An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters From Westerbork by Etty Hillesum, published in one volume in English 1996

"[B]y knowing and feeling so deeply and fully, an unknown young woman became one of the most exceptional and truest witnesses of the devastation through which she lived and of the suffering humankind whose fate she chose to join." Eva Hoffman from the preface to the 1996 one-volume edition of Etty Hillesum's diaries and letters

Etty Hillesum, a Dutch citizen and an assimilated Jew, was born in 1914 and died in Auschwitz three months after she arrived there from the Westerbork transit camp in 1943.  These bare facts are movingly fleshed out in the volumes of Etty’s diaries that she kept from 1941-1943 when she lived in Amsterdam and in letters she wrote to her friends in Amsterdam from the Westerbork transit camp.

In the Introduction J.G. Gaarlandt, who saw to the publication of the diaries and the letters in 1981, stated that Etty started the diary at the same time she became involved with Julius Spier, a German Jewish refugee who had trained with Jung. The diary was a place where Etty could reflect on her effort to be more conscious of her psycho-social development.

The backdrop to the diaries was obviously the war and the German occupation of Holland. But early in the diary Etty made a point to turn inward and focus on issues of body and soul. An intellectual who was studying Russian and tutoring students studying Russian, she had read widely in many philosophical, religious and literary texts – from St. Augustine’s Confessions to the Gospel of Matthew to Psalms to the poet Rilke and the novelists Tolstoy and Dosteovsky. She contemplated the meaning in these texts as she sought to live a spiritual life, a less selfish life, one devoted to others. She wrote a lot about what "God" meant; she spoke directly to God; she prayed for strength; she refused to hate.

The contents of the diary entries shifted in the later entries. Etty could not help but be preoccupied with the terrifying world outside her room in Amsterdam and spent some time planning for when she would be in a labor camp. It is heartbreaking to read about her plan to go to the dentist soon so that she would be in good physical shape to withstand the hardships of labor. And she also thought about what books she would bring with her.

In an act of defiance, despite the increasingly horrifying situation of Holland’s Jewish population, she continued to see beauty all around her – both in human nature and in her natural surroundings. She refused to go into hiding, despite the urging of her friends, choosing to volunteer to go on the first transport from Amsterdam to Westerbork where she worked for the Jewish Council and spent much of her time in the camp’s hospital. Having the privilege of postponing deportation because she was a worker made her very uncomfortable, but she used it to help keep her parents off of the weekly deportation lists. She wanted no dispensation for herself. Eventually, despite her position, she and her parents and a brother were deported. The last written communication from her was a postcard she threw from the train to Auschwitz.  Addressed to a friend, it was found by a Dutch farmer and mailed.

Her letters to her friends read like journalism: she reported in detail about the physical conditions in the camp as well as the tension and despair amongst inmates. She was very consciously bearing witness: she asked a friend to whom she entrusted the diaries to get them published.

Note: The combined volume that was published in 1996 that is widely circulated is an abridged edition of Etty Hillesum's diaries and letters.. The volume of the complete diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, a more scholarly volume,  was commissioned by the Etty Hillesum Foundation at the University of Ghent and was published in 2002 as a joint venture with Novalis at St. Paul University.

The 1996 volume has a Preface by Eva Hoffman (author of Lost in Translation, subject of an earlier post) which focuses on the personality of Etty that emerges from her diaries and letters. An Introduction  by J.G. Gaarlandt focuses more on background material on the family and the war in the Netherlands. This volume also includes very helpful footnotes and photos.

To read a short biography of Etty Hillesum and to see family photos, go to the site of the Etty Hillesum Foundation, by clicking here.

To read an article about the leaders of the Jewish Council at Westerbork and the choices they made, click here.

