Albert Maltz’s A Tale of One Jan­u­ary was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1966 and recent­ly rere­leased with an intro­duc­tion by schol­ar Patrick Chu­ra. The nov­el does not ask the ques­tions, Why did the Holo­caust hap­pen? How can any­one do such things? Instead, it asks, How do we begin to heal from a trau­ma so extreme that we’re unsure how to even name it? Are we able to become human again when we have spent so long being denied that very human­i­ty? This is a pow­er­ful sto­ry about six vic­tims who, hav­ing escaped cap­tiv­i­ty at the onset of the book’s action, dis­cov­er a taste of free­dom. The fact that they have all had encoun­ters with hatred brings them clos­er togeth­er in a short peri­od of time. The near­ly dead — two men and four women — slow­ly regain their human­i­ty. Read­ers will get a glimpse of how it feels to heal from pro­found trau­ma and expe­ri­ence life again.

Even the read­er with a library full of Holo­caust mem­oirs, sto­ries, and non­fic­tion has not encoun­tered a nov­el like this one. It is a rare emo­tion­al excur­sion into the heart and ema­ci­at­ed body of a sur­vivor (par­tic­u­lar­ly the lead, Claire) who has escaped and is remem­ber­ing what it feels like to live again. ​“Human beings can take much more hard­ship of every kind than you ever real­ize,” Maltz writes. This is an impor­tant book for any­one who wish­es to under­stand the Holo­caust from a survivor’s per­spec­tive, or to take a deep­er look at heal­ing from trauma.

Chura’s mes­mer­iz­ing intro­duc­tion gives us insight into Maltz’s mind and writ­ing process. He explains that the author based a non-Jew­ish char­ac­ter on a real-life Jew­ish fig­ure. Chu­ra gives his own the­o­ry as to why Maltz made this choice: to avoid per­se­cu­tion. Maltz was no stranger to prej­u­dice; he was black­list­ed for being a Com­mu­nist. Because of this, it took many years for A Tale of One Jan­u­ary to be pub­lished after Maltz wrote it. The book itself, then, is steeped in persecution.