Anton the Dove Fancier: Anton the Dove Fancier [Paperback]

Gotfryd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1990

This collection of extraordinary true stories—including nine stories new to this expanded edition— illuminates the experiences of a young Polish boy before World War II, through the gathering storm of Nazism, into the death camps, to poignant reunions many years later. Here we watch young Bernard break curfew to secure a rare chicken for the High Holidays—only to see it given to the Christian janitor because it is not kosher; we meet Alexandra, a Polish resistance fighter who enlists the teenaged Bernard in the cause but who perishes while he survives; and we share Bernard's fear as he spends one very uncomfortable night—hours after his liberation—in the seemingly sympathetic home of the parents of a young SS officer.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hours before she was deported to the concentration camp where she was murdered, the author's mother begged him to survive "to tell the world what the Nazis did to us." With his simple, affecting memoir, the former Newsweek photographer who grew up in Radom, Poland, summons up faces from the grave. When impoverished peasants steal his pious grandmother's table in those innocent days before the war, she gifts the apprehended thieves with food--and the table; years later, the Nazis shoot and kill her as she recovers from a stroke in the ghetto hospital. Sexually assaulted, the milk woman's teenage daughter, Masha, becomes a deaf-mute, and a physician, a rabbi and a witch doctor fail to cure her; forced to clean the ghetto of the dead after a deportation, Gotfryd discovers Masha's corpse in the rubble. Those who perish also include Gotfryd's father, who tries to pass a forbidden egg to his son in a labor camp; the father gets a beating and the egg falls wasted to the ground; a beautiful gentile activist in the Polish underground who captures Gotfryd's heart as she endangers his life; and his brother's friend Leon, who is crushed when he learns that his favorite cousin is a prostitute for SS guards and kapos. A meaningful, earnest addition to Holocaust literature. Portions appeared previously in Midstream .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-- This remarkable collection of true stories gathered from the anguished memory of the author's years as a Jewish youth in wartime Poland offers a painful array of memorials. Gotfryd's extraordinary experiences span a spectrum of individuals from Resistance fighters and SS sympathizers to the inevitable children and families to whom he dedicates his book. This collection is noteworthy for its clear, uncluttered writing style that allows the poignancy of the individuals' own stories to assault readers page after page.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (August 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671691376
• ISBN-13: 978-0671691370
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,442,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars powerful, beautiful, sad........., August 23, 2000

By 

Ruth Henriquez Lyon (Duluth, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust (Paperback)

Anton the Dove Fancier is a collection of autobiographical short stories about a teenage Jewish boy in Poland during World War II. The stories are so well linked together that the book reads like a novel. In it we discover the Nazi occupation and the death camps through the eyes of an adolescent, which gives this book a different slant compared to much Holocaust literature.

The author, Bernard Gotfryd, shows himself to be a keen observer of people, as well as of the small, humble details of everyday life. He has the gift of being able to illuminate those details, so that they take on a transcendant beauty. We see a world--one which others might find dull and ordinary--through the consciousness of a mind which is itself radiant. Thus, the stories do not only address the horrors of the nazi occupation and the camps; those horrors are set against a backdrop of everyday life and people, the memories of which are interspersed throughout the book. This gives it a chiaroscuro quality which I find to be rare in literature, and through the play of light and shadow the author creates an ambiguous, complex world. This ambiguity is another way in which the book differs from much Holocaust literature. Many of the characters themselves are ambiguous, and after reading about them we find ourselves asking, "Was he good, or bad?" The answer is yes.....

This book indirectly leads the reader to ponder the issues of suffering and healing. Despite the optimistic teachings of the growth psychology movement, there are wounds which are too traumatic to fully heal. Growth psychology would have us believe that without integration, and psychological "functionality," we cannot realize our full potential. It posits a future goal that we can attain through work on ourselves. However, Gotfryd shows us, through the power of his words, that we are most fully human when we can really open our eyes and see the world in its complexity and irrationality, as well as its simplicity and beauty, right now.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It is not possible to praise this book enough., August 22, 1999

By 

Slazz (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anton the Dove Fancier: Anton the Dove Fancier (Paperback)

Why is Anton The Dove Fancier out of print? It is an extraordinary collection of true stories that ought not be buried away. This book illustrates that human behavior is, simultaneously, both the most fascinating and disturbing form of contemplation. Anton The Dove Fancier is well worth any effort it takes to track down. Buried treasure indeed - it is profound, intensely moving, raw in its simplicity. Humanity and its many layers are exposed without judgement. Quite a trick, and something afforded only to the calm, quiet truth tellers. Such as Bernard Gotfryd. Find this priceless gem... and hold on to it. Tight.

5.0 out of 5 stars I read this in xeroxed installments my mother mailed me in jail, January 17, 2007

By 

Jonathan Yoder "Jon" (DC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Anton the Dove Fancier and Other Tales of the Holocaust (Paperback)

I read this book in DC Jail in chapters my mother xeroxed and sent. I remembered it when she mentioned it at DC's National Shrine, where we were having breakfast. Now I am thinking of giving it to my 70-year-old, profoundly yet peacefully religious friend Bill MacKaye. In this book, Gotfryd rescues the humanity he saw brutalized and destroyed. I've read several Holocaust books and the horror is unspeakable, and it is in this book too, but Gotfryd recovers the crucified grace. It's a great gift to humanity and a life-changing read.