Under Review

Reviews by Robert Blaisdell

How My Grandfather Stole a Shoe and Survived the Holocaust in Ukraine is an exquisite memoir – and a model of how to write one. That is, be modest; collect any story you can get about or by the subject; if the tales have discrepancies, question them; provide the context of the recollections’ retellings; do some research, but don’t let that material block your readers’ sight of the memoir’s star. Julie Masis, a Russian-born, Boston-based journalist, writes:

… I tried to learn more by searching in the archives and traveling to the places where my ancestors lived in Ukraine and Moldova. But mostly I ended up recording the stories I heard from my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles. I wrote them down because I wanted to save other people’s memories.