The Lion Seeker (66 page)

My most profound gratitude goes to my late grandmother, Hanna Raizel Bonert (1901–1995), for suffusing my childhood with absolute love, as well as the memories and stories of her home village, Dusat/Dusetos. This gratitude extends to all the Jews of Dusat, the community that so nourished her, including, of course, her late husband, Koppel Bonert (1886–1970), the grandfather I never knew, though I am his namesake.

I am also grateful to Sara Weiss-Slep for collecting and publishing the oral histories of many of the survivors of Dusat's Jewish community in a volume called
Ayara Hayeta B'Lita; Dusiat B'Rei Hazichronot (S
. Segal & Co., Tel Aviv, Israel, 1989). An English translation by Judy Grossman,
There Was a Shtetl in Lithuania; Dusiat Reflected in Reminiscences
, is currently accessible on the web. This wonderful historical resource has been a great inspiration to me in the writing of this book. I also want to thank Sara for receiving me with such warmth and hospitality when I visited her in Haifa, Israel, where she continues to tirelessly maintain her ever-expanding archive of Dusat-related information.

Many thanks to Gord McFee of the Holocaust History Project, for kindly granting permission to make use of his English translation of “The Jaeger Report” (which is available online).

The epigraph quotation from
Hamelitz
is adapted from a translation by the late Chaim Gershater that appears in
The Jews in South Africa, A History
, (Pages 70–71, Geoffrey Cumberlege/ Oxford University Press, Cape Town, 1955, edited by Gustav Saron and Louis Hotz).

Thanks to Don Fehr and to Ellen Levine of Trident Media.

I am deeply grateful to all at Knopf Canada—especially Anne Collins, Louise Dennys and Craig Pyette, for reading and accepting the manuscript, and to Craig again for helping me to refine it with his many excellent suggestions.

I reserve another huge thank you, and much appreciation, for Jenna Johnson of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in New York, for so enthusiastically embracing this book, and for her valuable and perspicacious insights all through the editorial process.

Pasey Bonert lent me essential assistance in getting the details right—yet another reason to say thanks, Dad. And thanks also to my mom, Avril, for her untiring support.

Finally, I want to thank Nicole Tataj for always being there for me.

 

K
ENNETH
B
ONERT
's fiction has appeared in
McSweeney's, Grain,
and the
Fiddlehead,
and his journalism has appeared in the
Globe and Mail
and other publications. Born in South Africa, Bonert is the grandson of Lithuanian immigrants.

 

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www.hmhbooks.com
.