Nothing Really Bad Will Happen: A Holocaust Story of Loss and Legacy
Paperback
Biographies GeneralImmigration & Refugees
Publisher Price: $24.99
Publisher: Dorette Publishing
Published: Jan 2 2026
Pages: 446
Weight: 1.31
Height: 0.99 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Winner of the 2024 Richard G. Tomlinson Literary Award.
Three generations. One hidden history. A family shaped by what couldn't be said.
Vienna, 1938. Six-year-old Doris Lichtenthal flees the only home she has ever known. Her mother, Rose, grips her hand as they board a ship for New York-alone. Doris's father, Paul, has already been arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Her grandfather, Sigmund, a respected Jewish hatmaker with a thriving shop, stays behind, believing he still has time. He doesn't.
Doris rarely speaks of what came before. She builds a life in America-marriage, children, forward motion-but the past remains: folded into silences and careful omissions.
Decades later, great-granddaughter Deborah Holman begins asking questions. Through letters, archival research, and family memory, she reconstructs what happened-and what it cost-when survival demanded silence.
Inside you'll find:
- A meticulously researched family story rooted in documents and letters
- Vienna-to-America displacement and the long afterlife of trauma
- A modern genealogical investigation-and what the records still don't say
- An epilogue on the reparations process and its real-world impact
For readers interested in:
- Holocaust memoir and family history
- Genealogy and archival discovery
- Intergenerational trauma, silence, and survival
Also in
Biographies General
Bluesland: Portraits of Thirteen Major American Blues Masters
Pete Welding (ED.)
Toby Byron (ED.)
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
The Children of Athena: Greek Intellectuals in the Age of Rome: 150 Bc0-400 AD
Freeman, Charles
Hardcover
Make It a Double: From Wretched to Wondrous: Tales of One Woman's Lifelong Discovery of Whisky
Sackier, Shelley
Hardcover
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
Isaacson, Walter
Hardcover
An Enemy Such as This: Larry Casuse and the Fight for Native Liberation in One Family on Two Continents Over Three Centuries
Correia, David
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
Cooper, Christian
Hardcover
The Secret Life of the Savoy: Glamour and Intrigue at the World's Most Famous Hotel
Williams, Olivia
Paperback
The Badger: The Life of Bernard Hinault and the Legacy of French Cycling
Fotheringham, William
Paperback
The Devil's Diary: Alfred Rosenberg and the Stolen Secrets of the Third Reich
Wittman, Robert K.
Kinney, David
Paperback
Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work: The Rise of Womens Political Culture, 1830-1900
Sklar, Kathryn Kish
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything
Ehrenreich, Barbara
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cherington, Gretchen
Paperback
Gift of Power: The Life and Teachings of a Lakota Medicine Man
Erdoes, Richard
Lame Deer, Chief Archie Fire
Paperback
My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
Dessa Wander
Hardcover
Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
Giuffre, Virginia Roberts
Hardcover
How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Happy, and Creative in Spite of Myself
Lawson, Jenny
Hardcover
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
Kuehn, Christine
Hardcover
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground
Dohrn, Zayd Ayers
Hardcover
A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Fedarko, Kevin
Paperback
Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast
Colloff, Pamela
Hardcover
