Staff Picks - LibGuides at Boulder Public Library

Menachem Kaiser was named after his Holocaust-surviving grandfather but otherwise does not know much about the pre-war history of his family. Attempting to right historical wrongs, he takes off to Poland on a mission to reclaim an apartment building that his grandfather once owned. On this journey, he encounters a reactionary legal system, suspicious residents, eccentric lawyers, and numerous treasure hunters completely obsessed with the memoir of Kaiser's distant relative. What begins as a "simple" story of reclaiming stolen family property soon morphs into a larger reflection on legacy, memory, and Poland's own complicated history with antisemitism.

Publisher description:

Menachem Kaiser’s story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as “The Killer.” A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? This is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance—material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

Find Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure in our online catalog.

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