This book is incredible.

As someone born and brought up in India at the fag end of the 20th century, I find it difficult to empathise with the horrors of the past. Hitler was a bad man and killed a lot of Jews. Genghis Khan slaughtered thousands of people. For me, there is no emotion attached to these statements. These are just statistics from the past - definitely something to avoid, but not something to mourn over.

The beauty of this book is that it made me understand what "The Persecution of the Jews" actually means. It converted facts from history into incidents that happened to real people - people that I cared about. We have a vague idea of what words like cruelty, beauty, love and courage mean. We need to be reminded on a regular basis what these words feel like.

I'll cherish this book for a long time to come.