People
Louis Hillesum – married to Rebecca Bernstein; author’s parents
    Jaap – their son
    Esther (Etty) – their daughter; author
    Mischa – their son

Friends and Acquaintances
Julius Spier – engaged to Hertha Levie
    Ruth Busse-Spier – Julius’ daughter by his 1st marriage
    Wolfgang – his son by his 1st marriage
Werner and Leisl Levie
    Miriam and Renate – their daughters
Sam de Wolff
    Leo de Wolff – his son
Joseph Isadoor (Jopie) Vleeschhouwer – married to Cato Cahen
Joseph and Hedwig Mahler
Werner Sterzenbach – married to Alice Sterzenbach-David
Max Witmondt
Paul Cronheim
Eduard Spier
Herbert Kruskal
Max Osias Kormann – married to Rosa Laufer
    Gerd – his son
Herman Boasson
Milli Ortmann
Grete Wendelsgelst – Milli Ortmann’s sister
Philip Mechanicus
Friedrich Weinreb
Renate Laqueur – married to Paul Goldschmidt
Julius Simon
Leo Krijn
Max Ehrlich
Clara (Chaya) Goldstein
Willy Rosen
David Cohen
Abraham Asscher
Simon van Gelder
Joseph Spier

Places
Amsterdam
Westerbork

The Peddler's Grandson: Growing Up Jewish in Mississippi 1999

Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters nonfiction award in 2000

Edward Cohen (born in 1948) has written an interesting memoir about what it was like growing up as a Jew in the South, specifically, in Jackson, Mississippi. His was a large, close-knit extended family most of whom worked in the family business, Cohen Brothers, a men’s clothing store.

The original brothers, his grandfather Moise and great uncle Sam, married two sisters, and the two families set up housekeeping together in a house they built that came to be known as “The Big House.”  Cohen felt safe and loved there where all of the five children of Sam and Moise and their spouses and their children went every Sunday without fail for dinner. He felt protected from the Christian world outside the front door; he was never totally at ease with a culture and lifestyle that seemed markedly different from his own.

Cohen discusses the small Jewish community, their temple - Beth Israel, and their practice. He describes how assimilated the Jewish community was, whose members wanted to blend in  rather than stand out. He also discusses at length the relationship between the black and white communities in the still-segregated South, and the behavior and attitudes within the Jewish community toward race relations and civil rights when the 60's and 70's were upon them and there was social upheaval. 

In large part this memoir is about the author’s figuring out who he is – the grandson of immigrant Jews who had left everything behind in order to start a new life in a new country and who settled in the South.  He tries to calibrate how crucial his Jewish identity and Southern identity are to who he is, two parts of him that often were at war with each other.

This memoir includes photos.

For a short biography of Edward Cohen on the Mississippi Writers page click here.

People
Gershon Cohn - father of Etta, Nell, and Ida Cohn; author’s maternal great-grandfather
    Moise (Kahane) Cohen – married Etta Cohn; author’s grandparents
        Leonard Cohen – married Pauline Weltman; author’s parents
            Edward Cohen – their son; author
        Pearle Cohen – married Melvin
            Roslyn Frank – Pearle and Melvin’s daughter
            Janice Knowles – Pearle and Melvin’s daughter
    Isaac Lazar Cohen – Moise’s brother
    Sam Cohen – Moise’s brother; married Nell Cohn (Etta’s sister)
        Lazar Cohen – married Lolita Stein
            Gary Cohen – their son
        Bernard Cohen – Sam and Nell’s son; married Anne
        Marvin Cohen – Sam and Nell’s son; married Helen
            Harriet, Debbie, Marilyn Rothstein, Marci – 1st cousins of author; either the children of Bernard or Marvin
    Ike Levy – married Ida Cohn

Mother’s family
    Ben Weltman -  married to Rae (author’s grandparents
        Pauline – their daughter; married to Leonard Cohen (author’s parents)
            Edward – their son; author
        Louis Weltman – their son; married to Marcia

Friends and Acquaintances
Ralph Salomon
Eva Sussman
Rabbi Perry E. Nussbaum
Max Berman
    Walter Berman – his son
Victor Glick
Phyllis, Bea, and Celeste Lehman
Ellis Hart
Henry Kline

Places
Vaslui, Romania
Jackson, Mississippi
Rochester, NY
Memphis, Tenn.
Shreveport, Louisiana
         

Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History by Helen Epstein 1997

"[T]his book is more than a family history. It is a moving evocation of an old world and its destruction." from a review by Ruth Gay in the New York Times, November, 1997

In this very readable, and extensively researched memoir, Helen Epstein focuses on three generations of women who preceded her: her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother.

