Will I love When Time Stopped?

Our experiences are quite different; Newmann grew up in Venezuela and didn’t know her father was Jewish, let alone that he’d survived the Holocaust. Yet, what drew me in was her desire to understand the pieces of her family story that were unexplained and the secrets that didn’t quite make sense.

Her quest to understand her father and his family, whom she never got to meet, kept me engaged until the end. We need to understand our past to understand ourselves.

This is an extraordinary memoir. Arianna’s father, Hans, came from a family with 34 family members living in Czechoslovakia before WWII; by 1945, 25 would have been murdered by the Nazis. He experienced unspeakable horrors, but he did not speak of them to his family. Having grown up in Venezuela, Arianna knew nothing of his past—not even, in fact, that Hans’ family was Jewish. Upon his death, Hans left her a box crammed with letters, diary entries, and memorabilia, including an identification card that had his picture but bore a different name. Investigating the various threads of his life, this… show more.

When Time Stopped is a family saga of love and self-sacrifice and also a detective thriller, both under the shadow of Nazi persecution. Ariana grew up in Caracas and except for her father’s nightmares her family was unaware of the deep wounds the war had left on the young man. After his death, a box of documents starts her on a harrowing journey into his past. It begins in Prague from where Hans’ parents were transported to Terezin. The loving correspondence with their two sons haunts me still. This beautifully written and deeply moving story is a reminder that it… show more.