Man of Ashes (Texts and Contexts) [Hardcover]

Salomon Isacovici (Author), Juan Manuel Rodriguez (Author), Dick Gerdes (Translator), J. M. Rodríguez (Author), Dick. Gerdes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Texts and Contexts | Publication Date: February 1, 1999

Salomon Isacovici was born to a farming family in western Romania. One day in 1940 his family woke as Hungarians, re-nationalised overnight by the changing borders of World War II. To other Hungarians they were Jews, and week by week their world grew worse. In 1944 the Germans arrived and Isacovici, his family, and every other Jew from his town were pushed into cattle cars and taken ever closer to the soot and smoke of Auschwitz. He became a man of ashes. Man of Ashes was first published in Mexico in 1990 as A7393: Hombre de cenizas and was awarded the Fernando Jeno Prize. The English translation has been thoroughly revised in collaboration with Salomon Isacovici. Dick Gerdes is a professor of Spanish at George Mason University. He won the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for his translation of Diamela Eltit's The Fourth World (Nebraska 1995).

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this moving memoir, first published in Spanish in Mexico in 1990, Isacovici writes of his youth spent on a farm on the border between Romania and Hungary. After the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, Isacovici experienced the horrors of the destruction of Jewish life in Europe: ghettos, forced marches, transports, and death camps. Upon returning to his hometown of Sighet (also that of Elie Wiesel) at war's ending, Isacovici decided to leave Europe and, after a few years in Paris, settled in Ecuador with his future wife. The author recounts beautifully his search for God and life's meaning in the midst of catastrophe. Recommended for Jewish studies collections.?Gene Shaw, NYPL
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Distinguished by geography as well as by its painful testimony, Isacovicis (d. 1998) memoir was first published in his adopted country of Ecuador. Like Elie Wiesel, Isacovici came from Sighet, Romania, and it took longer for the Holocaust to reach that far east. The comparison with Wiesel ends there, as we get mundane phrases like ``my tenacious desire to survive''; otherwise, the co-author and the translator have done an admirable job with the unearthly suffering depicted here, and the unusual psychological self-awareness of the survivor. Isacovici, typically, has few theological insights about the momentous events he lives through, but there are a few reflective philosophical moments. The authors peaceful childhood was already rocked by a sense of evil learned from predatory owls and a destructive flood. And while life with his large farm family was otherwise uncomplicated, young Salomon had already learned to smuggle to get ahead. Much of the memoirs early drama involves the creeping Nazi threat opposing the Jews wishful thinkingthat the war might be ending and that it cant happen here. The residents of the authors town heard blood-curdling testimonies from Polish refugees, tales of massacre and rape. Only a few other memoirs document such breaks from the Nazis code banning sex with non-Aryans, and, together with descriptions of the brothels at Auschwitz and the kapos as often being released prisoners ``who slept with young boys chosen from among the prisoners,'' the memoir offers these more unique bits of historical significance. The authors family is shattered in Birkenau, but he survives Auschwitz with jobs peeling potatoes and mining coal at Jaworno, and he survives a gruesome death march as the Soviets advance. Isacovici is able to rejoin two brothers in a fruitless return to the family farm and to many European cities in search of a haven. He then joins the family of a woman with whom he has a serious romance, who end up with visas for Ecuador, where he feels an empathy for the suffering of the local Indians. Above average in the torrent of Holocaust memoirs, this account tells an unforgettable and unique story. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; 1 edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803225016
• ISBN-13: 978-0803225015
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,625,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book that must be read, February 21, 1999

By 

Bernie Isacovici([e-mail]) (Iowa City, Iowa USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Man of Ashes (Texts and Contexts) (Hardcover)

This is a book that must be read by anyone interested in the Holocaust and Jewish life. It is unlike any Holocaust autobiography in that it involves Jewish life in South America. Even after living through the tragedies of the Holocaust Salomon Encourages joy and happiness. As a College student, and as Salomon's grandson this book touched my life in a very special way.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A haunting, memorable, beautiful read, September 5, 2010

By 

David Berkowitz "Blog - MarketersStudio.com" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Man of Ashes (Texts and Contexts) (Paperback)

This book will stay with you for some time after you read it. Fans of Primo Levi will find the approach fairly familiar, but here Isacovici pours out his whole story in a single tome. You're first transported to the carefree and then less carefree days in pre-war Romania, getting a sense of life along the river. Then the darkness sets in, and Isacovici vividly recounts his stories of surviving what's too horrific to really imagine. He's one of the lucky ones of course, making it out and ultimately arriving in Ecuador, but some injustices he witnesses there are too galling for him especially after everything he lived through.

While it's not one of the better known Holocaust memoirs, and I only discovered it in The Ecuador Reader: History, Culture, Politics (The Latin America Readers), his story is one worth remembering.