Includes two father-son rescue stories, one in Hungary, as told in the father’s diary with an Afterword by the son; the other in Bulgaria, as told by the son. “Gabriel Mermall, Seeds of Grace: The Diary of Gabriel Mermall,” with an Afterword by his son Thomas: The diary relates the story of Gabor Mermelstein (Gabriel Mermall) as a slave laborer in the Hungarian military’s Labor Service, and his rescue in 1944 together with his little son. Unable to rescue his wife, who was deported to Auschwitz, Gabor hid with his son in the Ruthenian forests, aided by a poor Hungarian lumberjack, Ivan Gartner, who generously supplied them with food for more than six months. During the last month, Gartner hid them in his hayloft. “Norbert Yasharoff, Reaching the Light at the End of the Tunnel”: As a youth, Norbert Yasharoff was forced to move with his family into the Sofia, an experience that inspired him to express himself through poetry. He was evicted to Pleven by the authorities, and after the war lived under communist rule in Sofia. He assisted his father, an attorney, in the post-war defense of Dimitur Peshev, who had been instrumental in preventing the deportation of Bulgarian Jews. Yasharoff relates his experiences as a student and writer in Sofia University, and then of his immigration to Israel, where he immediately joined the army, finding fulfillment in the land of his dreams.
