Czernowitz

“I had nothing” after arriving in Israel, he told the Paris Review, recalling a pivotal day when he wrote down the names of his family members and scrawled a simple declaratory sentence: “I was born in Czernowitz and my mother was killed.”

Landing in a cornfield, he soon connected with his father and fled to Czernowitz, where they stayed in the Jewish ghetto before being taken east to forced-labor camps in Transnistria.

His father, Rubin, and his mother, Martha, were leftist Zionists who emigrated to Palestine, he from Czernowitz in present-day Ukraine, she from Prague.

Wait until you get to the part where Gruber is shown preparing veal chops Czernowitz, stuffed with wild mushrooms and garlic; you’ll understand.

Ms. Schaechter married a physician, Dr. Jonas Gottesman, and they spent the war years in the Czernowitz ghetto.