Living Memory

In his seventy-ninth year, Andor Schwartz was driven to record the lives of his family and friends who perished. Writing with the instincts of a born storyteller, Andor takes us back to the world of his childhood in rural Hungary in the years leading up to World War II. His love of nature and country life, his friendships, the harvests, the Jewish festivals, the age-old customs – now lost – are evoked with intense vitality, before dark clouds gathered to obliterate this Arcadian childhood. We live with him through the horrors of the Holocaust, on the run in Budapest, evading death time and time again under the protection of his Malach (angel), whose name had been given to him by his father on their separation. Andor survived, but his entire family was killed. He takes us to Israel and then to Australia, where he prospered, his children had children, and the cycle of life returned to its natural order.