IRB intro post #2 - Ten Green Bottles

Ten Green Bottles was written in 2004 by Vivian Jeanette Kaplan. The book was published in English, and translated into several different languages such as German, Hungarian, and Italian. It is the true story of a Jewish family that escaped from Nazi-occupied Vienna to Shanghai under Japanese rule. The book is told from the viewpoint of the author's mother and starts in 1921. Gerda Karpel is a 5-year-old Jewish girl living in Vienna in 1921. She comes from an upper middle-class family. The book starts with the birth of Nini's brother, Willi, to the death of Gerda's father shortly after the birth. The book then discusses day to day life from the viewpoint of a Jewish girl growing up in Vienna. It talks about the political instability caused after the assassination of Engelbert Dollfuss and the suppression of democracy after it. This book seems especially interesting to me because I am from a Jewish Heritage, and many of my relative that lived in the 20th century have similar stories to this one. I hope to learn more about the European Jewish Culture that my family shares in my duration of reading this book.