Join Lisa Gruenberg (Nonfiction, June 2007) as she speaks virtually about her memoir, My City of Dreams, through Temple Concord in Syracuse, NY.

In this carefully researched and hauntingly written memoir, Lisa Gruenberg records not only her own life, but also that of relatives long lost to darkness, terror, and murder. In dreamlike sequences she weaves known facts of the lives of those lost into tableaus of imagined family dinners, conversations, and leisure activities set in the Vienna landscape. She embodies her aunt Mia as she walks in her shoes, sees with her eyes, and speaks with her voice. These flights into the past are presented within the framework of Gruenberg’s own family, her husband and daughters, and her father. He escaped from Vienna in 1939 and shared few of his memories with her, and those only late in life.

The trauma and feelings of guilt often described in Holocaust survivors is reflected in this memoir, also the burden shared by so many of their children and grandchildren. At the same time, this tale is one of lightness and finding balance. My City of Dreams is an important landmark in 21st century testimony of the Holocaust. Read an excerpt from the book.

—Sabine Hildebrandt, author of Anatomy of a Murder: Ethical Transgressions and Anatomical Science during the Third Reich