Epstein, born in 1947 in Prague to parents who were both survivors of concentration camps, started writing this memoir after her mother died in New York where the author grew up.  She had felt incredibly close to her mother at the same time that she sought distance and a better understanding of her mother’s early years. That led her to want to know more about the lives of her grandmother and great-grandmother.

Epstein went to Central Europe – to Prague and Vienna and to the villages where her family had lived earlier and spent time in archives at town halls and in cemeteries, tracing her family in those records that she was able to find. Of course it helped immeasurably that she could speak and read Czech although she had much help from archivists, friends, and relatives she tracked down in Europe, Israel, and America. 

What’s particularly interesting in this memoir is the historical background and cultural history Epstein includes which situates each generation in its time and place. We see how they spent their leisure and work time. Her mother and her grandmother were both expert seamstresses, her grandmother having established a business, Salon Weigert , that attracted a wealthy clientele until the Nazis forced them to give it up and then deported them. 

In telling their story Epstein spends considerable time talking about the status of being a Jew throughout the generations in Prague and the surrounding areas, commenting about how assimilated her parents and many in their generation were. She examines their reaction to the advance of Hitler and their having to confront the fact that they were not like other Czech citizens, however much they had always felt they were.

This memoir includes photos and an extensive bibliography.

To read a July, 2010 interview with Helen Epstein about her family history with particular reference to her book Children of the Holocaust, click here.

People
Maternal grandmother’s family
Abraham ben Samuel – assigned name Furcht; great great great great grandfather of author
        Jakub – grandson of Abraham
        Lazar – grandson of Abraham; married Josephine; author’s great great grandfather
            Therese Furcht – his daughter; married to Judah Sachsel; author’s great-grandparents
                Heinrich – Therese’s son; perhaps not Judah’s
                Rudolf – son of Therese and Judah
                Leopold – son of Therese and Judah
                Emil – son of Therese and Judah
                    Peter Scott (changed from Sachsel)– their son
                Josephine (Pepi) – daughter of Therese and Judah; married to Oskar Weigert and then Emil           Rabinek; author’s grandmother
                    Frances (Franziska) – daughter of Josephine and Emil; married to Pepik (Joe) Schon (Solar); 2nd husband Kurt Epstein
                        Helen – author, daughter of Francis and Kurt; married to Patrick Mehr
                            Daniel and Samuel – her sons
            Joachim Sachsel – brother of Judah; author’s great uncle
            Rosalia Sachsel – sister of Judah; author’s great aunt
                    Gisela Saudek – distant cousin of Frances

Maternal grandfather’s family
            Israel and Franziska (Fanny) Rabinek
                Gustav – their son
                Leo – their son
                Gisela Kremer– their daughter
                    Erna, Berta, Clara, Felix – Gisela’s children
                Gabriela Roger– their daughter
                    Kurt
                    Greta
                        Margaret – married Alphonse Hirsch
                Emil – their son; married Josephine Sashsel; author’s grandparents (see above)
                Helena Rissova – distant cousin of author
            Lev Vohryzek – father of distant cousin Kitty
                Kitty Egererova; his daughter – distant cousin of author
                    Miki – her son
 Ilse Aichinger -a Rabinek cousin of the author
 Lily Hearst (Emil Rabinek’s niece)
    John Hearst -  Lily’s son; married to Jean
Vava Schon (Nava Shan) – cousin of Pepik (Joe) Shon (author’s mother’s 1st husband)
Franzi Petschek – relative of Kurt Epstein (author’s father)

Friends, Acquaintances, and sources
Jiri Tichy
Charlotte Janu
Jakob Kaufmann
Leopold Kompert
Dorothea Schlegel
Rahel Varnhagen
Henriette Herz
Fanny Lewald
Fanny Neuda
Sigfried Kapper
Stefan Zweig
Leopold Hilsner
Moric Schiller
Frantisek Langer
    Jiri Langer – Frantisek’s son
Franz Kafka
Ernst Pawel
Hermine Hanel
Jan Zidek
Bertha Fanta and Ida Freund - sisters
Zuzana Nagy
Leo Oppenheimer
Honza Pollak
Margot and Arthur Korbel
Dr. Karel Steinbach
Rabbi Richard Feder

