'I have invented nothing. Reality turns out to be more fascinating and yet also more terrible than any product of the imagination.' In an old cardboard suitcase found in a flea market in Jaffa, Roman Frister discovered the scraps of paper that were to form the basis of this remarkable history. Using everything from upholsterers' bills to personal letters, he reconstructs the story of the Levy family, who struggled to become one of the richest and most respected Jewish families in Pomerania, Prussia, but whose fortunes were to turn to dust in Nazi Germany. The story of the Levy family reads like an epic novel, but the events that shaped their lives were all too real for the generations of Jews who made a home in Prussia, then Germany. Yet as the power of the German Reich grew, so did the impossible tensions between the love of their homeland and their Jewish identity.