Author(s): Diane Armstrong

General

This extraordinary true story begins in the Polish city of Krakow in 1890 and spans one hundred years and four continents. It is the story of a Jewish family whose patriarch, Daniel Baldinger, divorces the wife he loves because she is barren. He believes 'a man must have sons to say Kaddish for him when he dies.' To ensure having children, he marries a girl of eighteen. By 1913, Daniel has eleven children - including six sons to say Kaddish for him. Impatient for his God-given son to begin learning the sacred language of the Torah, Daniel sent Avner to cheder at Chevre Tilem when he was three years old. Most boys were enrolled at four or five, but Daniel couldn't wait for Avner's rabbinical training to begin. Cheder was the place where childhood ended. At this religious day school, Jewish boys learned Hebrew and studied the Torah. No coloured pictures, childish stories or lively games relieved the tedium of this dour classroom where Avner had to memorise words he didn't understand, learn hundreds of rules and write strange squiggles. But although God has answered Daniel's prayers, it is with a bitter twist: each of his six sons rebels against his religion, and not one of them says Kaddish for him when he dies. This richly textured portrait follows these eleven children from the 1890s, through the terrifying years of the Holocaust (when Diane and her parents assumed non-Jewish names and passed themselves off as Catholics in the little village of Piszczac), to the present. (Preceeding text courtesy www.randomhouse.com.au) Paperback