Their Promised Land

A family history of surpassing beauty and power: Ian Buruma's account of his grandparents' enduring love through the terror and separation of two world wars

Ian Buruma's maternal grandparents were born into the same world: children of German-Jewish émigré stockbrokers living in London. But at the demand of his parents, Ian's grandfather, the dutiful son, broke up with his fiancée by letter just before leaving for the western front during World War I, where he served as a stretcher bearer in the Battle on the Somme. It was the first great shock their romance would suffer, but their love would survive it. Bernard (“Bun”) and Winifred (“Win”) Schlesinger were married for more than sixty years, but the heart of the story Buruma tells with characteristic grace in Their Promised Land lies within the span of the two world wars.

This is the moving story of an assimilated Jewish family in unhappy times, held together by a shared love of classical music. Never able entirely to take national belonging for granted, they were more British than the British, in the way their forebears were more German than the Germans, until Hitler made this impossible. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Schlesingers began to face the real prospect that the Nazis could defeat England and place their family's survival in question. Nonetheless, they helped twelve Jewish children escape from Nazi Germany and gave them new lives in Britain. Drawn into service during World War II, Bun was stationed in India as a military doctor.

No matter what else befell them, Win and Bernard sustained a remarkably consistent stream of letters back and forth between England and India, averaging a letter every other day, and filling their correspondence with vivid accounts of their respective spheres of activity. Back home, Win struggled through wartime privation and the blitz to hold her family together. Through courage and imagination, she cast a spell over her children that kept fear and horror at bay, such that her son John, who became the Academy Award–winning director of Midnight Cowboy, recalled the war years as the most magical time of his life.

Their Promised Land is Ian Buruma's spellbinding homage to the sustaining power of a family's love and devotion through very dark days.