I Remember the Location Exactly by Eric Koch

Winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award, Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize in Biography/
Memoir 2007

Set in Frankfurt, Germany, Cambridge, England and Quebec, Canada, I Remember the Location Exactly traces the most unusual life of Eric Koch from 1919 until 1941, when he as able to leave the internment camp to which he had been confined. Caught up in a period of enormous change and ominous transformation, Koch paints a vivid picture of an assimilated-Jewish family that was unprepared for the events following January 1933.

The Koch family was an established family in Frankfurt. Eric Koch’s grandfather Robert Koch was a court jeweller who had founded his store in 1879. His father had served in the German army during the first world war and saw action on the French and Russian fronts. He had married into another prominent family – the Kahns – who had achieved wealth in banking.Eric Koch was born in 1919. Throughout the ‘twenties and early ‘thirties life for the Kochs, an assimilated Jewish family, was as normal as that of many other comfortably off families who had been spared the misery caused by inflation and depression. But everything began to change in 1933 when the Nazis took power.

Eric Koch’s memoir documents, in a very personal way, the life of his family,the circle of their friends, and the life of Frankfurt generally from 1919 onward. It also covers his experiences at school and university in England after his emigration in 1935, and his internment as an ‘enemy alien’ in England and Canada. It is a book full of colorful characters and entertaining incidents – all based upon fact. The 30 chapters are all written in different styles – some are narratives, others are short dramatic scenes, others are diary entries and letters. The book is at the same time – a series of short stories, vignettes, portraits and more.

Eric Koch is Canada’s premier historical fiction author whose works have now been translated into German, Italian, and Chinese. He is the author of seven works of fiction and numerous nonfiction works. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

For more information on Eric Koch, visit his blog for regular insightful posts.