Return to Erfurt

"The power of this book derives from the immeasurable tragedy of the Shoah, viewed through the plight of the Spiers, a German Jewish family from Erfurt, Germany, flung into the heart of the violent anti-Semitic persecution." Serge Klarsfeld, from the preface. The book is a tour de force, written in the first person by Tarcali, who brilliantly relates the story from the point of view of Marianne Spier-Donati, who was 5 years old when the story begins.

The narrative follows the family's flight from Germany to Brussels, through the grim French camps in Gurs and Saint-Cyprien, to the Cote D'Azur. After the capture of their parents, Marianne and her brother were taken under the protection of the Italian Jewish banker and philanthropist Angelo Donati. The Spier children lived in Nice with Donati - a key figure in the underground Jewish rescue efforts in Southern France - until September 1943, when he brought them into hiding in Italy. The Spier parents perished in the deportation - and after the war Angelo Donati adopted the children and gave them his name.

The point of departure for the book is the crucial moment in 1999 when Marianne Spier-Donati, who had been living in Paris, is contemplating a return to Erfurt, at the invitation of the city's mayor. The conflicting emotions and clash between the ambiguities of the adult survivor and the unhealed pain of the child who has lost her beloved parents, are given a clear voice in this searing book. [Publisher's text]