ABSTRACT
This chapter has two intertwined topics, one biographical, the other autobiographical. The first discusses the difficulties in writing catastrophic biographies using the life of Alexander Weissberg-Cybulski (1901–1964) as an example. The autobiographical part deals with the centrality of the Second World War in the lives of the postwar generation of European Jews to which the author belongs. Weissberg-Cybulski was an Austrian-Jewish physicist, writer, and businessman best known for his book The Accused, describing his imprisonment in the Soviet Great Terror. He then lived through the five years of German occupation of Poland. After the war, he spent his business and writing career mostly in France. He was part of an international milieu of scientists, intellectuals, writers, and artists first active in left-wing, then anti-Stalinist politics and cultural activities in Europe. Their travails threw a heavy shadow on the generation of their grandchildren.
