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This 16-year-old turned her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story into a novel
(New York Jewish Week) — In May of 1937, 7-year-old Inge Eisinger lived in a luxurious Vienna apartment with a pantry stocked with favorite foods and a staff to keep her company. Though she had a strained relationship with her mother and an absent father, Inge, who was mostly raised by her maternal grandmother Anna, was living a charmed life.
This is the scene that opens “Running for Shelter,” a young adult novel about the Holocaust written by a young adult herself: 16-year-old Suzette Sheft, who is a junior at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. In the novel, Sheft retells her grandmother’s story of surviving the Holocaust.
Published by Amsterdam Publishers, which specializes in Holocaust memoirs, the book is a delicate and powerful reminder of the importance of recording one’s family history. It’s a lesson Sheft learned too early in life: Her father died of pancreatic cancer when Sheft was just 13 and she soon realized she was forgetting all the stories he told her about his childhood.
“I fantasized about rewinding time, so I could go back and record my favorite stories about his childhood,” Sheft writes in an author’s note. “I wished I had taken the time to write these stories down when I had the chance, because his death allowed me to understand the vitality of preserving the stories of our loved ones before it is too late.”
In memory of her father, Sheft recorded the story of his mother, her grandmother Monique Sheft, who was once the Viennese school girl Inge Eisinger.
In pre-war Austria, Eisinger had been living a completely assimilated life — so much so that her parents never even told her that she was Jewish. Following the Nazi takeover of Austria, her mother managed to whisk the two of them away to Switzerland, then Paris, but soon abandoned her. After a twisting and tragic story, Eisinger eventually reunited with her grandmother and moved to a village in Central France to wait out the war, changing her name to the more French “Monique.”
Sheft’s novel ends in 1946, when the two are on the boat to New York after the war and Eisinger’s grandmother reveals to her that she and her family are actually Jewish.
In spite of this — or perhaps because of it — Sheft, who lives in Manhattan with her mom, her twin brother and two dogs, is very committed to her Jewish identity. “Although my grandmother never really practiced Judaism, my dad was very involved in the Jewish world,” she said. “He was very passionate about Jewish causes and just Judaism, in general. So I felt very connected to the Jewish world because of him.”
The New York Jewish Week talked with Sheft about what the book means to her, why its subject matter is important and what she learned in the process of putting it together.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
New York Jewish Week: What was the process of writing the book; how did the idea begin and how did you collect your grandmother’s story?
Suzette Sheft: I had heard a lot of my grandmother’s stories from my dad. I always had an interest in the Holocaust — I would go to Holocaust museums in every city I visited, and I almost exclusively read books about World War II and the Holocaust growing up. So I kind of knew in the back of my head that I wanted to do something like this, but [my father’s death] sparked and ignited the necessity of doing it as soon as possible.
As for the process, a few summers ago I spent a week with my grandmother, interviewing her every day about her escape from Austria to France. At first she shared physical elements of her life, like her apartment and her family dynamics and her school life, but then she began to talk to me about the time leading up to the war — the years before the Germans invaded Austria. As she spoke, I recorded everything she said in bullet point form and I would periodically stop and ask for more detail. The next day, at the beginning of the conversation, I would recap what we had talked about, and then allow her to elaborate or clarify the story.
Later, I wanted to widen my perspective and uncover other stories and details that she may have forgotten, so I watched an interview she did with the USC Shoah Foundation. This was really helpful because there were some details that she had forgotten or that she had left out.
Even though the book is about your grandmother’s life, you wrote it as fiction. How much of the story came from your grandmother’s details, and how much did you have to research or create on your own?
Every event that happens is true, and everything actually happened to her, but there are some small details that I embellished. For me, it was really helpful because, while I love creativity and writing, I sometimes struggle to pick an idea. So the fact that she had all these little stories, and I could expand from those, was something I loved while writing this. I had to use fiction when describing the atmosphere of certain places and also to write the dialogue because I can’t know exactly what they said or how they said it.
