65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Speechless, April 5, 2009
This review is from: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (Hardcover)
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Here I sit, tears in my eyes, having closed "Clara's War", which I have lived with her these past two days. Zolkiew, Poland, 1941: Surviving with 17 fellow Jews for an incredible 18 months in a shallow dirt bunker under the floor of the paradoxically deeply flawed, yet saintly, Beck, she is urged by her mother, "Write, Clara, write!" And write she did, filling three notebooks with the harrowing, incredible account, and the moments of happiness of their lives during WWII.
Now at 81, having spent her life in teaching and speaking, she has written this book, which fleshes out the diary which she wrote as a child. She brings her vivid memory of those terrible days together with skillful writing and her journal (now preserved and displayed in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.) to create this book. It is difficult to fathom or relate to the events and conditions of their life in the narrow cellar, yet "Clara's War" brings these events and conditions, otherwise unfathomable, to light with a clear and descriptive prose. Though never overstated,the book is compelling and engaging. The hardest parts for me to read (emotionally) were the beginning and the end.
Being plucked from my cozy bedroom and plunged into world of unspeakable cruelty that was the War left me aghast. Still, I followed Clara into the life which she lived and so lucidly articulated: the unimaginable suffering, the sweet kindnesses of the Beck family, the endless fear while living just below the feet of the Nazi soldiers billeted at the Beck's, the close-calls; luck upon luck; and, finally, the survival.
As the story drew to a poignant close, I could not keep from weeping as the 50 (out of 5000!) survivors rejoiced together. I then followed Clara's family and friends from Zolkiew, to a holding camp, to Palestine, and finally to New York; and the lives of the Becks in southern Poland; the lives of the other cherished fiends and family; the reunions; the affection. The lives and hearts of these families were eternally and inextricably intertwined. A story like this would only be possible when love reigns in their hearts. The Schwarz', Clara's family, was such a family. Beck, for all his faults, and his wife, Julia, were such persons. Such a contrast with the hard-hearted hatred of the braggard Nazi's and the other murderous, marauding peoples in the book! I ask myself: "how can we be the same species?"
I was deeply touched by "Clara's War". I am sorry to be so sentimental; I can't help it. But I can tell you that it is a monumental book. We are indeed fortunate that this original diary has been preserved in the US Holocaust National History Museum in Washington, DC. DON'T MISS This one!
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Testament of Love From the Holocaust - a "Must Read", March 31, 2009
This review is from: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (Hardcover)
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Here's the summary: "A teenage Jewish girl writes a diary while hiding with her family and two others from the Nazis in a crowded bunker during World War Two."
Yes, that is the same basic plot as the book that other famous WWII diarist wrote.
So why read "Clara's War"?
Because, other than that basic similarity, these are two very different books.
This book made me even angrier than that more famous diary, and made me cry more than once.
And this book, unlike that other, is really an unbelievably heart-wrenching love story... though you don't realize that until the end.
Clara Schwarz is a quiet, introspective 14 year old living with her parents and rambunctious younger sister in an idyllic Polish town where Jews and Christians have lived in harmony for three centuries. Although pogroms and other persecution have happened other places in Poland over the years, Zolkiew has been spared all of this because it was deemed so by King Sobieski three centuries ago. There is a long tradition of tolerance there.
Then the Nazis come.
Although Clara's father knows hundreds of Christian Poles and Germans through the factory that he owns, only two of them offer to hide his family. The first fellow is a poor Pole with no house and six small children to support. Clara's father declines, because the fellow simply doesn't have the resources. The second, Julia, a hard-working but poor ethnic German, was the Schwarz's housekeeper. She says she and her husband and her 17 year old daughter will hide the family. Clara's father is wary, because Julia's husband, Beck, has an infamous reputation around town: a heavy-drinking womanizer with a short fuse and with a bad reputation as an anti-Semite. As the Nazi noose tightens, though, Clara's father feels as if they have no other choice. They dig a shallow earthen bunker beneath Beck's bedroom and move there with 14 other Jews Beck agrees to hide. They don't dig the bunker very deep because they figure that, at most, they might need to live there two or three weeks.
Over the next 2 1/2 years, tragedies and miracles follow one upon the other in breathless succession in such an improbable way that a Hollywood scriptwriter would be laughed at if he submitted such a script. Intrigue, romance, infidelity, cruelty, arson, razor-thin escapes... even a 12-pound carp in a bathtub, stolen directly from the local Nazi Commandant!
But, through all of that human drama, what is most important: an improbable love grows.
In the beginning of the book, Clara is afraid of Beck, with his gruff ways, heavy drinking, Christian holidays, colorful vocabulary and anti-Semitic reputation.
But, by the end of her captivity, she learns that people aren't always what they seem---and that love speaks louder than anything else.
But be warned: In this temporal world of ours, good people sometimes lose, evil sometimes wins, and, unlike a Hollywood script, sometimes everything DOESN'T "work out well in the end."
But in the world of the eternal, all that really lasts is love.
"Clara's War" is an homage to the most righteous man she ever met.
It's now on my list of favorite books.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning story, May 21, 2009
This review is from: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (Hardcover)
This is a stunning, moving, heart-wrenching, brutal glimpse into Clara Schwarz Kramer's life. Kramer gives poignant examples of great kindness and devastating examples of great cruelty. This is Anne Frank's diary ratcheted up about three notches as far as cramped living, human fraility and man's inhumanity to man. The family tree is essential for keeping track of who is who, and the line diagram is a start at picturing just how small a space was shared. I cannot understand why the book does not include a more detailed sketch of the living space (maybe a side view instead of just an outline) and I was really, REALLY wanting to see photographs of the people and places mentioned. (8/09 update: A reader has told me the version she read DID have photographs. I'm so glad to know that! I increased my rating to 5 stars.)
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