Padělatelé pepře - Rodinný příběh – Sznajdermanová Monika (2022)

A family story. So simply and innocently sounds the subtitle of the book in which Monika Sznajdermanová narrates the fates of her loved ones. In reality, she speaks of two families, Jewish and Polish, her father's and mother's family, and it is by no means a simple or innocent story. There are two narratives flowing concurrently, never meeting or intersecting. And we might get the impression that there is nothing connecting them, if we overlook the fact that the people in question shared the same sky and breathed the same air. Monika Sznajdermanová presents two different, self-contained worlds that know little about each other and would like even less to have anything to do with one another. On one side is the Jewish Radom, the family town of the Grunbergs, Blatas, Flamenbaums, Sznajdermans, and Hubermans, whose blood runs in Monika's veins, 'ordinary people without history,' as she herself describes them. Then there is the Jewish Warsaw, where her grandfather moves. The fact that Izaak Sznajderman, whom they called Icyk at home, leaves his native Radom to study medicine in Warsaw signifies a clear break from his family and traditional Jewish environment. From this moment on, the doctor Sznajderman will be known as Ignacy. On the other side is the Polish part of the family (mother's...