Please Welcome Our Guest Today, Dr. Allen Malnak, Author of Hitler's Silver Box



Dr. Allen Malnak


About the author: Dr. Allen Malnak

Following medical residency, Dr. Malnak served as chief internal medicine, U.S. Army Hospital, Fort Sill, OK, and as a clinical investigator in liver disease and medical director of the emergency department at Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital. A board-certified internist in the Chicago area, he was an assistant clinical professor at Stritch School of Medicine for 25 years. His interest in the Holocaust was sparked by the fact that his father’s entire Lithuanian family was murdered by the Nazis.
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About the Novel, Hitler's Silver Box -

Hitler’s Silver Box, a modern day historical thriller set in Chicago, begins with an elderly bookseller and Holocaust survivor, Max Bloomberg, being brutally murdered by a trio of thugs. Max’s closest relative, Dr.Bruce Starkman, chief ER resident at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital is shocked when he learns his Orthodox uncle is dead—his body cremated, a violation of his uncle’s religious beliefs. Max leaves a clue, allowing Bruce to find a hidden journal in Max's handwriting detailing his uncle’s ordeal some fifty years before in a Nazi concentration camp, during which Max is forced to craft a silver box as a birthday present for Hitler. The box contains a document written by Nazi leaders, which if discovered will lead to a worldwide Nazi resurgence. Max manages to escape and bury it in a forest near Prague. Bruce decides to find the box and solve the mystery of his uncle’s untimely demise. He and an attractive Israeli female companion with a military background are pursued and attacked by present day Nazis intent on reviving the Reich. The novel leads from Chicago to Paris to Prague in swift, hair-raising turns. The full journal of Max Bloomberg is included in the book.

Background of the Novel:

After retiring from the practice and teaching of internal medicine, I took an adult education course taught by an outstanding novelist and previous short story editor of “The New Yorker,” Hollis Alpert. One of several topics for a short story was “A Silver Box.” Perhaps because my father’s entire Lithuanian family had been murdered by the Nazis, I wrote the story about a concentration camp prisoner, Max Bloomberg, who was forced to make a silver box as a birthday present for Hitler.

The professor suggested it had the making of a novel, and I changed the protagonist to a nephew of the victim, and while the silversmith’s experience in the camp is told in his journal, basically the historical thriller is about a search for the box and it’s horrendous contents with Bruce, the young ER physician going up against present day Nazis, who are willing to torture or kill to get their hands on the silver box, which his uncle Max was able to bury near Prague as the Second World War was coming to an end some fifty years before the novel begins.

Writing the novel required considerable research. Having worked during my training and military service in a number of emergency rooms as well as having been medical director of a large ER department in Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital, I was familiar with that aspect of the story. I studied articles and books on life inTheresienstadt concentration camp and had to learn a great deal about silversmithing.

The most difficult chapters for me to write were the two that made up Max Bloomberg’s journal. Max is Bruce’s uncle and the silversmith who was forced while a prisoner in Theresienstadt concentration camp to make the silver box. Many aspects of Max’s fight for survival were gut wrenching. The provenance of the silver he had to use almost drove him and me mad.

Availability:
Book’s website: http://www.hitlerssilverbox.com/,
amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, kobo.com. Soon in local book stores.