Heroes, Rogues, Family: Two Centuries of Survival

In I Want This in Writing, Yoram Rubin launches an epic quest to discover the five generations of dead Rubins he never met but whose absence, he is certain, has shaped his entire life.

He begins in World War II, with tense-and-terrifying stories of his father and grandfather, both antiquarian booksellers who survived the Holocaust using their wits and their “Aryan good looks” as their only currency. But in a radical departure from typical Holocaust narratives, he moves both backward in time 150 years and forward to the present day, discovering along the way a previously unknown branch of the family tree peopled with radical philosophers, communist agitators, and great achievers—quite a counterpoint to the flawed-but-fearless street fighters in his own lineage. A sweeping, action-packed narrative spanning centuries, Rubin moves seamlessly from the courts of Emperor Franz Joseph to Nazi torture camps, from Mossad-directed spy rings to personal vendettas by his grandfather, and from tales of courage and heroism to heart-wrenching betrayals and collateral family damage.

What began as a fact-finding mission evolved into a confrontation with a legacy of conflict shaped by decisions made under extraordinary strain. Men deeply wounded by war and dislocation acted from fear, survival, and incomplete understanding, often unaware of the harm their choices would inflict on those who came after them. These choices hardened into enduring rifts, not from malice alone, but from lives lived in extremis—fractures that persisted long after their authors were gone.

A one-of-a-kind book, I Want This in Writing is harrowing, heartbreaking, and, at times hilariously funny—an up-close-and-very-personal look at one Jewish family and its awe-inspiring place in history. It is an attempt to restore dignity to the dead, to make peace with a fragmented family, and to understand how the past continues to live within us—until it is finally put into words.