Shayndl and Salomea

the long version

At the age of fifty and faced with severe depression, Salomea Genin began to write about her family's history and her own. From stories both told and untold, Genin recreates the lives of the Zwerling family in the Jewish quarter of Lemberg (Lvov): There is her strict, deeply religious grandfather, Shulim, the patriarch; his patient but tired wife, Dvoire; and his beautiful and rebellious daughter, Shayndl, who marries the dreamer Avram Genin against her father's wishes and without his blessing, and who will later become Salomea Genin's mother. Genin details her grandparents' and parents' lives with great psychological and emotional acuity. Her richly detailed personal history presents a vivid portrait of the effects of a family's struggles - personal, religious, social, and for their very survival - against the shadow of the Nazi rise to power.