The Price of Bread
The Unwanted Inheritance of Silence
Coming May 2027
The Price of Bread, is the debut work of narrative nonfiction by Melbourne-based writer, speaker and researcher Em Lewin, a forensic and deeply personal investigation into the hidden lives of her grandparents, Romanian Holocaust survivors who kept their secrets for decades while building a life of quiet, determined pride in Australia.
Em grew up in a family that was fully, committedly Australian. Jewish identity and Australian identity were not two separate things but one, expressed through community, culture, faith and a deep sense of contribution. Her family were proud, present and forward-facing. Which made the silence about the past the one thing that never quite made sense.
Then, in 2020, she found their hidden testimonies buried in the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, ones they gave and never mentioned. What was in them was not what she expected. It was not even close.
About the Book
The Price of Bread tells the story of two teenagers in small Romanian towns, watching persecution quietly devour everything around them, their education, their friendships, their chance at a normal coming of age.
Her grandfather Mordechai disguised himself as a Nazi soldier and smuggled food into a ghetto for nearly two years, saving hundreds from starvation. Her grandmother Ruti swapped identities with a girl in Auschwitz, a decision that sent her to a camp in Germany whose brutality exceeded even Auschwitz, leaving her deaf from a beating that never healed.
Two teenagers. Two disappearing acts. Two prices neither of them ever stopped paying.
What follows is Em's own Sherlock Holmes journey, pulling her across archives, survivor testimonies, photographs and long-lost relatives across seven countries, uncovering denied massacres, extraordinary kindness in unimaginable places, and a discovery so unexpected it reshapes everything: that Ruti had grown up alongside a boy named Elie Wiesel, a bond so intimate and unspoken that it reframes what it means to witness, to survive, and to have been known by someone the world would later make into a monument.
The Price of Bread asks profound questions: what selflessness costs in wartime, what suffering persists long after liberation, and what silence does to the generations it passes through. Most of all, it asks what becomes possible, for the living and the dead alike, when the past is finally allowed to speak.
About Em
Em Lewin holds degrees in Psychology and Marketing and Business from Monash University, and spent more than twenty years in senior leadership roles at some of Australia's most recognised companies, including Coles, Heinz, Bunnings, WPP and MARS. It was that combination of psychological training, strategic thinking and professional discipline that shaped the forensic rigour she brought to four years of research for this book.
Six years ago she stepped back from corporate life to write the book she couldn't not write.
Em has spoken locally and internationally about inherited trauma and Holocaust memory, including presenting to German high school students in Geislingen, the very town where her grandmother was imprisoned during the war. She describes it as one of the most powerful rooms of her life.
She is also an artist, creating Jewish and abstract works as another way of processing what words alone cannot hold. At home in Melbourne with her husband and two children, she is currently attempting to reconnect with her Romanian and Hungarian roots through cooking, a project her children are tolerating with mixed enthusiasm.
The Price of Bread has received editorial guidance from Katia Ariel and mentorship from authors Rachelle Unreich and Joseph Reich.
Coming May 2027
The Price of Bread will be available for purchase in May 2027.
Want to be the first to know when it's available? Follow Em's research and writing journey on Instagram, where a growing community drawn to Holocaust history, family memory and identity follows her work.
Follow the Journey
Em shares her research and writing journey on Instagram, a growing community drawn to Holocaust history, family memory and identity.