Barring a Miracle is a biographical and historical account of the Stupp-Sartiel family across a century marked by Jewish life, exile, memory and antisemitic violence. Hervé Deguine reconstructs the family’s path from 1850 to 1950 through the story of Yossi and Yosefa Sartiel, whom he met in 1991 at Kibbutz Kfar HaHoresh in Galilee, and through the silence surrounding Yossi’s past. The book moves between private family history and the wider history of twentieth-century Europe, showing how personal choices, displacement, survival and inherited trauma become part of one family’s destiny. Written as an investigative life story rather than a conventional history book, it is intended for readers interested in Jewish family biography, Holocaust-related history, European antisemitism and the ways a single family story can illuminate a broader historical wound.
Author: Hervé Deguine
Publisher: Bonaventure
Year of publication: 2024
Number of pages: 522
