Surviving the Holocaust and Stalin – The Amazing Story of the Seiler Family

The book is based on a recently re-discovered cache of family letters and exclusive interviews with Marta Seiler who translated the documents for the first time. Marta has supplemented her account with childhood memories of Kistelek and original photos that lay hidden in a shoe box for decades.

The narrative is told through the voices of Marta, her mother Izabella and her father Lajos on a journey that takes us from 1935 to the present day. The reader can piece together the family’s personal challenges set against a backdrop of international political conflict.

Exploring the themes of resilience, identity and inherited trauma, by the end of the book we learn how Marta rediscovered her Jewishness, found her place within the community and has moved toward a place of tolerance.

In the tradition of oral history, Marta told her remarkable family story exclusively to British journalist Vanessa Holburn. For Marta it’s important we learn the lessons of the past before they are lost for good.

At the end of the book, Marta expresses her wish for this record of her family’s experience to ‘go home’ to Hungary. And now it can.

The book is available here