Too Deep Were Our Roots: A Viennese Jewish memoir of the years between the two World Wars

Born just before World War I, Sonia Wachstein's earliest memories of her childhood in Vienna revolve around her family's house looking out over the peaceful Vienna Woods. She also recalls a post-war time of rampant inflation and unemployment. Long an intellectual and cultural capital, the city was also a place where the well-established Jewish community prospered.

But as the European political situation changed during the 1920s and 1930s, life for the assimilated Jews in Vienna began to cha...