Neumann brings each relative to vivid life. When Time Stopped is an unputdownable detective story and an epic family memoir, spanning nearly ninety years and crossing oceans. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined. Ten years later Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries, and other memorabilia. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who, to escape the German death net, traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo’s eyes. Of thirty-four Neumann family members, twenty-five were murdered by the Nazis. Eighteen days later his prisoner number was entered into the morgue book. In 1941, the first Neumann family member was taken by the Nazis, arrested in German-occupied Czechoslovakia for bathing in a stretch of river forbidden to Jews.

In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.

When Time Stopped by Ariana Neumann