The Reasons Why you wrote your book or books discussion

Since I decided to write a novel about young Jewish lovers during the Shoah ("Jacob's Courage: A Holocaust Love Story" (2007, Mazo Publishers), I have become keenly aware that many people lack any substantial knowledge about the Shoah. Literally millions of people, especially young people,either don't know about the Holocaust, or believe that it never happened. So, I wrote about it in a novel with coming-of-age lovers as protagonists. One newspaper editor called Jacob's Courage, "The Forrest Gump of the Holocaust, because young Jewish lovers walk through real historical events.”

My 524-page novel has become a teaching instrument. One day, one of our housekeepers mentioned that "Jacob's Courage" was required reading at her high school. It is also in libraries here and around the world. Reviews include Jewish Book World and The Association of Jewish Libraries.

While I enjoy the novel’s current royalty checks and popularity (including advancing my author platform significantly), I much more value that the book has become required reading for young people and that it will, hopefully, enhance the empathy that readers have about contemporary genocide. Perhaps one day it will be turned into a major film. Two movie companies have already expressed an interest in the novel.

The more books which accurately portray life in the Holocaust, the more readers will comprehend the continual fear, brutality, degradation and murder that Jews (and others) endured on a daily basis in Nazi concentration camps. Imagine life in a Nazi concentration camp, subjected to daily enforced slave labor in horrid weather conditions, starved, made sick from unhygienic conditions, forced to live in ghastly conditions and to endure the constant terrifying cruelty imposed by Kapos and the SS. Imagine knowing that you and all those who you love and respect are either dead, will soon be murdered, or live in these same deplorable conditions, required to do the Nazis’ dirty work. Imagine living in fear each day because you know that your number will eventually require deportation to a Nazi death camp. This was daily life for the victims of Nazi oppression and murder.

Since the Holocaust, we've seen additional genocide in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Only when the world learns to value differences among us rather than fear them, will humanity achieve its maximum potential. Meanwhile, accurately portrayed books, plays and films about the Holocaust can only help the world know how minorities have been treated in the past. It vividly explains what governments should never do to their citizens. It thus has become a beacon of shining light for freedom, equality, humanity and love for one another. If "Jacob’s Courage: A Holocaust Love Story" is successful at all, it must be to the extent that it helps people today comprehend the abject misery of minorities during the 20th Century and the powerful ends that result from bigotry, prejudice and anti-Semitism.