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Throughout his life, Joseph Kertes had been haunted by his grandmother's story of Hungarian family members who survived the Holocaust due to the efforts of a nephew, who, working with Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews by issuing protective passports and identity papers, rescued the family from certain death.

But a post-war rift between Kertes' family and the nephew who saved them from extinction resulted in his disappearance from their lives; they never saw or heard from him again, despite numerous attempts to learn his whereabouts and reconcile.

"This story has always been a source of shame and guilt to me," Kertes told The Jewish State. "So I wrote the novel 'Gratitude,' which is inspired by this family anecdote. I wanted to create a novel around and about these people. The story is that any of us -- Christians, Jews, saints, and sinners -- can make mistakes with tragic and lasting consequences."

Kertes discussed his book, published in 2008 and winner in 2009 of the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Award, Best Holocaust Novel, by the Jewish Book Council of Canada, with an audience at Two River Theater in Red Bank Dec. 8. The event was presented by the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Center at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft and NovelTeas in Red Bank.

Kertes, who lives in Toronto, was born in Hungary but escaped with his family to Canada after the 1956 revolution. He founded the creative writing and comedy programs at Toronto's Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning and currently is the school's dean of creative and performing arts.

"Gratitude" is the story of Dr. Robert and Klari Beck, whose characters are based on Kertes' grandparents. The affluent Budapest family's world shattered in 1944, when the Nazis imposed their iron grip on the city and began the deportation and slaughter of the Jewish population.

When Robert and Klari were placed on a train headed toward the death camps, their nephew, Paul Beck, based on their real-life nephew who was a lawyer working with Wallenberg, came to their rescue. Armed with documents from Wallenberg that identified his family as Swedish nationals, Paul stopped the train en route and demanded their release. The ruse worked, and the Becks spent the rest of the war in a safe house established by Wallenberg.

When the Russians occupied Hungary, the elder Becks felt Soviet rule could be tolerated; Paul, who was now sharing their home, strongly disagreed, and when Robert Beck told him to adhere to the Russian mandate to join the city's work details or leave his home, Paul left and disappeared from their lives forever.

"I think Robert was just trying to assert his authority when he told Paul to join the work crews or leave," Kertes told The Jewish State prior to the Two River Theater program. "Robert wanted things to return to normal, complete with lovely dinners and cultural entertainment. But Paul wasn't buying it. He felt the so-called liberators were the new occupiers, especially in light of Wallenberg's disappearance, reportedly at Russian hands. When Robert issued this challenge, something snapped in Paul."

As a result, Paul's disappearance was the sad outcome of Robert's minor complaint, an act that caused the fictional and real-life family a lifetime of guilt, Kertes added.

"I don't think Robert ever meant to completely disown Paul, but what happened is an example of how a person who is basically good can do something wrong," he said.

The author, who is known for his award winning comedic stories and children's books, felt a "responsibility" to write this complex novel, he said.

"I felt the weight of being my family's chronicler," said Kertes. "It was important to me to express gratitude to those who do small and large things that help us. Taking on this project was a psychological burden, and the challenge was to write about real human beings, not just heroes and villains. And all people -- even good people -- are flawed."

The book was written as a novel because a nonfiction account would have been too confining, Kertes said. About 75 percent of the book is based on the true stories he heard from family members and other Holocaust survivors, and the novel form also allowed him to flesh out other characters and include additional material to illustrate the absurdity, evil, and violence that permeated the times, he added.

His research took him to Hungary and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he discovered photographs of the real Paul Beck with Wallenberg. More photos were unearthed in New York, and Kertes also learned that Paul had lived in Montreal 20 years ago. He searched Jewish cemetery records to no avail.

"This book took me eight intense years to write, and it haunted me for several more years," Kertes said. "It was not a cathartic experience. But as the grandchild of survivors, I felt a responsibility to sound the alarm about what happened during a time of hope, faith, love, and loss. And I want my children to know the context from which I came."