Minka Pradelski Und da kam Frau Kugelmann And then Mrs. Kugelmann Came Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, September 2005, 254 pp. ISBN 3-627-00123-0 'I can highly recommend this wonderful book' – Elke Heidenreich When sparky young Zippy Silberstein of the curious eating habits receives news from Tel Aviv that her recently deceased Aunt Halina has left her a set of fish knives and forks and an old brown suitcase, she decides to travel from Germany and collect them in person. She arrives in the full heat of summer and settles into her hotel room, hoping for a much needed rest. But before long there is a banging at the door and a stranger, Frau Kugelmann, invites herself in, evidently determined to talk. She does, and to magical effect. She starts with reminiscences of the small town where she grew up – Bendzin, in Poland, not far from the German border – and of the people who lived there before the outbreak of the Second World War. She describes the woods and the river, her schooldays, her family, her neighbours, her intimate friends, the factory and shop owners, the local dishes, the Yiddish speakers and the ne’er-do-well scroungers. Zippy is enchanted, but puzzled and disquieted too. For what connection can there be between the idyllic picture painted by Frau Kugelmann and the horrors so grimly recalled by the visitors to her parents’ new home in Germany when she herself was growing up? Is Frau Kugelmann idealising the past? Her mind finds it difficult to accommodate the idea that there may in fact have been a peaceful ‘Before’, yet she becomes more and more fascinated by it, and by the characters, good and bad, whom Frau Kugelmann brings to life. Never has her own father told her of such a world. Now she is learning about it from a stranger. And indeed Frau Kugelmann says, with tears in her eyes, that she believes she survived the war just for this purpose: to tell it like it was. Zippy is filled with a new sense of aliveness as the emptiness that had been part of her identity is set to rest and a rich assembly of possible relatives and friends comes rushing in to fill the vacuum. ‘Just one more story please and then I’ll let you go’, she says to Frau Kugelmann. A sincere, moving message of reconciliation and hope. Readers of Binnie Kirschenbaum’s books will enjoy the brand of humour that is also part of this work.