Lost Bread

Bruck''s "spare prose captures the raw terror and bitter sorrow of the camps. She also finds lyrical beauty and unexpected joy in moments of calm. Reading her work is like breaking bread with her, seeking light amid the shadows cast by history."
—Wall Street Journal

Drawing on the remarkable events of her own life, renowned author and Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck tells the story of Ditke, a young Jewish girl living in Hungary during World War II. 

In 1944, twelve-year-old Ditke, her parents, and her siblings areforced out of their home by the Nazis and sent to a series of concentration camps, includingAuschwitz and Dachau. Miraculously surviving the war with one of her sisters,but losing her parents and a brother, Ditke begins a tortuous journey—firstback to Hungary, where she knows she doesn’t belong, and then to Israel. There,she holds various jobs before she leaves with a dance troupe, touring Turkey,Switzerland, and Italy. In Italy she finds a home, at last, and a small measureof peace; there, too, she falls in love and marries.

Writingas herself, Edith Bruck closes Lost Bread by addressing a letter to God expressing her rejection of hatred, her love for life, and her hopenever to lose her memory or ability to continue speaking for those who perishedin the Nazi concentration camps. After the book’s publication in Italy, PopeFrancis visited Bruck and thanked her for bearing witness to the atrocities ofthe Holocaust.