human­i­ty despite the fact he wit­nessed the worst of it.