Marble Hill Publishers

When Robin Lustig’s mother died in 2013, he found himself drawn back into the tangled history of his German-Jewish family -- a story of survival, exile, death and endurance. And the Cello Came Too is both a personal memoir and a family chronicle, spanning centuries of Jewish life in Europe, its near-destruction under the Nazis and its slow rebirth in the years after the Second World War. At its heart is the award-winning journalist and broadcaster’s father, Fritz Lustig, a refugee from Berlin whose cello accompanied him through upheaval, war and a new life in Britain. From Enlightenment rabbis and pioneering journalists to the ‘Three Old Ladies’ who helped to shape his childhood, Lustig pieces together a sweeping narrative from letters, memoirs, and memory. This is a history not just of persecution but also of resilience and continuity -- of lives rebuilt, music played, and stories reclaimed. Moving, intimate, and meticulously researched, And the Cello Came Too shows how one family’s journey can illuminate the universal struggle to survive, remember, and belong.

December 1916. A young English woman crosses a North Sea patrolled by German submarines on the first stage of her lengthy journey to the Southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don where she is engaged as a tutor to the teenage daughter of a prosperous industrialist. Within three months the Russian Revolution explodes, and she is caught up in chaotic and bloody months of violence. Rhoda Power's remarkable record describes with an extraordinary cool eye - and often humorous ear - her growing sense of insecurity and powerlessness as the conventions and divisions of the social order are swept aside in a tumultuous outpouring of repressed resentment, prejudice, vengeful lawlessness, terror and murder. The shell fire and machine-gun bullets of the Battle of Rostov become the soundtrack of her daily life. Death is all around. And the Germans are advancing. Originally published in 1919 as Under Cossack and Bolshevik Rhoda Power's account of an ordered existence degenerating into battles raging in the streets around her and of her perilous escape is a neglected classic of outstanding "on the ground " reporting of events at a time when morality and justice no longer exist. Her words bring home the courage of a remarkable woman; although written over 100 years ago, they have a remarkable contemporary resonance and relevance in today's turbulent world of conflict.