Book Review: Those Who Forget

Those Who Forget

My Family’s Story in Nazi Europe — A Memoir, A History, A Warning

by Geraldine Schwarz

Scribner

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 22 Sep 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Those Who Forget through Scribner and Netgalley:

Géraldine Schwartz grandparents were neither heroes or villains during World War 2. They were simply Mitlaüfer those who followed the current. After the war ended they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage the third reich left behind.

The first mass deportation of the Jews took place in the region Geraldine’s grandparents lived in October 1940. When more than 6500 Jews from the southwest of the country were deported to the Gurs camp in the south of France.

After the war Geraldine’s Fathers family never talked about politics and in general discussions at the dinner table were rare.

Geraldine’s Grandparents has thought their past was buried under the wreckage of the third reich until it reared it’s ugly head one morning in January of 1946. Karl Schwarz found an envelope in the mailbox with a return address that immediately implied bad tidings — Dr. Rebstein-Metzger, Lawyer, Mannheim.