Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure Kaiser, Menachem

A New York Times Critics Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his familys apartment building in Polandand of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaisers brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfathers former battle to reclaim the familys apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as The Killer. A surprise discoverythat his grandfathers cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complexleads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritancematerial, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

FEATURES