With an Unopened Umbrella in the Pouring Rain

By Ludovic Bruckstein

The stories in this collection are stories of the lives and struggles of a wonderful variety of characters living in the Maramures region, in the years leading up to a war that will suddenly and irretrievably destroy the pattern of their existence. The eerily shocking ending of many of these stories is the moment their protagonists climb on the cattle trains to be transported to Auschwitz; while leaving the tale of their often tragic fate unstated.

Bruckstein’s works, novels, stories and plays, deal with the sometimes cruel, sometimes comic, lives of simple people whose fate is controlled by highly unpredictable forces. These he describes with understanding, compassion and forgiveness; smiling at the petty worries and trivialities that people take so seriously, while often remaining unaware of very real and existential dangers. He belongs to a generation so well described by the writer Czeslaw Milosz, in his book, The Captive Mind: “Few inhabitants of the Baltic States, Poland or Czechoslovakia, of Hungary or Romania, could summarize in a few words the story of their existence. Their lives have been complicated by the course of historic events”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Istros Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912545339

Ludovic Bruckstein

Ludovic Bruckstein was a Romanian/Jewish author and playwright who grew up in Sighet, in the Northern region of Transylvania, a town well known for its flourishing pre-war Jewish community and Hassidic tradition. Bruckstein edited a Yiddish newspaper called “Our Life” (Unzer Lebn), and in 1947 he wrote a play, describing a Sonder-kommando revolt in Auschwitz. The play, titled “The Night Shift” (Nacht-Shicht), written in Yiddish, was presented in Romania by both the Bucharest and Iassy Yiddish theaters, and was the first literary representation of this true event. His novels and stories are translated into Hebrew, French and English.