Author, Long Beach Native, Takes On Holocaust For New Novel

LONG BEACH, NY — Roslyn Bernstein spent her formative years in Long Beach. She would graduate from Long Beach High School in 1959, but would not forget her time by the ocean. She previously wrote "Boardwalk Stories," a set of fictional tales during a 20-year stretch in Long Beach.

Bernstein is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

She married her second husband, who, of course, she met in Long Beach.

The author has more serious fare in her latest effort and first novel, "The Girl Who Counted Numbers."

"She resembles me a little, but it's not a memoir," Bernstein told Patch.

It's based on the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. The infamous Nazi leader was extradited from Argentina.

"During that year, I lived in Israel," she said.

But the story tells of a girl who is sent to Israel by her father, who is a lawyer (Bernstein's father Morris was a lawyer in Long Beach).

The title character is asked to find out what happened to her uncle, who vanished after the Holocaust. There is no record of the man.

"It's also about her finding her own independence and understanding what it means," Bernstein reflected.

But she said the plot has a mystery as to why the uncle didn't emigrate with the rest of the family in 1921.

That was the same year Bernstein's father and siblings left Poland.

"While my immediate family did not suffer from the Holocaust, the branches of the family, some of them were completely extinguished," Bernstein said.

The "counted numbers" in the title refer to Jews being tattoed during the Holocaust.

Bernstein said she's been thinking about the Eichmann trial for decades, unable to decide on how to write a book involving it.

When she won a fellowship six years ago from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she had to find something to delve into.

"The first day, the whole first chapter of this book came out of me," she recalled.

While this is a fictionalized story, "I'm a journalist, so I make the context very realistic," Bernstein said of the process.

"The Girl Who Counted Numbers" is available now on Amazon.