I recently got to review Do Not Cry When I Die for the Jewish Book Council. In this memoir, Holocaust survivor Renee Salt tells her story with the help of author Kate Thompson. Born Rywka Ruchla Berkowitz in a small Polish village in 1929, Renee, as she now prefers, was just ten when Nazis began their war against Poland and European Jews. Though she's eventually separated from the rest of her family, Salt's mother makes it her mission to keep her daughter alive throughout the strings of ghettos and camps in which they were incarcerated.
One of the things I admire most about this memoir is how much space it devotes to Salt's life after the camps were liberated. It takes on a lot of hard issues that (as I argue in my own work-in-progress) often get left out of Holocaust survival stories.
Click HERE for the full review.
The memoir will be released on 11 March, 2025 and is available for pre-order now!
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