Conventional wisdom, propagated repeatedly by the media, is that once damaged, distorted or deviant, you stay that way. This was also very much the doctrine of our late-19th century forbears in psychiatry. More recently, healthy antidotes to this pessimistic nihilism have come, for adults, from George Brown's work on protective factors and, for children, Michael Rutter's on psychosocial resilience. Even though damaged, some people make a good lifelong adjustment.

Kerry Bluglass has not set out to write a psychiatric text but any psychiatrist will benefit from reading it. Hidden from the Holocaust contains extended interviews with 15 adults who, as Jewish children in occupied Europe, were saved from certain execution by being hidden, usually by Christians. The accounts concentrate upon their memories from childhood and then trace their subsequent lives to the present in terms of relationships, emotions, memories, work and family life. The childhood stories are terrifying but their lives since then have been extremely positive. They now, in their 70s, are all stable, creative and often humorous people. Through their employed work, charitable involvement and most of all their families, they have brought great benefit to the well-being of those around them, and through their stories they counter the destructive, prevailing pessimism of our society.

I do not want to spoil your enjoyment by telling you the stories. Suffice it to say that once into a story I could not put it down, and it followed me round into every room in the house. Kerry Bluglass wears her psychiatric persona lightly, but it is always there. The interviews themselves are insightful and skilful, and her commentary relates this group to the more general body of work on resilience.

This qualitative follow-up study emerged from the author's internationally recognised work on bereavement. At a conference in Brussels she met and made a friend of a colleague in the same area of interest. As her friend's personal story unfolded, so her own views and preconceptions concerning victims and their long-term disabilities were rectified, and from this first story, the rest of the study developed.

For the general reader this is a heart-warming account of the triumph of the human spirit. For the European citizen (including me) it is part of our history, which we must never forget. For the psychiatrist these accounts should make us think again when we are tempted to abandon our recalcitrant patients to the consequences of their heredity and early environment. One thriver wrote: ‘While it is important to remember the past, it is equally important to look forward to the future, celebrating the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people to survive. Most of us who survived have endeavoured to lead as full a life as possible’.