Randi’s father-in-law, Hirsch, was a teenaged deportee from Poland who ended up as the third person named on Schindler’s List. His family had a treasured coin collection that they buried to keep out of Nazi hands, and which was not recovered for over sixty-five years. Part of the book is the story of the treasure hunt, which Randi and her husband, Mark, embarked upon after Mark related the story that his father had told him about the coins. Mark only knew that the coins were buried somewhere in Poland. Mark’s dad died in 1981, so it was no longer possible to ask him any details. Mark eventually, along with Randi, started what ended up being a 20-year quest to discover when and where the family managed to bury the coins. Additionally, the book is the search for answers as to what happened to Hirsch and the rest of his family all of whom disappeared during the Holocaust. Randi’s mother-in-law, Sally, was a survivor of several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, where she stood up to the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele and lived to tell the tale. She eventually ended up working as a cook in Dr. Mengele’s kitchen. The book tells a story of the very dark days of the Holocaust and their impact upon two teenagers, who, against all odds, survived, met and fell in love and somehow found the strength to emigrate and thrive in their new American life.

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A housefire in 2011. The contents of a box that survives become the catalyst for a quest whose seeds were planted in 1983 – the day Linda Ambrus Broenniman learned that her Catholic father was Jewish and what little family history she knew was a lie. Searching for truth, Linda pieces together the astonishing story of her Jewish ancestors -- the Politzer family--their remarkable lives lost to her father’s secrets. From the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1700s to modern day Hungary and America, she finds her family: doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs and industrialists, writers and musicians, artists and art collectors. She learns of their resilience in surviving religious persecution, wars, epidemics, and economic upheavals. Finding her roots brings Linda a new sense of who she is and a peace that now she can honor the memories of her family. In helping Linda find her family, András Gyekiczki wrote, “I hardly know any non-fiction sagas to better exemplify Hungarian Jewish fate of the past 300 years as this Politzer story.” Illuminating the destructive power of hatred, dehumanization, and injustice, this powerful story encompasses issues that still echo today. The Politzer Saga is the subject of an Exhibition at the Rumbach Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary.

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