Faris Cassell, Inseparable

The 32nd Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents Faris Cassell, Inseparable: A Holocaust Survival Story 
with Special Guests Marion Lewin and Steven Hess

In Conversation with former Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat

Author Talk, Q & A & Book Signing

Community Partners: Eternal Life-Hemshech, Georgia Commission on the Holocaust, and JF&CS

Ste­fan and Mar­i­on Hes­s’s hap­py child­hood was shat­tered in 1944. Torn from their home in Ams­ter­dam, the six-year-old twins and their par­ents were deport­ed to a place their moth­er called ​“a dying hell” — the infa­mous con­cen­tra­tion camp at Bergen-Belsen.

Insep­a­ra­ble is the vivid account of one fam­i­ly’s strug­gle to sur­vive the Holo­caust. When caught in child­ish mis­chief, Ste­fan and Mar­i­on ran from SS sol­diers, mak­ing a game of see­ing who could get clos­est to the guard tow­ers before being warned he would be shot. They wit­nessed their father beat­en beyond recog­ni­tion, dodged straf­ing war­planes, and some­how sur­vived in a place where ​“the chil­dren looked for bread between the corpses.” Above all, this is the unfor­get­table sto­ry of a young moth­er and father who were will­ing to sac­ri­fice every­thing for their children.

From the Hess’s pros­per­ous pre-war life in Ger­many to their des­per­ate ride in a bul­let-strafed box­car through the rub­ble of the col­laps­ing Third Reich, Faris Cas­sell weaves Ste­fan and Mar­i­on’s per­son­al mem­o­ries and his­tor­i­cal details into a grip­ping nar­ra­tion of this hero­ic fam­i­ly’s ordeal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Faris Cas­sell is a jour­nal­ist and writer. Her pre­vi­ous title, The Unan­swered Let­ter, won the 2020 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award in the Holo­caust cat­e­go­ry and placed first in the 2019 Pacif­ic North­west Writ­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion Lit­er­ary Con­test for Unpub­lished Works. She and her hus­band, Syd­ney, live in Eugene, Ore­gon. She earned a B.A. in his­to­ry from Mount Holyoke Col­lege and an M.S. in jour­nal­ism from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oregon.

Books will be available for purchase on the evening of the event from our partner bookseller, A Cappella Books!