Ariana NeumannRecensioni

The author’s father kept his life in Czechoslovakia secret from her, identifying himself as Venezuelan. When she learned from a complete stranger in college that her name was Jewish, she was shocked. With very few hints from her father, and a box he left her when he died bearing little information, she went on a search for how he came to be in Venezuela. This book is about her genealogical search, and her father’s and his family’s story during WWII. The prologue felt like I was about to read the author’s memoir, but it really settles into most specifically her father’s story and his family. It is very deeply researched and to the extent she could, she provided immense detail in a way that shed light on what life was like trying to survive Nazi occupation and concentration camp as a Jew. It was always revealing—always making the reader think: how would I survive this? The narrator was perfect for the audiobook. Her voice was calm and appropriate throughout the story. I’m also glad I checked out the ebook from the library at the same time because it has photos. A highly recommended read for both its apt approach to telling about a genealogical search and of course, describing a life of fear and survival in Nazi-occupied Prague.

This was a really good look at one family’s experience of the Holocaust. I often find Holocaust books difficult to read, as I’m sure everyone does, but despite the truly tragic occurrences in the book, its overall tale of survival and remembrance make it stand out. The incredible risks people take, often for friends and family, give a lift to the spirit. There are also details about day to day life during the war, and first person narrative like letters and documents that make this an especially effective book.

Ariana Neumann had to do so much research to discover her family. Her father never told her the story of his life in Czechoslovakia during WW II. She discovers all the horrible things that they went through, being Jewish in the Nazi reign.

Excellent account of a family’s attempt to survive during the Holocaust.

This was well written to teach me both about the communities' responses to the Nazi regime, and also about the responses and activities of many individuals. I learned about so many underground activities and individual dares that actually worked. This book was extremely sad and also very educational for me.½

Like all Holocaust stories, WHEN TIME STOPPED is unique. The author, Ariana Neuman grew up in Venezuela in the 1970s. Her father, a wealthy industrialist, didn’t talk of his past. One of his main hobbies involved his large watch collection. She didn’t even know he was Jewish though she felt she was different from the other Catholic children she knew from school and church.

After his death, he left her a box in which she found clues to his history including an ID card bearing someone else’s name. That freed her to search for his story.

She learned that the first member of the thirty-four member Neumann family, then living in Czechoslovakia, was sent to Auschwitz in 1941 for swimming in restricted part of a river. He died soon afterwards. By the end of the war, only nine survived.

Her father, Hans, was one of them. Despite all the restrictions, he managed to survive by hiding in plain sight in Berlin, of all places.

Her search took her to many locations and enabled her to meet relatives she didn’t know she had.

WHE:N TIME STOPPED has two compelling stories, that of her father’s life and her search for family members. It includes a map, family trees, and many photos of her family and some amazing watches.

This was such a well written family story and world history in one. Ariana Neuman takes her Father's mysterious life on as a mystery like she'd been looking for as a child interested in being a sleuth. Growing up in Argentina with her Father, she'd known that something in his past caused him great pain, but other than to see a few glimpses of his pain, her Father would never discuss what it was to cause the nightmares and silence of his story. When he died he left a box of carefully organised documents, letters, and pictures for her to finally look into his secrets. As she researches, she not only comes upon his life in Czechoslovakia as a Jew during the Nazi Regime, but his whole network of family and friends, many who did not survive. The journey she was on wasn't fast, as she had a life of raising children and the stories she found were not easy ones to know.

I love this author’s writing style. I love the humor. It took me a while to get into the narrative but once I did I enjoyed the story/stories. I loved the passages written by her father, Hans. They were incredibly powerful and completely riveting!!!

This is the kind of genealogical research I wish I could have done. I’m in awe.

The author has a lot materials from so many different parts of her family and others. There is a voluminous collection of photos of people and photos of documents and other pictures and many images really enhanced the storytelling. I appreciated all the evidence presented. There is a helpful family tree and map included too! A list of discussion questions were also in my edition.

At first there was a lot about her life, which was interesting, but I felt distant from her father and the others (maybe because when she started she knew virtually nothing about their pasts) but the more I read about the people alive during WWII in Nazi occupied areas the more engaged I became. It took me some time but I grew to know about and deeply care about these people.

I found it interesting that she was doing gung ho research and had wanted to be a detective when she was a kid, but she seemed so uncurious and naïve and ignorant about historical events until she eventually started her inquiries.

This Holocaust narrative stands out because of the author’s father hiding in plain sight with an assumed non-Jewish identity in Berlin for two years during WWII and also because so many family members’ relationships, lives, and fates are revealed. It’s an extraordinary narrative. I also found it interesting and not surprising how so many of the survivors felt lifelong impact from the trauma they’d experienced. What was unexpected was how so many of them were able to flourish and be successful anyway.
This author writes beautifully and this is a quotable book. Here is just one phrase that I appreciate. “Memories, like misfiled documents, are not always where you expect to find them...I learned that detailed questions often did little to trigger specific memories. People returned to distant facts in roundabout ways, along their own winding paths, which seemed more mapped by emotion than by logic.”

ETA: I want to add the other quote I "liked" in my quotes: “Perhaps all remembrance is a process of compilation and creation. Every day we absorb what is around us and assemble observations of a specific time: sounds, smells, textures, words, images, and feelings. Of course, we prioritize and edit as we go, subjective witnesses to our own lives, providing recollections that are often biased and incomplete.”

I enjoyed this book SO much more than the volume The Tattooist of Auschwitz. The writing was lovely and the items shared by Ariana told the story of her family so movingly. I'd recommend this book.

Ariana Neumann traces the life of her father during World War II. She was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, and had no idea she had Jewish roots until a fellow student at Tufts pointed it out. Her father, Hans Neumann, had built a business empire in Venezuela and was fascinated with timepieces and religiously kept them running. He seemed to use them as a way of coping and controlling his life. He wakes from horrible nightmares, never talks about his life prior to Venezuela, and avoids his daughter's questions about that time. When he dies, he leave her a box of mementos that allows her to research his life and family members from Prague, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and the US. Hans's parents were Otto and and Ella Neumann; his brother was Lotar. His best friend was Zdenek Tuma, with whom he hid in plain sight. His parents owned and operated a paint factory in Prague while they lived in a garden villa in Libcice before World War II.

A daughter's engaging look at her search for the unspoken past of her father, a Czech holocaust survivor.

Good

When Time Stopped, Ariana Neumann, author, Rebecca Lowman, narrator
Ariana Neumann did an amazing amount of research over decades, in order to discover her father’s true past and name, and in so doing, her own heritage. Brought up without much religious foundation, she had no idea of her Jewish background until she discovered a box with her father’s documents, documents he had carefully kept secret from his family until his death. Neumann did not discover most of the information until more than a decade after his death when a box she had seen as a child, reappeared in her life. With this box, began a research project which exposed relatives with whom she never had contact and a religion which she never knew she had a connection.
Through careful investigation, she discovered unknown relatives who had documents and letters that enabled her to retrace her father’s history in Europe. Neumann had been raised in Venezuela and never knew her father had been born in Czechoslovakia, nor that he lived through the German occupation as a Jew on the run with another identity. Although his family once numbered more than 30, she discovered that most of them were murdered.
Because of the documents and letters, some new information was provided which I believe was very enlightening. The book will inform the reader of the plan Nazi Germany masterminded that enabled the murder of so many innocents, of the steps some took to protect those innocents and of the lucky intervention that often made the difference between life and death.

In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.