Places and Institutions
Brtnice, the former Czechoslovakia
Iglau, Germany (becomes Jihlava, the former Czechoslovakia)
Vysocina, the former Czechoslavakia
Prague                            “
Kolin                               “
Brataslava                        “
Barrandov,                        “
Roudnice-nad-Labem        “
Breslau, Germany
Celle, Germany
Vienna, Austria       
Salon Weigert, Prague
Concentration Camps: Terezientadt, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belson, Birkenau

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman 1994

"It is Mr. Aciman's great achievement that he has re-created a world gone forever now, and given us an ironical and affectionate portrait of those who were exiled from it." from a review by Barry Unsworth in the New York Times, February, 1995

This is a wonderful immersion into the life of a large, colorful, multi-lingual Sephardic family who moved from Constantinople, Turkey in the first decade of the twentieth century to Alexandria, Egypt where they lived a rather prosperous life until mid-century. The story, told by the author who was a child growing up in Alexandria amidst his parents, two sets of grandparents and many aunts, uncles and cousins, takes us  to the end of their stay when the last members of the family were expelled in 1965 and moved on to Europe and America. Most of the story takes place in Alexandria with a few scenes in Paris and in Venice where some of the exiled family members resettled.

The author illustrates how his family members seemed woven into the fabric of the city, owning businesses and thriving financially until the status of the Jews in Egypt changed radically with the end of the monarchy and the rise of Nasser, nationalism, pan–Arabism and anti-Israel sentiment. The established Jewish community no longer felt safe and was no longer welcome. Andre Aciman was thirteen when he left with his family for the United States.

Caveat: As in some memoirs, Aciman has not included most of the surnames of members of his extended family, I assume to protect the privacy of their descendants. He does not give us the surnames of either his mother’s or his father’s family, except in the case of his paternal grandfather whose name in Alexandria was spelled Adjamin, not Aciman. This was discovered by an internet source who went sleuthing. Unfortunately, Aciman does not alert us to the fact that he changed at least one important name, that of an uncle who figures prominently in the story.  Samir Raafat published an article on the internet stating that the uncle Aciman calls Vili, whose “real” name Aciman says is “Aaron,” was actually Maurice George Levi who changed his last name to Lee. So we can assume the surname on his father’s mother's side is “Levi.”

Given what we know about this name change, it’s possible that other names have been changed as well, so a list of the names as they appear in the memoir is not included. Unless you’re trying to trace the family name Levi  from Cairo and Constantinople, this memoir is best read as an evocation of the life of a Sephardic Jewish family in Alexandria, how they spend their time, how they live their lives in the first half of the twentieth century. And it is certainly well worth reading.

To read an op ed piece in the New York Times written by Andre Aciman in May, 2009 objecting to President Obama's failing to mention the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt after World War II in a speech Obama delivered in Egypt, click here.

Names
Aciman (Adjamin)
George George Lee (Levi)


Places
Alexandria - (Rue Memphis, Rue Esnah, Rue Delta, Avenue Ambroise Rally in Ibrahimieh, Grand Sporting, Cleopatra, Stanley Beach, Sidi Bishr, Smouha, the Corniche, Boulevard Saad Zaghloul, Vue Cherif, Rue des Pharaons, Rue Toussoum, Rue Phalaki,Rue Djabarti, Montaza Place, Place Mohammed Ali, Delices, Hannaux,  Athineos, La Cote, Hotel Cecil, Victoria College.)

Martha Quest by Doris Lessing 1952 (fiction)

"I read the Children of Violence novels and began to understand how a person could write about the problems of the world in a compelling and beautiful way, and it seemed to me that was the most important thing I could ever do." from an interview with Barbara Kingsolver by Bill Moyers on PBS Now, in May of 2002.

Martha Quest, the first in a series of a thinly-veiled autobiographical novels collected under the title Children of Violence by the Nobel-prize-winning author, Doris Lessing, covers her early years growing up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in between World War I and World War II. Written shortly after World War II, the author looks back at a moment in time, at life before the war, through the eyes of someone who knows the tragedy her generation is about to confront.

