The Pessimist's Son: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope - Paperback

by Alexander Kimel (Author), Martin Kimel (Author)

A personal depiction of life in Poland set against the Nazi and Soviet takeovers of Europe and their cataclysmic aftermaths. It is the compelling memoir of Alexander Kimel, taking him from a shtetl in the Polish Ukraine to a Nazi ghetto to liberation. It is also the harrowing story of his wife, Eva, whose father is murdered in the "Holocaust by Bullets." A dialog across generations with narrative written by their son, the book is a rare portrayal of Jewish survivors who remained in Communist Poland after the war. It is a story of the many challenges they faced and the life they built together after quitting Poland in 1956 for Israel, ultimately emigrating to America. By including the stories of other family members, the book also provides a panoramic view of Polish Jewry before, during, and after the war.

Author Biography

Alexander Kimel was born in Podhajce, Poland (now Pidhaitsi, Ukraine) in 1926. After the war, he earned a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering at the Wroclaw Polytechnic University in Poland. In the U.S., he started and ran his own consulting engineering firm. Poems from his award-winning website on the Holocaust have been used in schools, universities and exhibits, widely reprinted, and recited on YouTube. He also contributed a chapter to the anthology, Life in the Ghettos during the Holocaust. He died in 2018.

Martin Kimel, the son of Alexander and Eva Kimel, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford Law School. He is a securities lawyer in Washington, D.C. and lives in Maryland. He has written on the Holocaust and other topics for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Wall Street Journal, Times of Israel, Forward, Chicago Tribune and many other publications.