Day After Night: A Novel

Four women with four different stories of surviving the European Jewish Holocaust find themselves in an internment camp run by the British military in Palestine as illegals, Jews without papers. Based on the true story of a dramatic rescue in 1945 of more than 200 prisoners at the Atlit internment camp, this extraordinary novel is equal parts history, adventure, and celebration of the profound determination of the human psyche. I loved this book and will recommend it for reading groups.

World War II is over and it is the 'twilight of colonial rule' in the Middle East. Still, the British are wielding a firm grip on the Holy Land and Jewish refugees are being interned in camps that, while not nearly what they experienced under the Nazis, are a barrier to the freedom that the Holocaust survivors seek and deserve. Diamant shows us the seeds of the state of Israel through the eyes of several women who have been waylaid at camp: Atlit, in Palestine for a variety of reasons; Tedi, a lovely, blue-eyed Jewish girl from Amsterdam; angry Zorah from a poor Warsaw ghetto; and Shayndel and Leonie, fast friends from vastly different backgrounds, one a prostitute in Paris during the war, and the other a resistance fighter from Nazi-occupied Vilnius. This book ultimately gives us renewed faith in humanity.