Lessing, born in 1919, creates a character much like herself, named Martha Quest, who is inquisitive and observant, disturbed by the racism and class divisions she sees in her daily life. Although the author is not Jewish, her second husband, Gottfried Lessing, was a German Jewish immigrant who fled from Germany in 1938. (They eventually divorced and he later became the East German ambassador to Uganda and was killed in 1979 during the revolt against Idi Amin.)

Jewish residents in Rhodesia are prominent characters in the novel. Cohen family members are an assortment of merchants, lawyers, Zionists and leftists.The Cohen brothers and their extended family are role models of intellectuals and professionals who actively help point Martha toward a life beyond the life on her British parents’ farm. Another character, Adolph King, a violinist at the fancy Sports Club, is portrayed as an insecure young man, the son of East European immigrant Jews who has anglicized his last name. Martha is encouraged to join the Left Book Club, which actually was founded in London to promote socialism, and it is where the author met her Jewish husband, Gottfried Lessing.

This novel is worth reading for the flavor of life in Zimbabwe with its diverse community of immigrant whites and their relationship to the native black population. This white population included a small Jewish community mostly living in the capital of Salisbury.

To read about the history of the Jewish community in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, click here.

People
Gottfried Lessing
    Peter Lessing - his son by Doris Lessing

Places
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe),
Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe)

When A Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa by Peter Godwin 2006

"[Godwin's] account of his family’s history and his parents’ lives in an increasingly desperate Zimbabwe is written with the unsparing eye of a journalist and the tender, conflicted emotions of a son." from a review in the New York Times by Michiko Kakitani, May 2007

Be forewarned: This memoir deals only in small measure with the author’s Jewish roots. Peter Godwin is a journalist who was born in Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) and now lives in New York City. In this memoir he chronicles his frequent trips to Zimbabwe from 1996 through early 2004 to visit his aging parents, and the book is mostly about the political/social/economic situation he found in Zimbabwe. In 1996 his father was suffering from diabetes exacerbated by a heart condition, and Godwin narrates his deterioration as he reports on the deterioration of the country under the dictatorship of Mugabe.

During one trip Godwin returned to his parents’ home and noticed a photo on the wall that had never been displayed before. When he asked his father who the people were in the photo, his father revealed for the first time that he was not a native Englishman, but rather a Polish Jewish refugee, the son of the couple in the photo. This was, of course, shocking news to his son, and the author followed it up with many questions, all of them extremely painful for his father to discuss. His father did his best to send his son lengthy e-mails, trying to fill in his family story.

Some of what Peter Godwin learned was that George Godwin was an assumed name; his father’s real name was Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb. His grandfather was an assimilated wealthy shipping agent living in Warsaw whose wife and daughter (the author’s grandmother and aunt) were transported presumably to Treblinka. The author’s father had been sent in  1939 to boarding school in England and never saw any of his family again although he heard from his father frequently from Warsaw where his father returned after the war and lived under an assumed name.

The author starts thinking about his own Jewish identity. He notes the small Jewish community that lived in Zimbabwe, mostly immigrants from the Baltics who were turned back from South Africa because of quota restrictions. And he mentions the Lemba, an African tribe who claim to be one of the "lost tribes" whose DNA confirms Jewish roots. He also remarks on the Jewish section of Pioneer cemetery that has 2000 graves.

The author also started reading contemporary Jewish history and attempted to find out the fate of his grandmother and aunt. He has gained a new understanding of his father, who always seemed somewhat remote and taciturn. And he understands the crowning irony: His father and his family were vilified in Poland because they were Jews, and he thought he’d made a secure future for himself and his family when we started anew in Africa, only to end up being vilified for being white and becoming fearful for his life and the life of his family, yet again.

This memoir includes photos.

To read about the Lemba in Southern Africa, click here.

