In Poland in 1890, Daniel Baldinger told his wife Reizel he was divorcing her after ten years of marriage. He promised he would provide for her but she hadn’t produced a child. “I can’t live without children. In return for the gift of life, a man must leave another generation to replace him.” Divorce was rare then and his family was very much opposed to his action. Not having children was grounds for a divorce, but it wasn’t mandatory. Daniel would not be swayed, even by rabbis.
While Reizel might have a difficult time finding another husband, Daniel was a very good target for families with daughters of marriageable age. Within two years, he married Lieba Spira.
Three years later, Daniel still was not a father. And then his life changed. Within eighteen years, he and Lieba had eleven children: six boys and five girls. “Adam and Eve, who had been commanded to go forth and multiply, had stopped at two, but Daniel intended to have as many as the Almighty blessed him with.” (NOTE: They had more than two children, including Seth.) The fifth, Hirsch, later called Henry, was the father of Diane Armstrong, the author of MOSAIC.
Part One of the chronicle is the story of the family before Daniel’s death in 1938. By then, Daniel realized that his desire to have religiously committed sons, was not going to happen. His children and their spouses were a very diverse group in their interests, abilities, and relationships. By the end of the book, we learn that many of the differences which led to splits within the family were the results of misunderstandings.
Part Two is the detailed story of the Holocaust and how it affected the family. As Germany gained more power in Poland, the children, many now with families of their own, scattered seeking safety. Some fled early on. Others decided to wait it out. Diane’s family moved several times trying to survive. Hirsch had changed his name and was a dentist. But the family still had hide their Jewish religion and be alert for people eager to report them to the Nazis and its supporters. The families’ fates differed greatly, though they did try to keep in touch and help each other when possible. Some died or were killed either in their villages or in camps. After the war, the survivors ended up living in Europe, North and South America, and Australia depending on where they could get visas and who was already living there..
Part III is the story of Diane’s visit to Poland and Ukraine to gather information about her family through archival records and conversations with people knew about her family and others in the community. She gathered more information than she expected but less than she hoped for. She began remembering more of her early childhood; she had been born in 1939 and left soon after the end of World War II. She also discovered that anti-Semitism was still very strong in those areas. The three million Polish Jews who died during the Holocaust, were barely acknowledged. Many people still blamed the Jews for events even though no Jews lived there.
The book is written in chronological order, but a lot of more recent events are interspersed as the author visits with her relatives to document their stories. She switches between past and present tense when reporting the conversations.
The title ’MOSAIC” is very apt. The book is built upon pieces of memories. Often the stories about the same person or event differed due to the perspective of the teller. This was especially true for the memories of Daniel’s children when talking about their parents and each other.
Part Two is a very detailed and accurate accounting of the effect of the Shoah on the family and the Jews in the area including the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Tidbits:

“Errors of omission jab us like needles concealed in the lining of our conscience.”

“Life isn’t fair. The pleasures that parents give children are brushed away like crumbs, but the pains are absorbed in the psyche like inkblots.”

“In Berlin, the anti-Jewish propaganda comes from the top, from Hitler and his Nazis, but here [Kradow] the hatred seems to come from the people.”

Hitler screamed “Poland had attacked the Third Reich and the two nations were now at war. Heydrich’s scheme to disguise a band of German criminals as Polish soldiers and stage a phony attack on a German radio station at Gleiwitz had provided Hitler with a pretext for starting World War II.” ( )

Having listened to the unabridged reading from audible.com, I will first comment on that version: There are many relatives who make appearances or are referenced at some point in the book that it is hard sometimes to remember, especially since the story jumps around in time. The printed book has extensive detailed diagrams of the family tree that the author recovered. Audible was remiss in not making this available to download, as they often do. If you want to listen, get a copy of these diagrams first and have a map of Poland handy as another reference. The narrator, Deidre Rubenstein, did a very good job, especially given the first person point of view of the author. She speaks British English (in the style of the BBC,) whereas the author, having emigrated to Australia from her native Poland at the age of 7, speaks Australian English. (I found a brief segment on youtube: Jewishnews TV bulletin: September 4, 2009, starting about 25 seconds in.)

The book is both a tale about various branches of the author's family tree as well as a personal journey to recapture her lost early childhood during the holocaust, having been born in Poland in 1939. Who were the people she met and knew at a young age? How have they contributed to the person that she has become? Given the devastation and destruction of European Jewry, it is amazing how many details of her family tree she was able to uncover. It illustrates her journalistic talent and experience. Through this effort, one obtains a vivid portrait of the lives of Polish Jews from the early 1900's through the 1950's. There are even some allusions to the role of Polish anti-Semitism in contemporary times. At the same time, there are depictions of numerous "righteous gentiles" who risked their own lives to help Jews in need.

Other reviewers have described its content and some of the details, and I will not repeat them. While for the most part enjoyable, the quality of the writing ranges from gripping and moving to deadly boring. It could have benefitted from a strong editor. The story could easily have been told in less than 500 pages instead of 600. Some events and thoughts are repeated verbatim, and some of her introspections are drawn out far too long. For example, her emotional difficulties dealing with the decline of her mother's health and, eventually, her death in Sydney, are not really so different from the experiences of many others who have had to become caregivers to one or more parent. However sad, it is really tangential to the book's thread, yet it drags on and on.

It is remarkable how many of her relatives survived the holocaust, an abnormally large percentage compared to the three million Polish Jews (90%) killed. Ironically, it probably reflected that many of her relatives were not really part of a closely knit family and often children were eager to leave home to seek their fortunes, sometimes elsewhere in Poland, sometimes further. This was especially true of the 11 children of Daniel and Lieba, of which her father was one.

The book reads like an historical novel except when she is relating her own impressions and experiences. Indeed, many of the specific events and conversations are clearly speculative, although having a basis in fact. This enhanced the reading and made for a much more interesting story than a narrative of the results of her research and interviews. She has a good sense of drama, and the ending is really a treat.

On the other hand, I sometimes wondered whether I was reading a composite of some people who may have existed or descriptions of meetings and events that never really occured. Her portraits of her near relatives seem realistic. She attributes to them positive qualities, such as generosity or cleverness, while, at the same time, indicating shortcomings, such as jealousy, selfishness, indifference, or miserliness; in other words, a typical extended family. ( )

I have reviewed this book here:
http://bewitchedbybooks.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/mosaic-by-diane-armstrong/ ( )