This Has Happened

National Jewish Book Awards Finalist. “Concise, restrained, and tightly written, a look from the inside of the Holocaust out.” —Entertainment Weekly

Five years after her return home from Auschwitz, Piera Sonnino found the courage to tell the story of the extermination of her parents, three brothers, and two sisters by the Nazis. Discovered in 2005 in Italy and first published in English in 2006, this poignant and extraordinarily well-written account is strikingly accurate in bringing to life the methodical and relentless erosion of the freedoms and human dignity of the Italian Jews, from Mussolini’s racial laws of 1938 to the institutionalized horror of Auschwitz. Through Sonnino’s words, memory has the power to disarm these unspeakable evils, in This Has Happened.

“The uniquely devastating quality of this book comes from the Old World refinement embodied by Sonnino’s parents and the systematic degradations their children see them endure. Sonnino also displays a propensity to dwell on human kindness.” —The New Yorker

“Piera Sonnino’s account of the terrible end of her family achieves a kind of classic starkness that makes it a living representation of human loss.” —W. S. Merwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and National Book Award winner

“A moving account of a family caught up in the Shoah . . . An important contribution to Holocaust literature.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“In spare, beautifully translated language, Sonnino details her life in Genoa prior to 1938, when the racial laws went into effect.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)