People
Maurycy Goldfarb (assumed the name Stefan Golaszewski) - married to Janina Parnas
    Halina - their daughter
    Kazimierz Jerzy Goldfarb (assumed the name George Godwin) - son of Maurycy and Janina; married Mary Helen Godwin Rose
        Peter Godwin - son of Kazimierz and Mary Helen - relation ship with ?; author
            Holly - his daughter
        Joanna Cole - married to Peter Godwin
            Tom and Hugo - their sons
        Jain - daughter of Kazimierz and Mary Helen
        Georgina - daughter of Kazimierz and Mary Helen; married to Jeremy
             Xanthe - daughter of Georgina and Jeremy
Sophie Parnas - sister of Jenina; author's great aunt
        Alexander and Jeannette - children by different husbands

Places
Zimbabwe, Africa
England
Warsaw, Poland
Treblinka

      

Breadgivers by Anzia Yezierska, 1925 (fiction)

"[Anzia Yezierska's] novels, short stories, and autobiographical writing vividly depict both the literal hunger of poverty and the metaphoric hunger for security, education, companionship, home, and meaning—in short, for the American dream"  written by Sara Horowitz from an entry in the encyclopedia of the Jewish Women's Archive


This very interesting novel about an immigrant family from Poland who settled on Hester Street on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the 20th century was written by a Polish immigrant whose family settled in New York and is frequently included in college courses. For example, it can be found on American Literature, American History, Jewish Studies, Women Writers, or Women’s Studies syllabi.

Yezierska has created the Smolinsky family who live on the Lower East Side, a family much like her own. The narrator is Sara, the youngest and most independent of Reb Smolinsky’s daughters who constantly locks horns with her father who spends his time studying Torah and who expects his wife and daughters to support him and to do his bidding, including marrying the men he chooses for his daughters.  Defying her father, Sara moves out and works to put herself through school and becomes a teacher.

This novel recreates in much detail life on the Lower East Side – the tenements, the poverty, the pushcarts, and life inside their tiny apartment where their father has the best room for his studying and where one of Sarah’s sisters announces to the family that in America everyone has his or her own toothbrush and towel. We are pulled into a “war” between generations, between the old ways and the new, between duty to one’s family and a need to strike out on one’s own.

In telling this story, Yezierska creates authentic-sounding Yiddish-inflected dialogue. It is easy to recognize that the issues she raises are the ones many immigrants encountered as they made their way in a new country, the children often leading the way.


Click here to find many links for historical information and literature about the Lower East Side of NYC.

Places
The Lower East Side, New York City
Hester Street, New York City
Elizabeth, New Jersey

Ester and Ruzya : How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace by Masha Gessen 2004

"Reviewers sometimes call a work of nonfiction 'as exciting as a novel,' but that would be an understatement applied to this extraordinary family memoir." from a review by Katha Politt in the New York Times in March, 2005

Masha Gessen, a journalist who was born in 1967 in Moscow, immigrated to the U.S. when she was fourteen, but then moved back to Moscow in 1991 as a foreign correspondent. When she returned to Moscow she was reunited with her grandmothers, Ester and Ruzya, who have been friends since shortly after World War II. The author is intrigued with their lives, since they had lived through some of the most turbulent decades in modern European history, and she interviewed both of them extensively for this book. They both are accomplished, and multi-lingual and held responsible jobs that went a long way toward supporting their families through difficult times.

This fascinating memoir is the story of these two women whose lives were shaped by the forces of history. Ester, her father's mother, was born in Bialystok, Poland and when Hitler started exercising his power, she left to go to school in Moscow. Gessen recreates her childhood in Bialystok and writes extensively about her father Jakob who was a member of the Judenrat in the Bialystok ghetto and died at the hands of the Nazis.

Her grandmother Ruzya, her mother's mother, was raised in Moscow. Her young husband died in the war when she was pregnant,  and she managed to land a job with the NKVD as a translator and censor that supported her and her daughter. But the job exposed her to the harshness of Stalin's regime and its purges and through her eyes we see the toll it took on the lives of citizens of the Soviet Union.

The details of their lives are very engaging. But the most interesting and perhaps vexing sections of the memoir are the ones in which she focuses on the potential moral dilemmas of members of her family. She investigates the life of her father as a member of the Judenrat in the Bialystok ghetto by doing extensive research, including reading privately printed memoirs written by survivors of the Bialystok ghetto where her father's name is mentioned frequently. Was he a potential savior? A dupe? With the information she gathers, she tries to sort out all of the angles.

