Book Description

My Roots, My Destiny, based on a profound historical investigation and the personal recollections of the author Gabriel Groszman, describes the fate of his family in the context of the history of the Central European Jews during two centuries. The narration takes us from the Jewish Enlightenment and Emancipation through the World Wars and their shattering consequences, culminating in the loss of millions of European Jews in the Holocaust. The family history, narrated through several generations, reflects the shared destiny of Austro-Hungarian and German Jewry and their achievements in spite of discrimination and open persecution leading to exile, survival or death. The story, which unfolds without resentment, takes us with irony and humor from the age of the Hapsburg Empire through the author's own coming of age in an increasingly anti-Semitic Hungary, the Nazi terror, a brief period of democracy, communist dictatorship and, finally, life in Austria under the occupation of the victorious allies. Gabriel Groszman was born in 1930 in a small Hungarian village. When he was 10 years old, his religious Jewish family moved to Budapest under the pressure of anti-Semitic laws. There he attended an Orthodox middle school until 1944, at which time Germany occupied Hungary. During the ensuing twelve months, his family struggled to elude the Nazi death trap. In 1949, they left the country, then under communist rule, for Vienna, where he began his university studies. Three years later, they emigrated to Argentina, where Groszman married, had three children, and built up a successful industrial company. In 2003, he moved with his wife to Florida. He published his book My Roots, My Destiny in Spanish in 2009, followed by the German and English translations in August and September 2011, respectively. He is now working on his second endeavor, a family saga in the context of the history of the German Jews.