A Brilliant Life: My Mother’s Inspiring True Story of Surviving the Holocaust

Australian journalist Unreich recounts the life story of her mother Mira Unreich (1927–2017) in this searing debut history. Mira’s childhood in Czechoslovakia was happy, but around the time Germany annexed the Sudetenland in 1938, she began to experience antisemitism from her neighbors. In 1941, the occupying Germans forced Jews to wear identifying items on their clothing. By 1942, most of the Jewish families in their small town had been deported. Mira’s father, Dolfie Blumenstock, risked his life to get forged identity papers to hundreds of Jews and gave shelter to members of the resistance. When the Nazis came to arrest him, Blumenstock was shot while trying to escape, and Mira and her mother Genya ended up in the Plaszow death camp, where Genya soon perished. Mira managed to survive Plasvow, as well as Auschwitz. After the war, she eventually settled in Australia, where, Unreich emphasizes, she built meaningful and loving relationships. Some portions of the narrative hit a false note, as when Unreich declares that the “concept of good luck seems woven into the fabric of the Jewish people.” Still, Unreich does her mother’s experiences justice, making clear that the Nazi genocide could not crush Mira’s desire and wherewithal to lead a happy life. The result is an uplifiting, if at times overly rosy, account.(Nov.)