Monika Maron Pawels Briefe S.Fischer Verlag, February 1999. 205pp. ISBN 3 10 048809 1 In this 'family portrait' the author combines memoir and essay into a fascinating investigation of the struggle of three generations in her own family to adapt and survive under three German regimes: the Weimar Republic, National Socialism, and the German Democratic Republic. Her story is all the more compelling for the fact that her grandfather, the Pawel of the book's title, was a Jew whose conversion to Christianity did not save him from the ghetto and murder at Nazi hands. Her efforts to uncover the secrets of her grandfather's life and tragic death also lead her to reflect upon her own biography, and particularly upon her relationship with her mother. Partly an act of self-justification, a defence of her decision to leave the GDR for the West in 1988, and partly a contribution to the contemporary debate on possible similarities between the Third Reich and East German Communism, this book never allows polemic to overshadow the author's desire to render her grandfather's life as sensitively and humanely as possible. The discovery in 1994 of letters written by Pawel from the ghetto to Hella, his daughter and Maron's mother, inspired her attempt to recreate his existence. Her problems in overcoming the gaps which result from her mother's unreliable memories, the absence of historical records, and, more disturbing, the expunging of all traces of Jewish history in Pawel's Polish homeland, force her to confront the contingent nature of memory, as well as her personal desire to confirm her sense of her own identity, imagining herself to be more like the grandfather she never knew than the mother whose political commitment to a discredited Communism continues to frustrate her. The book's picture of everyday life under National Socialism from the point of view of the persecuted is both moving and compelling, and the excerpts from Pawel's letters are introduced to great effect, revealing a man of extreme dignity, modesty and kindliness. Equally, the author's sensitive examination of the nature of memory, the boundaries between fiction and biography, and the influences on personal identity have an appeal far exceeding the immediate subject in hand.