Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, Korb explores the feelings of entrapment and violation that define the family in Hendel's story.

Small Change recounts the tragic story of a German immigrant family haunted by the Holocaust. Though many years have passed since they moved to Israel, Shlezi and Gerda still carry the repercussions of the concentration camps, and they pass the pathologies this trauma has engendered to their daughter Rutchen. The family in Small Change" may have escaped from Germany and the Nazis, but they cannot escape from the ensuing feelings of entrapment, violation, and paranoia. With its multiple motifs of imprisonment, violence, hatred, and aggression, the concentration camp experience has come to limit the family and its interior relationships.

Shlezi and his unhealthy obsessions set the tone...