Neshoma

In interwar Amsterdam, seventeen-year-old Rusha lives in the Jewish quarter, writing to her brother Max, who has emigrated to the Dutch East Indies, about daily life: proud diamond cutters, haggling market traders, cabaret songs, civic leaders like De Miranda championing social housing, and entrepreneurs behind De Bijenkorf, the Amstel Hotel, and cinema Tuschinski. Optimism after World War I yields to depression, fascism, and occupation; lechajim sustains the community as Rusha matures, balancing her socialist father and religious husband, until World War II forces an impossible choice and leaves the neshoma of Amsterdam.