Customer Reviews

The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival

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This is a Heroine's journey during time of war. From Vienna, the city of music, to a little house outside London, where Lisa Jura will find safety & a piano where she can continue her mother's legacy.

It is the memories of the descent into the hell that Adolph Hitler visited upon the people of Europe, upon the life of one girl with a huge talent & a family who sent her away that she might survive.

It is memories of danger & death, as well as hope & the goodness in people's hearts, & how a dream made a girl brave & true to her heritage.

THE CHILDREN OF WILLESDEN LANE is passionate, engaging & charming, destined to find its place beside THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK.

The Children of Willesden Lane is a remarkable, transporting story, at once upllifting and heartbreaking. I'm a better person for reading it. The authors' flawless narrative style facilitates a "can't put the book down" memoir read. After grabbing their readers' hearts, Golabek and Cohen seize their readers' minds with a cogent, compassionate, and otherworldly understanding of the intricacies of living a life in music, and its accordant near-mystical ability to bring humanity as close as it can get to the divine. Such are Golabek's and Cohen's gifts that one can almost hear the music coming from the pages of The Children of Willisden Lane. I loved this book. It is a gift.

Anne Frank's parents turned down the chance to send their daughters to England before the war, not recognizing the imminent danger until it was too late. Lisa Jura's parents did recognize that danger and took advantage of an empty seat on the Kindertransport to send Lisa to the relative safety of the English countryside. Several other reviews have noted the "can't put it down" quality of this wonderful story. I must add my agreement to that sentiment! The only interruptions in my reading were stopping to play at least a snippet of the Chopin, Beethoven, and Rachmaninoff pieces on my CDs, so I could follow Lisa's enjoyment of them even better! This book should be used by all teachers who teach Anne Frank's story, as it is a beautiful look at the life Anne herself might have had had her parents only seen the danger in time.

The Children of Willseden Lane is a motivational piece of literature about a young woman, Lisa, who dared to dream and made that dream a reality. Her daughter, Mona Golabek, wrote this memoir on her mother's wondrous gift of playing the piano. Lisa spent all her life in Vienna, Austria before the Nazis invaded causing her to be sent to London on the Kindertransport leaving her heartbroken parents and two sisters behind. She was sent to a hostel on Willesden Lane where she lived with thirty other Jewish children for the duration of World War II. She felt a sense of comfort right away because these children were dealing with the same loneliness, and Lisa became part of the big family. The would have a special bond which would stay with all of them forever because they would spend most nights huddled together in a bomb shelter fleeing the late night bombings. As soon as her matron, Ms. Cohen, realized that she had a prodigy living under her roof, she did everything in her power to help Lisa achieve her goal. Before long, everyone in the hostel was encouraging her to become a pianist and begged her to play for them every night after dinner. After much hard work, Lisa was accepted into an elite music school, which proved that anything was possible. The children became motivated and were given a sense of hope that they too could "make something of themselves". After the war was over, she was reunited with her two sisters and learned that her parents were sent to a death camp. Lisa became even more motivated to continue with her musical talents so that she would always play for her mother as a tribute for their shared love of music.

The Children of Willesden Lane is a compelling story about a Jewish girl growing up in a country overtaken by Hitler during World War Two. The Jura family, being allowed to send only one child to England on the Kindertransport, sent Lisa knowing that her musical talent would ensure her survival. When all is going wrong, and it seems as though she has nothing left to hold on to, Lisa lets all her feelings go through her music and holds on to her abilities.
This book never let me take my own musical talents for granted. Being a pianist myself, I have learned to really appreciate music for all it is worth. Many books have slow beginnings, but The Children of Willesden Lane was full of excitement from beginning to end. I recommed this book to anyone with any kind of passion. Through this book you will see what can come of your talents, no matter what is going on around you in your life. It will most certainly help you to fully understand the amazing power of music.

I have never before been reduced to tears by a book.... During the hours I spent reading The Children of Willesden Lane I experienced tears of joy, tears of pain, tears for the human condition and finally the soul cleansing tears of a spirit renewed. I literally cried my way through the last 140 pages of The Children of Willesden Lane while sitting in seat 6C of a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Houston. Not a simple moistening of the eyes, but a steady stream of tears pouring down my cheeks as I experienced a completely unexpected range of intense emotion. I have read hundreds of nonfiction books and never, absolutely never, have I experienced anything even vaguely akin to this extraordinarily down-to-earth book.

The first third of the book feels like getting reacquainted with an old friend. Despite the tragic backdrop of the era, the themes and the setting feel warm and familiar. The character development is just detailed enough to evoke the distinct identities of the major characters without setting them in stone. Instead of nailing down every conceivable detail, Mona Golabek leaves plenty of room for the reader to personalize the lead characters. As I dug deeper and deeper into the storyline, it was uncanny how I began to identify more and more closely with the central characters. It is almost as if the book was crafted to ensure that Lisa, Aaron, Johnny, Gina, Gunter, Hans, Mr. Hardesty, Mrs. Canfield and Mrs. McRae would gradually assume the characteristics of the people who have made profound differences in my life. It is worthy to note that none of the characters are completely idealized. Whether it is cowardice, indifference, vanity, petty jealously, self-pity or the emotional disconnect that many soldiers suffer, the characters in The Children of Willesden are presented "warts and all."