Do you have a favorite story your grandma told you that you made sure to get in the book?
Inge goes to a boarding school [in France] with her host family and there the children play a game where they pick someone to be the “torturer,” who is usually whoever they think the ugliest person is. My grandma had red hair and green eyes, and I guess she wasn’t the traditional standard of beauty. They picked her to be the torturer and she would have to pull people’s hair and scratch them. There would also be a queen, who was usually the prettiest girl with blond hair and blue eyes, and she would be protected. I thought it was interesting because to me it was the children’s way of understanding what was going on in the world around them. It’s a bit complicated, but when she told me this story I was completely shocked. It was really fascinating.
For people your age, why do you think Holocaust education is still relevant and important?
Some people my age don’t know anything about the Holocaust. I recently came across a statistic that talked about how little Gen Z knew about the Holocaust. There’s also been a spike in antisemitism and a decrease in awareness of history. For example, with Kanye West, who has a lot of followers, saying antisemitic remarks, a lot of people are going to just go along with what he says. There’s also just been a lot of hate crimes towards Jewish people, especially during COVID.
Lastly, the number of living Holocaust survivors is diminishing by the day. Gen Z is the last generation probably that is ever going to have the ability and the opportunity to speak with Holocaust survivors before they’re all gone. It’s important that we share this book now and then we educate people now before it’s too late.
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Israel Pounds Lebanon with Heaviest Airstrikes of the War as Hezbollah Pauses Attacks
Rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut, Lebanon, April 8, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Israel carried out its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the conflict with Hezbollah broke out last month, even as the Iran-aligned group paused attacks on northern Israel and Israeli troops in Lebanon under a two-week US-Iran ceasefire.
Consecutive explosions shook Beirut, sending smoke billowing across the capital, as Israel’s military said it had launched the largest coordinated strike of the war. More than 100 Hezbollah command centers and military sites were targeted in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon, it said.
The strikes killed dozens and wounded hundreds, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. In Beirut, Reuters reporters saw people on motorcycles picking up wounded and transporting them to hospitals because there were not enough ambulances to get them in time. A group of firefighters worked to put out flames in a car park after one strike left more than a dozen cars scorched and mangled.
The head of Lebanon’s syndicate of doctors, Elias Chlela, called in a written statement for “all physicians from all specialties” to head to any hospital they could to offer help. One of Beirut’s biggest hospitals said it was in need of donations of all blood types.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said overnight that the ceasefire suspending the six-week-old US-Israeli war against Iran did not apply to Lebanon, and the Israeli military said operations against Hezbollah there would continue.
That position contradicted comments by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key intermediary in the US-Iran ceasefire talks, who had said the truce would include Lebanon.
Lebanon’s state news agency NNA had reported continued Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon earlier in the day, including artillery shelling and a dawn airstrike on a building near a hospital that killed four people. An Israeli strike on the southern city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 22 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Hezbollah stopped attacking Israeli targets early on Wednesday, three Lebanese sources close to the group told Reuters. The group’s last public statement on its military activity was posted at 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Tuesday), saying it had targeted Israeli troops inside Lebanon on Tuesday evening.
The group is likely to issue a statement outlining its formal position on the ceasefire and on Netanyahu’s assertion that Lebanon is not included, the three Lebanese sources said.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the situation in Lebanon, a former French protectorate, remained critical and called for Lebanon to be included in the deal. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, welcoming the US-Iran ceasefire, said Beirut would continue its efforts to ensure that Lebanon was included in any lasting regional peace agreement.
“Hezbollah was informed that it is part of the ceasefire – so we abided by it, but Israel as usual has violated it and committed massacres all across Lebanon,” senior Hezbollah lawmaker Ibrahim al-Moussawi told Reuters.
‘LEBANON CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE’
Most of Wednesday’s strikes were in civilian-populated areas, Israel’s military said. Hours before the strike, the military had issued warnings for some areas of southern Beirut and southern Lebanon. No such warning was given for central Beirut, which was also hit.
