The Berlin Shadow

Hans Lichtenstein left occupied Berlin as a child on the Kindertransport in 1939, and almost none of his family survived what followed. His son Jonathan writes this memoir in three time frames, moving between that escape, a post-war childhood in rural Wales where the conflict was never discussed, and a journey the two men make together back to Berlin as Hans reaches old age. The book is as much about what silence does to a family as about the original loss, tracing how a father's relentless drive and unexplained habits shaped children who had not been told why. It was published to coincide with an eightieth anniversary. Before it reaches the shelf: • Memoir structured across three periods rather than a single narrative line • Firsthand family account of the Kindertransport and its aftermath • Examines inherited trauma running across two generations • Centres on a return journey made by father and son together For readers of Holocaust history, family memoir and twentieth-century European writing. Available through Boipoka.