Yield­ing to a need to com­mu­ni­cate to his fam­i­ly some under­stand­ing of what the Euro­pean Jews of World War II expe­ri­enced, Tra­cy trav­els back in his amaz­ing­ly reten­tive mem­o­ry to com­mu­ni­cate in detail his family’s expe­ri­ence in the Shoah and to ulti­mate­ly reflect on what it means for the present and future gen­er­a­tions of Jews. The world is already rewrit­ing his­to­ry, he reflects, nor can his chil­dren and grand­chil­dren com­pre­hend an every­day strug­gle for sur­vival, but he will make them remem­ber. And does he! This is an extreme­ly detailed, graph­ic, and well-writ­ten book. He leads the read­er from the com­pla­cen­cy and com­fort of their quite large shtetl, Skala, deep in East­ern Gali­cia to the ulti­mate night­mare that was the Shoah. Like his present- day fam­i­ly, his Skala fam­i­ly was com­pla­cent, going about their dai­ly lives despite the suf­fer­ing of Ger­man Jews under the Third Reich which although known, after brief moments of empa­thy, was most­ly ignored. Lit­tle did they envi­sion the hor­ror that would soon engulf them, suf­fer­ing at the hands of the Ukrain­ian Nazis as well as the Ger­mans. He vivid­ly describes the role of the Juden­rat (most­ly neg­a­tive­ly), limns the expe­ri­ences he and oth­ers under­went with vivid anec­dotes, and recounts the see-saw bat­tle that ensued when they thought they were saved when the Rus­sians invad­ed, only to be dri­ven out by the Ger­mans. When at last the Rus­sians returned to lib­er­ate the few remain­ing Jews, they were incor­po­rat­ed into a brigade and giv­en carte blanche to kill as many Ger­mans as they want­ed. One of the most inter­est­ing parts of the sto­ry is the fact that he and the oth­er sur­vivors could not bring them­selves to kill a Ger­man or Ukrain­ian and the author missed a chance at revenge when he could have had it. When he and his Jew­ish friends asked their Russ­ian brigade leader for per­mis­sion to pray on a Jew­ish hol­i­day, he mocked them, but lat­er offered to adopt the then teenage author and take him home to Rus­sia to live with him and his fam­i­ly. This is a poignant book, a dra­mat­ic book and one that rips your heart out.