This remarkable work is the outcome of a loving and determined effort by Leah Sherry to learn and record her father's story of amazing courage strength and resilience in the face of unspeakable cruelty. She also recounts her mother's own terrible wartime experiences, in a supposedly civilized Europe.

On a more heartwarming note, Leah describes the rewarding life her parents, Maier and Otilia, went on to make in Israel. This is set against an account of the endless struggles of the new Jewish state, including the wars in which Maier fought.

But this book is much more than that. Leah has also labored to comprehend the undying evil that so blighted her parents' young lives - antisemitism.

After a successful career as an engineer and a lawyer, Leah has thrown herself with characteristic energy into learning new subjects, such as history and genetics, to understand all she could of the ancient prejudice against Jews and of the pseudoscience used in modern times to try to justify it, and to learn about the technological means to persecute Jews in the name of science. With impressive thoroughness, Leah has broadened her account to describe the many, many places and times, to this day, where humanity has given way to intolerance and bigotry.

She completes her story with a heart-felt plea for us all to learn history's terrible lessons. .