Concerto in G Major: A Story

Introduction: This story was included in a collection of my parents’ fiction titled Píseň pro Den smíření (“Song for the Day of Atonement”), published in Prague in 1971 and almost immediately confiscated by the Czech Communist government.

The book’s disappearance dealt a blow to my parents’ aspirations as writers. Having survived the Holocaust—my father in Bucharest, my mother in the mountains of Slovakia as depicted here—they were then plunged into the turbulent and dangerous atmosphere of postwar Czechoslovakia. As journalists for many years, they specialized in both reportage and impressionistic pieces combining fact and imaginative re-creation.

It was only natural, given their life experience, that my parents would put their best thoughts and feelings into storytelling. Their love for each other and their family, their appreciation of literature and music, and their Jewish values were what gave them the strength not only to persevere but to turn their hardship into art.