What You Did Not Tell

A warm, insightful memoir by an acclaimed historian that explores the struggles of twentieth-century Europe through the lives and hopes of a single family—his own
 
Following his relatives’ remarkable stories, Mark Mazower recounts the sacrifices and silences that marked a generation and their descendants. With a rich array of letters, photographs, interviews, and archives, he creates a moving portrait of a family that fate drove into the siege of Stalingrad, the Vilna ghetto, occupied Paris, and even the ranks of the Wehrmacht. His British father was the lucky one, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who settled in London after escaping civil war and revolution. Max, the grandfather, had started out as a member of the socialist Bund organization and manned the barricades against tsarist troops, but never spoke of it. His wife, Frouma, came from a family ravaged by the Great Terror yet somehow making their way in Soviet society.

In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, What You Did Not Tell recalls a brand of socialism erased from memory: humanistic, impassioned, and broad-ranging in its sympathies. But it also examines the unexpected happiness that may await history’s losers, the power of friendship, and the love of place that allowed Max and Frouma’s son to call England home.

Mark Mazower is a historian specializing in modern Greece, twentieth-century Europe, and international affairs. He is currently the Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University. His books include Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950, winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Runciman Award; Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe, winner of the LA Times Book Prize for History; Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century; and Governing the World: The History of an Idea, a Financial Times Best Politics Book. His articles and reviews on history and current affairs appear regularly in the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, The Nation, and the New Republic. Born in London and educated at Oxford, he lives in Manhattan.