Following the strikes, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee claimed on X that Hezbollah had moved out of its traditional Shi’ite stronghold in southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood to religiously mixed areas of the city, including in the north.
Addressing Hezbollah, he said, Israel’s military will “pursue you and act with great force against you wherever you are”.
More than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel’s air and ground campaign across Lebanon, including more than 130 children and more than 100 women, since March 2 when Hezbollah started firing rockets at Israel in solidarity with Tehran.
Israel has issued evacuation orders covering around 15 percent of Lebanese territory since then, mostly in the south and in suburbs south of Beirut. More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to Lebanese authorities.
Israel has also pledged to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River as part of a “security zone” it says is intended to protect its northern residents.
“Hopefully a ceasefire will be reached,” said Ahmed Harm, a 54-year-old man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs. “Lebanon can’t take it anymore. The country is collapsing economically, and everything is collapsing.”
Outside a school sheltering displaced people in Sidon, pillows and blankets were piled onto cars as some families held out hope of returning home soon. On an astroturf football field, one family had packed plastic bags with clothes, pots and pans, towels, sheets and blankets.
“We’re just waiting for the official decision from the top, so we can go back,” said Samar al-Saibany, who was displaced from a village in the south.
Local mayor Mustafa al-Zein said more than 28,000 people were sheltering in the area as of Tuesday night. He cautioned residents against trying to return before an official signal.
“In the south, give someone a signal to return, and he’ll return,” Zein said.
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‘A Lot of Work to Do’ to Reopen Strait of Hormuz, UK’s Starmer Says on Gulf Trip
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday there was still a lot of work to do to reopen the Strait of Hormuz following the US-Iran ceasefire, speaking during a visit to the Gulf.
Starmer will hold talks with regional leaders during the visit, which had been planned before the ceasefire was announced.
“We now … have a ceasefire, but there’s a lot of work to do, as you will appreciate, a lot of work to make sure that that ceasefire becomes permanent and brings about the peace that we all want to see,” he said in a speech to military personnel at a base in Saudi Arabia.
“But also a lot of work to do in relation to the Strait of Hormuz, which has an impact everywhere across the world.”
Starmer, who has been heavily criticized by US President Donald Trump for failing to support the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, has hosted multinational meetings on how allies could support the reopening of the key strait that is fundamental to oil and gas trade.
“It’s our job to make sure that the Strait is open, that we’re able to get the energy that the world needs out and stabilize the prices back in the United Kingdom,” Starmer told reporters.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also spoke to her US counterpart, Marco Rubio, on Tuesday, about diplomatic measures to secure the reopening of the Strait, including last week’s UK-led meeting that brought together over 40 countries to discuss the issue.
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Netanyahu Backs US–Iran Ceasefire, Says Deal Excludes Lebanon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participates in the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of the Iron Swords War on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem on Oct. 16, 2025. Photo: Alex Kolomoisky/POOL/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement in the hours following the ceasefire agreement, announcing Israel’s support for the US-brokered two-week truce with Iran while clarifying that it does not extend to Lebanon.
In the statement, Netanyahu’s office said Israel backs the decision by US President Trump to suspend strikes against Iran for two weeks, on the condition that Tehran immediately reopens the Strait of Hormuz and halts all attacks against the United States, Israel, and countries in the region.
The statement added that Israel supports Washington’s broader objective of ensuring Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile, or terrorism-related threat to regional and global security. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the United States has reassured Israel that these goals will remain central in the upcoming negotiations.
“The United States has told Israel that it is committed to achieving these goals,” the statement said, noting that these priorities are shared by the US, Israel, and their regional allies.
It also stressed that the ceasefire does not apply to Lebanon, stating explicitly that “the two-week ceasefire does not include Lebanon.”
In the hours following the announcement, Iran launched additional missile strikes targeting Israel and several Gulf states before tensions appeared to ease toward morning.