BACK TO LIFE

They tried to annihilate them, but this book brings the memory of them back to life.”

Having found out about the stones dedicated to her grandparents after a spur of the moment search – only days after they were placed – was quite the coincidence for Jackie: “I’ve never been someone who believes in some great cosmic order, but I think things do happen at certain times, and I can’t really explain it. All I know is that it did happen, and it was a coincidence. Things are sometimes in the ether and there are times when things are meant to come to the surface. I’m not really a judge of that, all I know is that it’s happened.”

Though this story is deeply personal to Jackie, there are a few things that she would like readers to take away from reading her book: “One thing that I would like to impress on people is that there is evidence when you start digging. Because the Nazis did a lot to obliterate the people they were annihilating. They gave them numbers, made the men take the name Israel and the women Sara as a way of dehumanising them. It’s important to bring back their humanity and see them as people. They’re not only identified by being victims of the Nazis, I want people to see that they were human beings who had normal lives that ended horribly, but that was just the end, there was a normality before that. And also to show that you can find the evidence, the Nazis were maniacs at keeping records.”

The Memory Keeper is available from all major book retailers.

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