The same is true when she talked extensively with her grandmother Ruzya who worked as a censor. Her grandmother feels culpable. Should she have held a censor's job? How does that implicate her in the evils Stalin perpetrated? Geffen has carefully researched this topic as well and integrates her research into her discussion seamlessly. This allows us to contemplate the situation in its complexity.

Throughout the memoir is a discussion of anti-Semitism, both obvious and covert. Beyond the rationing, the paranoia, the constant worry that you might be denounced for any reason, real or imagined, was the added burden of being targeted because you were a Jew. The author forcefully conveys all of this by discussing the lives of her family members, most especially two remarkable women who survived those years in large part due to their own resourcefulness and whose accomplishments are celebrated in this memoir.

There are some pictures at the beginning of each section.

For more information on the NKVD, Stalin's People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, click here.


People
Jakub Goldberg –  married to Bella; author’s great grandparents
    Ester – their daughter; married Boris Gessen; author’s grandparents
        Sasha – son of Ester and Boris; author’s father
Helena – Bella’s sister; author’s great great aunt
Arnold Gessen – married Miriam; author’s great grandparents
    Boris – their son; married Ester Goldberg;
        Sasha (Alexander) – their son; marries Yelena Minkin; parents of author
            Masha – daughter of Sasha and Yelena; partner with Svenya; author
                Vova
                Yael (Yolotchka)
            Kostya  (Keith) – son of Sasha and Yelena
            Leonid – son of and Ester Goldberg and 2nd husband Sergei
           
Moshe Solodovnik – married Eva; author’s great grandparents
    Ruzya – their daughter; married Samuil Lvovich Minkin; author’s grandparents
        Yelena (Yolotchka) – daughter of Samuil and Ruzya; marries Sasha Gessen
    Yasha – their son
    Boris – their son
    Semyon Zenin – Ruzya’s second husband
    Alik – author’s 3rd husband
Lev – Eva’s brother; author’s great great uncle
Lev Minkin – married Batsheva; author’s great grandparents
    Samuil – their son; married to Ruzya Solodovnik
        Yelena – daughter of Samuil and Ruzya; author’s mother (see above)
    Zhenya – daughter of Lev and Batsheva; author’s great uncle

Friends, Acquaintances, and Sources
Isaj Drogoizinski
Efraim Borasz
Berel Subotnik
Rabbi Rozenman
Civi Wider
Itzhak Malmed
Jakub Makowski
Daniel Moszkowicz
Pejsach Kaplan
Nahum Grossman
Regina Wojskowska
Chaika Grossman – married to Meir Orkin
Malka Orkin – sister of Meir Orkin
Refoel Rajzner
Mordechai Tennenbaum-Tamaroff
Sara Brenner
Gideon Hausner
Hannah Arendt
Chaim Rumkowski
Leo Baeck
Adam Czerniakow
Isaiah Trunk
Marie Syrkin
Raul Hillberg
Solomon Mikhoels
Zhenia Galperin
Lena Zonina
Polina Zhemchuzhina
Sergei Eizenshtein
David Oistrakh
Isaak Fefer
Ilya Ehrenburg
Max and Lusya Akivis
Margarita Aliger
Yevgeniy Varga
Aleksandr Kushnerov
Iosif Yuzefovich
Boris Shimeliovich
David Gofshetein
Veniamin Zuskin
Vladimir Shamborg
Yevgenia Ginzburg

Places and Institutions
Dzerhinsky, Soviet Union
Ashkhabad, Turkestan
Biysk, Siberia
Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), Russia
Brok, Poland
Bialystok, Poland
Bialystok Ghetto
Pereslavl, Ukraine
Novosibirsk, Russia
Omsk, Russia
Warsaw, Poland
Pietrasze Field, Poland
Pruzhany, Belarus
Majdanek labor camp
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Glavlit
Dubna, Russia
NKVD

The Pages In Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home by Erin Einhorn 2008

"[W]ith her 21st-century, third-generation point of view, Einhorn is able to give [The Pages In Between] an intellectual rigor many-similar-sounding books have lacked." From an introduction to the memoir by Jan Lisa Huttner  in the JUF News of Chicago in anticipation of a visit by the author.

