RecommendationsIntroduction Prologue 1. Beginnings (1900-1939)2. Invasion (1939)3. Escape (1939-1941)4. Separation (1939-1944)5. Private Wars (1952-1996)6. Kaddish7. San Donato Val di CominoAfterwordAppendixAbout the AuthorAcknowledgmentsHeart Songs illuminates the consequences of inherited grief and unmourned losses and celebrates the strength and resilience of those who died and those who survived.When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Buchsbaum family fractured, each choosing a different path to try to survive. Their stories live in Heart Songs, A Holocaust Memoir and form the legacy of love and loss inherited by the author, a member of the second generation of Holocaust survivors.In 2015 the author discovered a carefully preserved packet of letters written by her grandmother Clara who fled to Italy from Czechoslovakia in 1939 and found refuge in the small mountain village of San Donato Val di Comino. There, the local residents sheltered twenty-eight Jewish refugees, ultimately risking their own safety by hiding the refugees from German soldiers. Secure in this medieval village, Clara wrote fifty-seven letters to her son John who had escaped to England and then emigrated to the United States. The letters detailed her life in Italy, her desperate efforts to get out of Europe, and her passionate love for her son. In telling the story of her father and his family as well as her own story, the author explores historical, familial and psychological aspects of the Holocaust. Heart Songs illuminates the consequences of inherited grief and unmourned losses and celebrates the strength and resilience of those who died and those who survived.When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939, the Buchsbaum family fractured, each choosing a different path to try to survive. Their stories live in Heart Songs, A Holocaust Memoir and form the legacy of love and loss inherited by the author, a member of the second generation of Holocaust survivors.In 2015 the author discovered a carefully preserved packet of letters written by her grandmother Clara who fled to Italy from Czechoslovakia in 1939 and found refuge in the small mountain village of San Donato Val di Comino. There, the local residents sheltered twenty-eight Jewish refugees, ultimately risking their own safety by hiding the refugees from German soldiers. Secure in this medieval village, Clara wrote fifty-seven letters to her son John who had escaped to England and then emigrated to the United States. The letters detailed her life in Italy, her desperate efforts to get out of Europe, and her passionate love for her son. In telling the story of her father and his family as well as her own story, the author explores historical, familial and psychological aspects of the Holocaust. Heart Songs illuminates the consequences of inherited grief and unmourned losses and celebrates the strength and resilience of those who died and those who survived.