Book Review:When Time Stopped

When Time Stopped

A Memoir of My Father’s War and What Remains

by Ariana Neumann

Scribner

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 04 Feb 2020

I am reviewing a copy of When Time Stopped through Scribner and Netgalley:

In 1941, the first member of the Neumann family arrested in the German Occupied Czechoslovakia. was taken prisoner by the Nazis, his crime was bathing in a part of the river that the Jews were not allowed to use. He was transported to Auschwitz and eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the Morgue book.

Twenty five of the thirty four members were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who in order to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight right under the eyes of the Gestapo. Hans experienced things so unspeakable that even when he built his industrial empire in Venezuela he was unable to bring himself to talk about what he had witnessed. The only thing his daughter Ariana knew was something horrible had happened.

After Hans died he left his daughter Ariana left a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. It took ten years before Ariana found the courage to have the letters translated and she began reading…