When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains

By Ariana Neumann

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Mar 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781471192944

Ariana Neumann

Ariana Neumann grew up in Venezuela. She graduated from Tufts University with a degree in History and received her master's in Spanish and Latin American Literature from New York University, where she taught for a year before moving to the UK and obtained a postgraduate degree from the University of London. She previously worked as a foreign correspondent for Venezuela's The Daily Journal and her writing has also appeared in The European. Ariana lives in London with her family. When Time Stopped is her first book.

Reviews for When Time Stopped

[mumoftheanimals · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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

[suesbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When Time Stopped, Ariana Neumann, author, Rebecca Lowman, narratorAriana 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.