When I was 13, I watched my father lose his two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. Despite the years of suffering, his death still felt sudden, and without his joy, love, and knowledge, the world felt empty and strange. As time passed and remembering him became less painful, I tried to think back on the stories he told me every night at bedtime about his childhood. I realized they were fading—if only I had taken the time to write them down. Instinctively, I turned to my father's mother's story, my grandmother Monique Eisenger, who survived the Holocaust. I felt an urgency...