The Past in Hiding

More about the book

This volume is the story of a historian, Mark Roseman, and his relationship with Marianne Ellenbogen (nee Strauss) - an elderly Liverpool resident with a remarkable past. This chance meeting between an expert on Germany and a survivor of the most terrible event in Germany's history had an impact that neither party could have anticipated. Roseman interviewed Marianne Ellenbogen several times about her experiences, but then - after Marianne's death in 1996 - he found himself with access to a vast range of papers secreted in their house - photos, diaries, letters. This book is about the extraordinary physical and emotional journey these papers provoked -it is a detective story, a love story, a story of great courage and survival under impossible conditions. Drawing on interviews with those who knew Marianne, on countless papers and on Roseman's wider knowledge of the Third Reich, this story s also about a historian's investigation into the nature of memory - about a past that remained "in hiding" for more than 50 years.