No Jews Live Here
About this book
WINNER OF THE 2025 CANADIAN JEWISH LITERARY AWARD FOR MEMOIR
NOMINEE FOR THE HERITAGE TORONTO 2025 BOOK AWARD
A stolen sign, ‘No Jews Live Here,’ kept John Lorinc’s Hungarian Jewish family alive during the Holocaust.
From pre-war Budapest to post-war Toronto, journalist John Lorinc unspools four generations of his Hungarian Jewish family's journey through the Holocaust, the 1956 Revolution, and finally exodus from a country that can't rid itself of its antisemitic demons.
This braided saga centers on the writer's eccentric and defiant grandmother, a consummate survivor who, with her love of flashy jewellery and her vicious tongue, was best appreciated from afar. Lorinc also traces the stories of both his grandfathers and his father, all of whom fell victim, in different ways, to the Nazis’ genocidal campaign to rid Europe of Jews.
This is a deeply reported but profoundly human telling of a vile part of history, told through Lorinc’s distinctively astute and compassionate consideration of how cities and cultures work. Set against the complicated and poorly understood background of Hungary's Jewish community, No Jews Live Here is about family stories, and how the narratives of our lives are shaped by our times and historical forces over which we have no control.
"John Lorinc weaves Hungarian history with the equally fascinating history of his own family to tell a deeply researched story with universal resonance: how events, enormous and seemingly tiny (a genocidal war, foggy skies), conspire to create outcomes with life-and-death implications through generations." – Marsha Lederman, author of Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction: The Pocket Watch
- 2 Ilona And The Earthquake
- 3 Judapest
- 4 Joska And Klara
- 5 The Quota System
- 6 The Nazi Construction Machine
- 7 The Copper Mine
- 8 A Warm Spring Day In March 1944
- 9 No Jews Live Here
- 10 The Aftermath
- 11 The Farm And The Feud
- 12 Nose Jobs And Name Changes
- 13 Fif Ty-Sixers
- 14 Montreal And Toronto
- 15 A Traditional Hungarian Jewish Christmas
- 16 Cholent
- 17 The Lost Stories Of Bor And Arad
- A Note On Sources And Timing
- Notes
- Image Credits
- Further Reading
- Acknowledgements
- About The Author
