The Postcard by Anne Berest

 Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024--San Antonio

The Postcard by Anne Berest is an autobiographical novel that was named a best book of the year by TIME, NPR, The New Yorker, and other book review publications.  It consists of multiple stories of generations of her family that come to light during the search by her and her mother to discover who was the anonymous writer of a postcard sent to them in the early 2000s--a postcard that had only the written names on it of the 4 core family members of theirs who died in the Holocaust.  But the search reveals so much more.  The two women are descendants of the only surviving member of that original family, a woman who never talked about her life before the war or what happened during the war.  What they learned during their search is the history of the family before the war--living in Russia, Romania, Poland and Palestine--always building a life and then moving as discrimination against Jews started to rise.  Because Palestine didn't provide the opportunity for a financially successful life that the other places did, the family finally moved to France and had been there long enough to feel that they were French citizens first and Jews second (because they had never been religiously active Jews).  They, therefore, thought that the threats from the rise of Hitler would not affect them.  They passed on opportunities to escape elsewhere until it was too late.  The story of the family up to its move to France is the first half of the book.  The second half is the story of their success in France, the coming of the Nazis, what happened to each of the family members during the war (especially the life of the daughter who survived without being captured and deported), and the life of that survivor after the war--all tied together by the story of the search for the anonymous writer of the postcard that caused them to start searching in the first place.  What I found fascinating was that the story covers so much more than most stories about the Holocaust do.  It includes the the things we know about Jewish repression over the centuries including Jews repeatedly being used as scapegoats when governments have economic problems;  actions taken toward the Jewish people by governments and non-Jewish citizens and neighbors; the various ways that the Germans affected the lives of Jewish people during the war; the various ways that resistance arose and was carried out against the Germans; etc.  It is somewhat a total package of the repression of Jewish people and the effects it has had on their lives over the centuries built around 4 generations of one family.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.