Children of Zion (Jewish Lives) [Paperback]

Henryk Grynberg (Author), Jacqueline Mitchell (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Jewish Lives | Publication Date: January 14, 1998

Award-winning writer Henryk Grynberg takes an extraordinary collection of interviews with young Polish war orphans conducted in Palestine in 1943 about their experiences and gives their stories "one voice". The cumulative effect of so many different voices discussing similar horrors is shocking and makes this book unlike any other work on the Holocaust.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In his preface, the author describes his book as a "documentary tale," an epic created by rewording the interview records of Jewish children evacuated from the Soviet Union to Palestine in 1943. Grynberg himself (The Victory, LJ 5/1/94) was a child survivor of the Holocaust who now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States. He has here selected and arranged 73 testimonies, not presenting each one as a separate entity but extracting from each certain common strands and collecting them in choral groups. Then, while not altering the content, Grynberg has sought to enhance the narrative by rewording the text in a way that allows it to flow more naturally. It begins with the children's life in Poland before the war, continues with the arrival of the Germans and the Russians, and concludes with the experience of exile. The result is a powerful, relentless document that bears grim testimony to the suffering endured by the children and their families as they journeyed from horror to horror. This is a bleak, cumulative tale of brutality, humiliation, and misery told in the straightforward language of children who have no need to embellish the truth, but whose stories cry out to be heard. Recommended without reservation for public and academic collections.?Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Polish --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 178 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; Translated edition (January 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810113546
• ISBN-13: 978-0810113541
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,509,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a moving description of a recent and little known diaspora, April 11, 2000

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"roger388" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children of Zion (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

This is a phenomenally moving book about the flight of Jewish children to the far corners of the globe in search of safety from the Holocaust. Grynberg's story is about the little known deportation of Jewish children and their families who found themselves in the Soviet Union in the early years of the war and were sent to Siberia and Central Asia for internment. Many of these people were unable to return to their homes after the war and remained in Eastern Russia or Uzbekistan. This is an excellent book.