A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was having tea with a good friend when she said she had some questions about my new book, Ashes and Ruins. Always eager to talk about my work, I assured her that she could ask me anything.

“How much of the book is true?” she said. Having been asked this question before, I had a ready answer.

“Ashes and Ruins is based on the true story of my grandmother and aunt,” I explained. “But as both have passed away, I had only a few hours of recorded interviews, a handful of letters, and my memories of my grandmother’s stories to guide me. Much of the detail and scene creation came from my imagination after doing extensive research about the locations and time frame.”

My friend shook her head. I could see this really wasn’t what was bothering her. “Clara was your grandmother, right? She didn’t suffer enough.” Her words left me momentarily speechless. Shouldn’t we be glad she didn’t suffer more? And what is suffering anyway? How can we, in hindsight, quantify this experience?

Trying to explain her feelings, my friend continued. “I’ve read a lot,” she said. “I know about the roundups, the packed trains, the concentration camps. I’ve read about the arrests and prisons. None of that happened to Clara or her daughter Edith.”

A Jewish lady in her late 80s, my friend has a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with Holocaust literature, all of which she has read—biographies, non-fiction, and novels. I took her comment seriously. One of the reasons I wrote Ashes and Ruins was to show the slow, pre-World War II progression of anti-Jewish laws as they affected German Jews during the early Nazi years.

The problem is that the vast majority of books about the Holocaust take place in Eastern Europe, in those countries overrun by Nazi troops. Books set in pre-war Germany are few and far between. The first half of my book occurs in Germany before the war began, the years 1933 to 1939, a time a few hesitant historians do not even consider part of the Holocaust.

In the years between Hitler’s rise to power and Kristallnacht, Jewish persecution in Germany rose dramatically, but mass deportations and the policy of the Final Solution were still in the future. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, even in The Netherlands and Denmark—indeed, anywhere the Nazi army invaded after September of 1939—the story was completely different. S.S. Death’s Head battalions followed closely behind the invading military units. They herded Jews together, imprisoned them in ghettos and concentration camps, and often murdered whole villages. Eastern Europe was an opportunity for the Nazis to test what they could get away with. It was a time to try things that hadn’t been dared in Germany.

I explained all this to my friend, but her initial reaction stuck with me. Most likely, other readers of my book would share her feelings. I’m currently working on a series of articles to explain the gradual nature of Nazi persecution in Germany during the six years between 1933 and 1939.

For now, I offer you another true story from Clara’s family—another story that speaks to the attitude of German Jews in the first years of the Third Reich. My second cousin who lives in Israel wrote this and recently posted it on Facebook. Here, translated from Hebrew, is the story of his family and of Lulu, Clara’s youngest sister.

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My grandfather Friz was a German doctor, and my grandmother Lulu was the daughter of a famous banker family from the city of Nuremberg, where generations of the family lived. My great-great-grandfather Josef Kohn was the first Jew to receive permanent citizenship of the city.

Like all Jews, they were loyal citizens of their country, Germany. Grandfather served in the German army in World War I.

How does the denial mechanism of humans work? Even when all the warning lights are on and the reality around you changes and what was true yesterday is no longer true today—there is faith that it will be okay. That things are not as they look, sound, and appear over time . . .

My grandparents Fritz and Julia [Lulu] didn’t want to leave Germany. They were good and patriotic Germans.

Even after the children were expelled from school, even after Grandfather wasn’t allowed to practice medicine, even after Kristallnacht—they did not want to leave. They thought things would be managed.

My father, Chaim, used to say in amazement, “In 1938, after Kristallnacht, two years after I arrived in Eretz Israel, . . . they [Chaim’s parents, Fritz and Lulu] still tried to convince me to return to Germany. They sent me a travel ticket. We met in Prague. . . .”

My grandparents, Fritz and Lulu Lowenthal, managed to escape at the last minute, only after sending Lisa, the little sister, on a Kindertransport to England in 1939.

As I composed this post, I contacted Assa by email to ask what more he could share about Lisa. He wrote back saying that his aunt Lisa had been sent to England when she was 16, but he wasn’t sure where or with whom she lived while in the UK. After the war, Lisa immigrated to the US.

Assa also added the following insight regarding his concept of “human denial,” the idea that inspired him to write about his parents.

I see human denial not only as a historical phenomenon but also as something that happens in real time. Even today, including here in Israel, there are processes unfolding around us, and many people respond with a kind of instinctive belief that “things will be fine,” even when warning signs are visible. That tension between reality and what we allow ourselves to acknowledge is, to me, at the core of the idea. (Assa Geyari, written 04/20/2026)

First published on kathrynslattery.substack.com on 05/23/2026