Jewish, Europe, Military, World, History 

IT WAS 1943 and the war in Europe
had all but bypassed Hungary. The
effects of the war were felt, to be sure:
all able-bodied males over 18 years of
age had been drafted into Munkatabors slave-labor camps; food and
fuel supplies were short; and for the
first time in their sheltered, cloistered
lives, Jewish women went out to earn a
livelihood for their families. But for the
most pan, life went on in Budapest as it
always had and the loyal Jewish citizens remained blissfully - determinedly -- ignorant of the holocaust
that raged on all sides.

Rivka Leah was little more than a
child when she married Jacob Klein
that spring, and her childlike innocence is agonizingly apparent. From
the remote city of Szombathely she is
transported to the capital where the
newlyweds settle into their own apart-
ment and are befriended by Danny
and Vera Brenner, theirjewish next-
door neighbors. Despite the food
rationing and black marketeering and
the need for Jacob to remain hidden
from the authorities, since he has
evaded the draft, Rivka Leah transforms their home into a miniature Gan Eden. All winter long, she busies her-
self with learning to be a proper balabusta. Her joy at the prospect of
motherhood knows no bounds - until
the war at last reaches her doorstep.

It soon becomes clear that the
flower of Hungarian jewry is destined
to be trampled beneath the ruthless
Nazi boot And like the tiny harbingers
of winter's end that peek enticingly
through patches of snow, the spring
for which Rivka Leah had yearned will
be singularly lacking in fragrance.

The author has written a stirring
World War II memoir that electrifies
the reader with its powerful prose and
engrossing narrative. The Srentof Snow-
flowers is a superb tribute to the Klein's'
unflagging faith and fortitude under
the most trying circumstances, and to
the valor of Karoly Bitter, the "Righteous Gentile" who was their savior. - from Amzon