Czech writer Ivan Klima masterfully recounts, first, what it was like for him as a Jewish child confronting with his family the inhumanities of the Theresienstadt concentration camp situated at the edge of their hometown, Prague. Then, more fully, he painstakingly recalls what it was like for him and his countrymen after the Nazi thugs were driven out by the Soviet Army and replaced for four decades by the Communist thugs.

Collects life lessons by a Holocaust survivor and concert pianist, sharing the wisdom she has gleaned and insights into her resolve to thrive in spite of loss and her choice to harbor no bitterness toward her oppressors.

"Gidon Lev is eighty-eight years old. He's been a dance teacher and a farmer. He loves soccer, his kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, his beloved wife of forty years, Susan, who died at age sixty-nine, and his unexpected late-in-life partner, Julie, who he met when he was eighty-one. He's a self-identified rascal and optimist. Gidon Lev is also a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned for nearly four years in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt....