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Shared Sorrows: A Gypsy Family Remembers the Holocaust

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Shared Sorrows weaves the history of the Nazi persecution of Gypsies into a families' personal narratives, recounted in a manner as gripping as any novel. Rosa Mettbach, the main character, tells a story of nearly-unspeakable injustice and personal courage. She escapes from the Nazis four times, each time punished more harshly yet surviving several concentration camps. Sonneman evokes shockingly rich memories of the sounds of the camps, the smells of burning flesh, the ash constantly in the air, of awakening each morning with lice swarming about one's head.

What makes this book more than a horror story is its humanism. Rosa the heroine is also a chain-smoking grandmother who indulges in her own prejudices. The author decribes in mouth-watering detail the pastries she and Rosa eat while awaiting the right time for an interview. Sonneman examines the complexity of her own reaction upon visiting places her Jewish family was forced to leave and meeting Germans who stayed. The people living in the town of Dachau must have heard and smelled something of what was going on in the concentration camp at the edge of town. Were they complicit or just paralyzed with fear? One is left pondering not just a remarkable oral history, but human nature itself.

Shared Sorrows is a breath-taking, exquisite book. Sonneman's quest begins as a personal one, revealing her courage in asking what happened to the Gypsies in the Holocaust, as she had earlier understood her own Jewish family's fate. I was awed by her conscience and courage in listening and recording the heart-rending replies. The truthful, brutal answers left tear stains on more than one page as I read. But Sonneman's reporter's voice and writer's heart were precisely what allowed me to face all that she heard. She brings her readers into a universe of unspeakable memories because we must all remember. And she shows us that we must honor these memories because the universe is still capable of love and luck and -- always -- conscience. It is a powerful and important book no reader will soon forget.