Feathered Quill Book Reviews

 #Bookreview of Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago

By: Ruth Benario (A Peter Benario Project with Carolyn Zalesne)

Publication Date: June 12, 2025

ISBN: 979-8283701479

Reviewed by: Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.

Review Date: August 14, 2025

One of the greatest works of Holocaust literature ever written is Ahron Appelfeld’s 1979 classic Badenheim 1939, a gripping novel that speaks to what happened prior to the building of the concentration camps and before the Nazis forcibly acquired absolute power in Germany. In Appelfeld’s book, families live their lives normally, blissfully naïve to the fact that their households will be completely upended, their families will be torn apart, and humanity would be fighting its second world war. Appelfeld, in other words, wrote a book about what was going to happen rather than what eventually happened during the 1940’s. Within Holocaust literature, this approach is generically uncommon, but does expose life prior to fascism. Similarly, Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago is reminiscent of Appelfeld’s dramatic narrative, but told from the standpoint of Ruth Benario, a real-life woman who lived through World War II and was able to tell her story from her humble beginnings. Her work, which is edited by Peter Benario (Ruth’s son) and Carolyn Zalesne, is an exciting, honest, and stunning autobiographical testimony coming from a Protestant citizen who fortunately lived through the war to tell her tale.

Organizationally, Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago (a fantastic title) starts with Ruth living her best life as a child in Erfurt, a town in East Germany on its way to being occupied. Right from the beginning of this memoir, readers will be impressed by the abundance of concrete details provided by Benario, who used her handwritten diaries as her guide. For example, when talking about her grandmother Helene, she remembers sitting “across from her in a big blue satin armchair, eating those delicious cream puffs, while she completely mesmerized me with her stories of strange and distant lands.” Whether delving into her love affairs with Gerhard, a naval captain in the Third Reich, and Ernie, a Jewish-American counterintelligence officer, whom she would ultimately marry; or her historical discussions about the Ritchie Boys (20,000 American soldiers who trained in Camp Ritchie near Cascade, Maryland); or her family life in America after World War II, Benario’s work is rife with beautifully constructed and vividly produced passages coming straight from her diaries and onto the printed page. Ruth’s story is a complete one, a harrowing testimony of a woman who experienced the best and worst in humanity during a time of great strife and beyond.

Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago is so thorough and so inclusive, Benario and her editors even provide photos and newspaper clippings throughout the text to draw readers in further; a visual account of Ruth’s life allowing the audience to become a part of the family. And, that is the true beauty of Benario’s memoir and of master storytellers like Benario (and Appelfeld). As readers, we want to feel like we are experiencing what these characters, these people are experiencing. We want to not only empathize but also immerse ourselves in their lives to the point of almost feeling like one of the family. Benario, without question, does this in spades, providing readers with a work--an experience--that is certainly educational, emotional, and memorable.

Quill says: Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago is, by far, one of the best memoirs of the year and an absolute must read.

For more information about Yesterday Was Not So Long Ago, please visit the author's website at: peterbenario.com