The war was over long ago, but the Holo­caust still lived in his fam­i­ly. It was the sub­text of his life, the trau­ma that held him cap­tive. His Yid­dish poet father’s cri-de-coeur about his birth haunt­ed him from ear­ly on. He was named Men­achem, con­so­la­tion… Above the peaks low clouds unfurl Sober, gray they spread Like faces from my far-off land Their call rings out unsaid: Bring forth new life, they clam­or — To replace six mil­lion dead How could he move on? Yet he knew he had to. The expe­ri­ence of the Jews who fled Hitler’s hell into Stalin’s pur­ga­to­ry dur­ing WWII is only now begin­ning to be stud­ied by his­to­ri­ans. The hier­ar­chy of suf­fer­ing and its seque­lae as lived by the author’s fam­i­ly are the sub­ject of this work. As a youth, the author comes to terms with issues of iden­ti­ty and faith from his begin­nings in Kaza­khstan, to the dev­as­ta­tion in Poland, to his ques­tion­ing of the teach­ings of his New York yeshiva,