This book will delight anyone who likes to read of the past as seen through the eyes of the people living it. It is the story of the descendants of Lazar Horwitz, an eminent rabbi’s son from Vienna who settled in Poland in the early 19th century. But there are no stereotypes here; it is not all ghettos and Holocaust. Horwitz married a wealthy merchant’s daughter and their progeny lived the lives of ordinary middle-class citizens, constructively engaged in Polish society: they were teachers, doctors, dentists, publishers and political activists. But there is nothing ordinary about their lives.

The story takes us way beyond Poland’s borders, for the Horwitz clan was nothing if not cosmopolitan. They studied in Ghent and Zürich, they holidayed in Baden-Baden, Ostend and Sorrento. They married far and wide, netting remarkable people such as André Citroën, founder of the French car firm. Their political activism involved them not only with the Polish socialist conspirator and later head of state Marshal Pilsudski, but with several eminent Bolsheviks, including Lenin, a close friend of one of the Horwitz girls.

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