Erin Einhorn’s mother’s story of having survived as a hidden child in Poland during World War II is the subject of this moving memoir. The author is curious. Her mother, who was born in 1942, says she remembers very little beyond that her own mother was killed and when pressed, wants to avoid talking about the past. She knows who took care of her, but never made contact with the Polish family who kept her during the war or the Jewish family in Sweden who took care of her after the war.

The author, who is a journalist, senses an interesting story and takes a course in learning to speak Polish in preparation for an extended stay in Poland. What she finds when she arrives in Poland is a disturbing story that she hadn’t anticipated. In knocking on the door of her mother’s old house, she finds the family of the woman who had saved her mother’s life, but soon she is enveloped in a convoluted real estate nightmare having to do with the house where her mother was raised and the descendants of the woman who saved her mother.

Interwoven with that track is the story of Einhorn’s search through archives in city halls and other repositories of old documents in Bedzin and elsewhere where her family had lived. She wanted to document the lives and deaths of her ancestors and to see if she could confirm family stories that had been passed down to her.  Here she had many experiences familiar to researchers – specifically those working in the area of genealogy. For example, she found records she didn’t even know to look for, while searching for others she never found. She corroborated some information she had learned from her mother, but to her surprise, disproved parts of stories told to her as fact. She found some people very helpful; others stood in her way. And throughout, she makes observations about a country whose large Jewish population was wiped out, leaving behind abandoned cemeteries and burnt out shells of synagogues. She talked to Poles of all ages, trying to get a read on their views of the past as well as their current attitudes.

This memoir includes an extensive family tree and photos. Included in the list below are the names of descendants except for recent generations where the author has only included their first names.

To hear stories about other hidden children, click here.


People
Pinkhes Frydrych – author’s maternal great great great grandfather; married Zlata
    Sura – their daughter
    Fraydela – their daughter
    Shmil- their son; married Liba Mari Henkos; author’s great great grandparents
        Yisruel –their son; married Zisl Paserman; author’s great grandparents
            Faygl – their daughter; married Chaim Weindling
            Moyshe – their son; married Minnie
            Shloyme – their son; married Rudl Ester
            Laybish – their son; married Tillie Gold
            Yankl – their son; married Heltsha
                Abramek and Gutsha – their children
            Duvid Oyzer – their son; married Baltsha Gold
                Zilla
            Beresh (Bernard)– their son; married Sura Leah Rozenblum; author’s grandparents
                Irena (Irene)– their daughter; married Brian Einhorn; author’s parents
                    Derek – their son; author’s brother
                    Erin- their daughter; author
            Fela (Faye) Brystowska – Beresh’s second wife
                Harold – son of  Beresh and Fela
            Liba; youngest daughter of Yisruel and Zisl; married Shmil Biber
                Gutsha
        Avrum – son of Shmil and Liba
        Yitshok – son of Shmil and Liba; married Pesela Najman
            Duvid
            Sukher (Sol) – son of Yitshok and Pesela married to Luba Tryszynska
            Moyshe – son of Yitshok and Pesela    
Natan Paserman – author’s great great great grandfather
    Yankl – his son
    Raysl – his daughter
    Moyshe – his son; married Rachel Getal (author’s great great grandfather)
        Chana – their daughter
        Zisl Paserman – their daughter; married Yisruel Frydrych; author’s great grandparents

            Sally Einhorn – author’s paternal grandmother
                Brian – her son; married Irene Frydrych; author’s parents

Friends and Acquaintances
Benjamin and Shprinsa Keijler
    Fannie  Adolffson - their daughter
Hannah Baytner
Maynard Gerber
Yale Reisner
   
Places
Bedzin, Poland
Detroit, Michigan
Atlanta, Georgia
Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp
Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland
Lodz, Poland
Kielce, Poland
Jedwabne, Poland
Krakow, Poland
Kazimierz, Krakow
Dzialoszyce, Poland