The Aftermath
A Survivor’s Odyssey Through War-Torn Europe
By Éric ThéoretAn important contribution to the literature of Holocaust testimony. Read it and you will be moved.
— Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Ra-tatata-ta. Ra-tatata-ta. The growl of machine guns. From time to time the distant roar of cannons. I am lying on the third tier of a bed of boards. I am cold. I have covered my head with a blanket. I think of food and then, with indifference, I realize that this is perhaps the last day of my slavery, or of my life.
So begins Henry Lilienheim’s remarkable story, on the eve of his liberation from Dachau. Written in 1947, The Aftermath provides an indelible first-hand portrait of the post-war world, where all Germans miraculously claim never to have supported Hitler, where Munich is the vortex of the greatest migration in history, and where former camp inmates become Displaced Persons. Through it all, Lilienheim battles to maintain hope that his wife, against all odds, is still alive.
Written in spare and often lyrical prose, The Aftermath is a powerful and eloquent love story with lessons for us all. It is destined to become a classic.
Henry Lilienheim was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1908. Hi parents owned a shop on the main street in Warsaw, where they made and sold silk flowers. His father was also a writer, but none of his writing survived the war. Henry Lilienheim was educated as an engineer in France before returning to Warsaw. At the beginning of the war, he an his bride Lydia fled to Vilna, Lithuania, thereby escaping the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, which claimed the lives of their parents and most of their family. Captured by the Nazis, he spent the remainder of the war in concentration camps. In 1949, he immigrated to the United States where he spent his professional life working as a successful international attorney. An essayist and poet, he speaks and writes in nine languages. He and Lydia had a son, Michael, a daughter, Irene, married to Abbey Neidik, and a grandson, Toben.