literature

When I was a child (not that long ago) no one talked about the Holocaust. Some of my mother's family survived the camps, but nobody mentioned it then. All we knew was that they were terrified of dogs and one had a phobia of queues.

Schindler's List and this year's 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps have done a lot to change that. Now Jewish Book Week, billed as "Europe's largest Jewish book fair" has taken up the theme, from every literary perpective. It opens on Sunday (8pm) with eminent American scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who has acted as an adviser to the German government on ways of teaching Jewish history, discussing her new book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. And the search for survivors is dealt with in the closing talk of the week (Sun 12 Mar, 8pm) when Theo Richmond, a Jewish journalist, discusses his seven-year quest to find the survivors of Konin, his family's little Polish village which was razed to the ground by the Nazis.

Highlights in between include Israeli author David Grossman in conversation with Melvyn Bragg (Tue 8.15pm); and prize-winning novelist Alan Isler examining the problem of writing fiction about the Holocaust (Wed 6.15pm). Joseph Heller expounds on his "Long Life as a Jewish Author" (Thur 8pm, which should perhaps be titled "Life after Catch-22"), and even International Women's Day gets a look in with a debate on the portrayal of Jewish women in English fiction (Wed 8.15pm).

Marion Cohen, Chairman of the Jewish Book Council and one of the event's organisers, feels that they can add something to all the Holocaust publicity: "New things are coming up that have been hidden - they call it the 45- year syndrome: for all those years survivors have put it to the back of their consciousness. Now there is a need in a lot of survivors to let their story out." Here's the perfect opportunity.

Jewish Book Week, Sun-12 Mar, Royal National Hotel, Bedford Way, WC1 (071-722 7925). Entry to book fair is free