Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This book provides a unique perspective of a family during the Holocaust. Most of the books I have read have been about Jewish families in hiding or firsthand accounts of time spent in concentration camps, all of which have taught me so much about the evil atrocities committed by the Nazis, things we are never taught in school and that I could never have imagined, but this book tells the story from a different perspective.

In the Footsteps of the Holocaust introduces the reader to Hermann and Henny Hartog and their daughters, a typical German Jewish family that sees under the present regime, Germany is becoming an unsafe place to live. From making the heartbreaking choice to send their daughters away to England for safety, to their journey through Belgium and France trying to secure their own protection, this book tells of the lengths an ordinary family would go to when faced with persecution.

Through a collection of discovered letters as well as intensive research, the author has pieced together the true story of her husband's grandparents. It is a story of strength, resilience, family and community. The reader learns about the daily challenges Jewish families faced in Europe and the restrictions placed on the population from curfews to what kinds of food they can and cannot buy as well as preventing the purchase of shoes, clothes or even the materials to make them. It depicts the living conditions and physical and mental struggles people endured and the importance of relationships and community.

This book is both informational and personal and in turn both educational and personal. The reader witnesses both good and evil, happiness and heartbreak. It is an emotional account of what the ordinary Jewish family experienced during such an unordinary and horrific time.

As time passes and we lose more and more members of that generation, it is so important that we remember the atrocious events that took place during WWII and the Holocaust. We must never forget. One of the most impactful excerpts for me was:

"Ordinary people are the ones who make brave decisions to rescue, to hide, or to stand up. But ordinary people also make decisions to ignore what is going on around them, to be bystanders, to allow the genocide to continue. How can ordinary people, such as ourselves, play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today?"

I would like to thank Pen and Sword publishing for the ARC copy of this book for review. It gave me such a unique insight and I am so grateful for the opportunity to read and review this book.

NetGalley, Rebecca Coveney