Courage and Compassion

In this extraordinary personal account of childhood and survival during the Holocaust, Professor Tony (Antony) Molho recounts his adventures in 1940s Greece from ages four to six, as his parents risked everything to hide him from the German occupiers. In doing so he pays homage to the many ordinary people who selflessly protected his family, demonstrating that even in the darkest times the self-sacrifice and kindness of modest people can still prevail. Delving into the power of memory, and exploring questions of personal identity, and the weight of the Shoah, Courage and Compassion goes beyond the bounds of conventional memoir, as Tony Molho also reflects on the nature of Jewish identity in the aftermath of the Holocaust and on how his personal awareness of this trauma has helped him to understand the course of his own life.

“The way in which Anthony Molho accepts…[the] obligation to establish his identity retains all the noble elements that characterize his narrative: the orientation of his conscience towards what unites and not what divides people, towards the virtue that prefers cheerful conciliation to grim denunciation.” • The Books’ Journal “This great ‘little book’ as the author repeatedly and humbly describes it, was written following decades of reflection, and is presented in "layers of memory" as with remarkable agility Molho shifts the reader’s attention from one period to another. A novelistic narrative of rare emotion, subtlety and sensitivity and a treasure trove of memories and self-awareness…” • Kathimerini “Many Holocaust memoirs have been published, but Greece has been noticeably absent from this literature, and the story told here is little known. Of all the Holocaust literature, no work combines the literary quality and child’s-eye view found in Molho’s engrossing story.” • David I. Kertzer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Pope and Mussolini “… [T]he deeply moving nature of this memoir derives from its emphatic demonstration that, for Tony (as perhaps indeed for all survivors of the Shoah), there was and has been no “other story.” Far from the “before” and “after” being different tales, far from the “after” being “another story,” this beautiful memoir shows us the powerful ways in which our childhood core is what we carry with us over the arc of a lifetime.” • Katherine Fleming, President, J. Paul Getty Trust "Chronicle? Memoir? History? However, one tries to describe Antony Molho's book, I don’t believe that it will do it justice. Molho, a great historian, plays with all the possibilities offered by writing to give us a narrative that is extremely fascinating, as well as instructive about the relationships between memory and history. And especially about what it meant to be a Jewish child in Thessaloniki in the 1940s." • Kostas Kostis, University of Athens

Tony Molho is the David Herlihy University Professor Emeritus at Brown University and Professor Emeritus of History and Civilization at the European University Institute in Florence.