Former basketball player's book on family's Holocaust story offers hope amid tragedy
The opening pages of Dan Grunfeld’s “By the Grace of the Game,” are difficult to read. The subtitle “The Holocaust, a Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream” gives some indication of the tragedy and sadness within the pages.
A few chapters in, Grunfeld, the son of longtime NBA player and executive Ernie Grunfeld, spells out the atrocities: His paternal grandmother, Livia, who Dan calls Anyu, which translates to mother in her native Hungarian, lost both her parents and three siblings at Auschwitz and another of her sibling’s died in labor camp in Ukraine during World War II.
Other relatives were also killed. And yet, his grandmother somehow finds light amid the darkness, had a son (Ernie) who came to America not knowing English and became the first NBA player whose parents were Holocaust survivors.
“My grandmother always said just because a story is difficult doesn’t mean you shouldn’t tell it,” Grunfeld told USA TODAY Sports. “It was hard. It’s hard to think about these things happening to anybody let alone to your family. For my dad, these were his grandparents who were killed in Auschwitz. For my grandmother, these are her parents and siblings.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/more-sports/former-basketball-players-book-on-familys-holocaust-story-offers-hope-amid-tragedy/ar-AATctKI
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... starring Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler. The movie is based on the true story of Oskar Schindler, and it takes place at the Auschwitz concentration camp in former Czechoslovakia. Many of those survivors were able to leave Europe after WWII and some were sponsored to come to the USA where they had relatives to help them get settled.
It's good that Dan Grunfeld tells about his grandmother's ordeal and survival.
