Three Lives. A Memoir
Max Mannheimer spent an untroubled youth in the Sudetenland. Yet his old life came to an end when the German Wehrmacht invaded in 1938. Restrictions and petty mistreatment increased and the Jewish family had to leave their home. In 1943 Mannheimer’s parents, three siblings and his young wife were murdered in Auschwitz, only one brother and he surviving their deportation. Max Mannheimer’s third life began after his liberation: He founded a new family and suppressed his terrible memories for many years – until after his second wife’s death, when he decided to put his recollections down in writing.
A witness to the Holocaust, Max Mannheimer has gained many honours and awards for his struggle against forgetting.
‘”I come not as an accuser, but as a witness of the times,” he says. That makes it easier for people. And hardly anyone can resist his charm and humour anyway.’ Helmut Zeller in Süddeutsche Zeitung