Remember Us: My Journey from the Shtetl Through the Holocaust

Before the war came, there was a world — a complete world of candlelit Shabbos tables, a grandfather's wisdom, and the particular warmth of a Jewish family rooted in a Polish shtetl. Remember Us reconstructs that vanished life before documenting its annihilation, which is what gives this memoir its unusual emotional weight. Martin Small's account moves from the tender rhythms of shtetl childhood through forced labor camps, the partisan forests of Nowogrudek, Mauthausen, displacement in Italy, and finally the 1948 Israeli War of Independence — a trajectory so improbable it would strain credulity as fiction.

What sets this book apart is its dual authorship: Vic Shayne spent years drawing out Small's memories, and the result reads less like a recorded testimony than a living voice on the page. The prose carries the cadence of an old man remembering aloud — unhurried, precise about small details, quietly devastating when it needs to be. Shayne resists the urge to editorialize; he lets the events carry their own judgment. Readers who come for history will stay for the humanity threading through every chapter.