Curiously, three of the book's most powerful subtexts are so deeply rooted in the story line that I am not sure that either the heroine (in her telling) or the authors (in their writing) intended them to be integral parts of the story. The first is "trust your instincts... seize the moment before it passes you by." Although 10,000 children were saved by the Kindertransport, how many eventual Holocaust victims hesitated, convincing themselves that they needed just one more piece of evidence, and then one more and then yet another, until it was too late? It is all too easy for us to convince ourselves that the opportunities we have today will still be there tomorrow. This, whether it is a matter of life and death or a matter of life and love. This observation is in no way a condemnation of the victims of the Holocaust or any other human tragedy. It is merely an acknowledgment of a theme that is repeated in any accurate accounting of human behavior. How else do you explain the half-empty lifeboats from the Titanic? The second powerful subtext has to do with the nature of beauty and accomplishment. After reading the entire text ask yourself a series of simple questions. As a child, was Lisa Juras more beautiful when she was wearing her Sunday best with her hat tilted just so or when she was tired, dirty and hungry yet somehow found the courage to take responsibility for the contents of the basket on the train? As a teenager, was Lisa Juras more beautiful in her fine red dress playing a grand piano or when she was pounding away at the upright piano wearing factory worker garb with bombs falling around her. While Lisa Juras undoubtedly valued both her musical talent and her physical attractiveness, can it truly be said that either were the true sources of her beauty or accomplishment? No, Lisa Juras was never more beautiful than she was courageous and her music was never more accomplished than when its intensity blotted out the onslaught of the London Blitz.... A time during which the piano wasn't even properly tuned! If this be true, Wigmore Hall is merely icing on a cake that was six long years in the baking. The third and no less important subtext is, "True love is that which moves you." Love is not merely a deeply rooted or intense emotion. Love is feelings transformed into action. It was the love of a father for a daughter that gave Abraham Juras the strength to put Lisa on a train headed for a country and people he knew not. It was the love between a daughter and a mother that gave Lisa the strength to pound out the Grieg concerto while bombs were falling around her and later when her fingers were nearly frozen and her body was racked by coughing. And last, we are led to believe in the epilogue that it is the love of a man for a woman that "moved" Michel Golabek to leave Europe for a life in the United States with his beloved Lisa.

It may seem a contradiction, but the strength of this story is its subtlety. Nothing about it feels staged, forced or contrived. There are no torrid love scenes. There are no gruesome accounts of the Holocaust. There are not even detailed accounts of the deaths of some the book's lead characters. Instead, The Children of Willesden Lane is as understated, natural, tragic and heroic as life itself. The Children of Willesden Lane is a remarkable invitation to become part of something intensely personal, a family legacy that spans two continents, four generations and, most importantly, continues to live on today through the descendants of both Lisa Juras and all those that made the Kindertransport a life saving reality.

If there is such a thing as "profound simplicity," Mona Golabek has defined it for us.

I stumbled on this book when a friend recommended it. I was wary of the title, but the book is excellently written and very easy to read. It is an inspiring tale of Lisa Jura, a Jewish girl from Austria. In attempt to save her life, her parents send her away to England on the Kindertransport train.

The story of Lisa is wonderfully told. I was moved to tears several times and laughter several others.

You will love this story.

This is a Heroine's journey during time of war. From Vienna, the city of music, to a little house outside London, where Lisa Jura will find safety & a piano where she can continue her mother's legacy.

It is the memories of the descent into the hell that Adolph Hitler visited upon the people of Europe, upon the life of one girl with a huge talent & a family who sent her away that she might survive.

It is memories of danger & death, as well as hope & the goodness in people's hearts, & how a dream made a girl brave & true to her heritage.

THE CHILDREN OF WILLESDEN LANE is passionate, engaging & charming, destined to find its place beside THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK.

There is a movie in this book's future -- or at least there should be. As one who normally ignores the biographical "bite" genera, I was very surprised at my inability to put "Children" down. There is a stealth hook to this story, one that inspires by helping us put our own problems into perspective and goads us to try harder. It is sweet without being sloppy; sure without being arrogant; certain without being too predictable. Golabek and Cohen have created a song in this book that is both primeval and polished, a moving tale many chapters of which could have expanded into books themselves. Richly rewarding. Somebody give us the movie!

A beautifully written account of the holocaust, as seen through the eyes of a young woman who spent her childhood being sent away from her family and homeland to live in England to escape the Nazis. Her relationship with music,as a pianist, is what kept her going during this difficult time. It was a gift given to her by her mother, which she then passed along to her children and grandchildren.