"The Postcard" Reveals Tragic Fate of Four Holocaust Victims
French author Anne Berest's book "The Postcard" is a part detective story, part examination of French attitudes toward Judaism. The book is based on an unsigned postcard that reached the Berest family home in 2003, which listed the names of four family members who died in Auschwitz in 1942. Berest embarked on an investigation of the mysterious piece of correspondence, which led her to relive some of the grimmest hours of France’s recent history and to examine her own experience of being Jewish. The book recreates in stunning detail the lives of Berest’s lost family members and weaves them into a detective story, loosely centered on the postcard.