The prosperous thief
By: Andrea Goldsmith
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Crows Nest, NSW
Language: eng
Number of pages: 291
ISBN-13: 9781741144697
Subjects: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Jews; Fiction
Description: Begins with two German children: Heinrik Heck, born poor in 1910, and Alice Lewin, who is six when Kristallnacht shatters her elegant secular Jewish family. As an army deserter in 1945, Heinrick comes across Martin, a typhoid-stricken concentration camp survivor, and makes a desperate choice. "There's his own future to consider, he tells himself as he squats down and lays his hands one each side of Martin's head. He twists." Martin is Alice's father; Heinrik, having killed Martin, takes part of Martin's identity and reinvents himself as Henry Lewin, a Jew, and starts a new life in Australia. Alice, saved by the Kindertransport, lands in California, marries a non-Jew and erases the un-American lilt in her voice. But her son, Raphe, is obsessed with his Jewish grandfather. His urging sends Alice to Australia, where she confronts Henry Lewin.