From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust [Paperback]

Lucille Eichengreen (Author), Harriet Hyman Chamberlain (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 19, 1994

In this disturbing but inspirational account of her experiences of the Holocaust, Lucille Eichengreen relates her journey as a young Jewish girl through Nazi Germany and Poland - including internment in the camps at Auschwitz, Neuengamme, and Bergen-Belsen. It was a journey that began in 1933, when she was eight years old and witnessed the beginnings of Jewish persecution, a journey along which she suffered the horrible deaths of her father, mother and sister. Sustained by great courage and resourcefulness, Lucille Eichengreen emerged from her nightmare with the inner strength to build a new life for herself in the United States. Only in 1991 did she return to Germany and Poland to assess the Jewish situation there. Her story is a testament to the very thing the Holocaust sought to destroy: the regeneration of Jewish life. Blessed with a remarkable memory that made her one of the most effective witnesses in the postwar trial of her persecutors, Eichengreen has composed a memoir of exceptional accuracy. As important as its factual accuracy is its emotional clarity and truth. Simple and direct, Eichengreen's words compel with their moral authority.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sometimes a book profits from its own apparent artlessness. Eichengreen's simple, almost childlike style is a perfect vehicle for retelling the horrors of the Holocaust, allowing the full force of the events to come through without a filtering literary sensibility. In Hamburg in 1933, Eichengreen (born Cecilia Landau) is an eight-year-old girl, living a comfortable existence with her parents and younger sister. But the rumblings of Nazism are already audible. In 1938 her father is transported to Dachau, where he dies. The rest of the family is sent to the Lodz ghetto, where the mother dies of malnutrition. Eichengreen and her sister are separated as they are sent to the death camps. The author survives through a combination of luck and intelligence, her language skills getting her marginally less arduous assignments from the Nazis. When the camps are liberated, she goes to work for the British and testifies against her tormentors at a war crimes tribunal. Eventually she finds her way to New York City, where she meets and marries Dan Eichengreen, and makes the difficult adjustment to normal life. The book concludes with the Eichengreens' 1991 visit to Hamburg and Poland. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

YA-Celia's straightforward account begins with name calling by other children in Hamburg, Germany in 1933; continues through her father's deportation and death in Dachau when she was 16 years old; her mother's starvation; and her experiences in Auschwitz, Neuengamme, and Bergen-Belsen. She shares what happened after she left the camps, her role in the war trials, adjustment to postwar life, her return to Hamburg and Poland in 1991, and her analysis of the current status of European Jewry. YAs will particularly empathize with the author's teen years, which included the loss of family, a close female friendship, a disappointing romance, and the degradations and hardship of internment. Readers are offered insight into Eichengreen's sense of survival guilt, her nightmares, and her continued attempts to make sense of what occurred. An accessible, clear picture of the Holocaust.
Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Mercury House; First edition (January 19, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1562790528
• ISBN-13: 978-1562790523
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #244,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fanstastic , Touching Book!, December 11, 2002

By 

"nocturnalgirl72" (tempe, az United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (Paperback)

I was extremely impressed with this book. The author decribes in detail her life before anti-semitism and how it started to change. Her story is emotional and touching.

She was born Celia Landau and changed her name to Lucille. She and her sister Karin were the products of a very close knit family completely torn apart by the Third Reich. Her father gets sent off to a labor camp and a year later they are delivered a box of what supposedly contains his ashes. Eventually Celia, Karin and mother are sent to the Lodz ghetto where surviving is difficult and their mother eventually dies of starvation. Celia's account of this is very sad and moving. She then tells a story of a tender love affair with Szaja in the ghetto, and befriends an elderly couple named Jules and Julius who ironically after liberation, she winds up marrying their son when she moves to New York.

She and her sister Karin are then sent to Auschwitz. Poor Karin is so devastated and having trouble surviving day to day after losing both her parents. Celia's heart is again broken when Karin is not chosen in the selection and is loaded up into a truck and never seen again.

Celia is only weeks away from death when Auschwitz gets liberated. She goes into detail her life after the camps including her testimony during war crimes trials that helped put many of the SS in prison.

She also tells her experiences of going back to Europe in 1991 for the first time since she left. The hostility and indifference against Jews was still alive.

This book is highly recommended. Well written.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revenge through good deeds, January 26, 2002

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (Paperback)

As a child in Hamburg, Germany, Celia Landau led a cultured and privileged life. Her father Benjamin had a study full of books and frequently entertained renowned visitors, including philosopher Martin Buber and Rabbi Paul Holzer. This began to unravel when the Nazis came to power. In the summer of 1934, the family traveled to a German spa in Bad Schwartau. As their visit ended, the spa's owner gleefully announced that Hitler would deal with the Jews. The next fall, nine-year-old Celia's grades began to falter as former school friends labeled her "Drechtjude." In 1937, the family were forced out of their condominium at Hohe Weide 25. In October, 1938, her father was carted to prison, then deported to Dachau. In February 1941, a Gestapo agent delivered his "ashes" in a cigar box.

Eight months later, Celia, now 16, was deported with her mother Sala and sister Karin to Lodz. Here they shared an unheated room on Zgierska Street with Julie and Julius Eichengreen and five others. As the vast majority of Jews were shipped like cattle from Lodz, the couple made Celia promise, if ever she went to New York, to find their son, who had left Europe years earlier. On July 13, 1942, Celia's starving and sick mother Sala died.

Before being herself deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, Celia starved and scraped to survive, and lost her sister Karin as well. Her one friend from that period, Elli Sabin, traveled with her in the final transport from Lodz to new horrors. Here she came face to face with the dreaded Dr. Mengele, slaved for some months in an outdoor construction site at the Neuengamme subcamp and in the Blom and Foss Shipyards. In October, she was transferred to Arbeitslager Sasel. Here, to gain access to important files, she promised to transfer her family's house in Altona-Luna Park outside Hamburg to an SS guard. The ploy worked, and she memorized the names and addressed of 42 Nazi guards.

In March 1945, Celia Landau was again transferred, this time to Bergen-Belsen, the disease-ridden camp where Anne Frank and her sister died of Typhus. Fortunately for Laudau, a month later, the camp was liberated, on April 15, 1945. Here she told a British major of her exploit, and was swiftly introduced to Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Tilling, of Britain's War Crimes Investigations unit. When friends Elli, Hela Dimand and Sabina Zarecki corroborated her story, the British swiftly transferred Celia Landau to Hanover Germany, where she helped bring 17 Nazis to justice.

Her assistance to the British War Crimes unit gave Celia new opportunities. What she did with them is but one of the things that makes this book fascinating. This is the story of an extraordinary woman who sought revenge only through her own good deeds.

The one thing missing from this book is what gave her the courage to go on. Alyssa A. Lappen

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, personal and moving account of the Holocaust, August 20, 1998

By 

Mr. Paul Dingley (Nottingham, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust (Paperback)

This is by far the best personalised account of the Holocaust I've read to date. Celia manages to convey the horrors and degredation experienced by the Jewish people living through the Holocaust, and yet still manages to temper the account with a constant almost irrepressible sense of hope.

I've visited Bergen-Belsen several times, and seen the official documentation and memorials, but From Ashes to Life really brought it all into perspective.

This is a book that provides a factual first hand account of what actually happened, and doesn't pull any punches, but it still emminently readable by everyone.

I had real difficulty putting From Ashes to Live down once I'd started it, and would recommend it to anyone!