Non­fic­tion

Zol Zayn Shulem II: Faroys!: Fam­i­ly His­to­ry in the Shad­ow of the Holo­caust. An Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jew­ish Identity.

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2025

Faroys!, part II of the Zol Zayn Shulem series, begins with the birth of the author in the late 1960s in post­war Ger­many, where he grows up in a world between Jew­ish sur­vivors and Ger­man per­pe­tra­tors and their chil­dren. The 1972 ter­ror­ism attack against the Israeli Olympic team plays an acci­den­tal cen­tral theme in his life. At 15, the author leaves his home­town Munich to fol­low promis­es of the Israeli Youth Agency con­cern­ing an Israeli board­ing school. It turns out to be a dif­fi­cult time, but he leaves with a high-school diplo­ma three years lat­er. When a Ger­man Bavar­i­an offi­cial puts stum­bling blocks in his way to access uni­ver­si­ty, Zyl­ber­sz­ta­jn- Lewandows­ki leaves Ger­many for good to study in Lon­don. Both his Kreo Sier­ra Leonean wife and he him­self became vic­tims of numer­ous racist and anti­se­mit­ic attacks, includ­ing in Octo­ber 2022 in front of the author’s then Lon­don syn­a­gogue on the day of his daughter’s Bat Mitz­vah. Faroys! open­ly dis­cuss­es the trau­ma and after-effects of the Shoah, but keeps hopes up for a bet­ter future in spite of setbacks.

Discussion Questions