This Has happened, by Piera Sonnino, and translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, is a deeply affecting Holocaust memoir written from the perspective of an Italian Jew, who was the only member of her Genoese family to survive. Sonnino wrote her story in 1960, ten years after she returned to Italy.

Sonnino wrote the book for her children (two daughters), and it was never meant to be published. It was an extremely personal memoir, and one in which she wanted her children to know the truth about how the Holocaust affected her and her family. It was her legacy to her daughters. Sonnino died in 1999, and after much deliberation and consideration, her children decided to try to have her compelling story published. The book is a masterpiece, in my opinion, on so many levels, including the fact that there haven’t been too many Holocaust memoirs written by Italians. Primo Levi and Alexander Stille are two names that come to mind, for me, and Sonnino’s accounting is no less brilliant or intense than theirs.

In fact, I find Sonnino’s writing to be concise, sharp and filled with incredible historical documentation and accountings of her family’s plight. Although she would not consider herself a writer, after finishing This Has Happened, I find her writing skills to be extremely defined and realized. Her word images are astounding, deeply emotional and heart-wrenching, in their conveyance of the events that occurred.  She presents the facts clearly and sharply.

Sonnino and her family hid in the hills to avoid deportation. Their hiding was to no avail, as the family was turned in to the police and they were arrested in October 1944. They were eventually deported to Auschwitz, where Piera Sonnino would become the only surviving family member. Her parents were murdered by the Nazis, along with her two sisters and three brothers. Their ashes inhabit the depths of the soil at Auschwitz.

That Sonnino survived is a testament to her strength and her will. That she was able to write about the horrific events that unfolded from the moment she and her family were deported is also a testament to her strength and will. She wrote with brilliance, wrote the facts with clarity, leaving no horrors or atrocities out, including the realities of the situations and events with simplistic, yet, amazingly strong and powerful writing. Considering she was not a writer, and did not consider herself one, but had only set out to write a memoir for her daughters, her words are searing in their intensity, cutting through the reader’s soul with burning force. This Has Happened is an incredible historical book and memoir, and Sonnino’s writing has left effects that will linger with me for a long time to come. This Has Happened now has a prominent place in my “books of importance” book case.

There is a foreward written by David Denby, and an afterward written by Mary Doria Russell.

You can learn more at Palgrove Press.

~~Jew Wishes…Peace to you all.
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