Customer Reviews

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival

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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!

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.

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.)

As I read Clara Kramer's memoir about hiding from the Nazis in a bunker under a neighbor's home, it wasn't the trials of living in what we'd call a crawl space that really gripped me. Yes, what they endured was horrible: Living for years in a space where the ceiling is so low you can't even stand up ... subsisting on potatoes and bread for so long that simply eating an apple gives you diarrhea ... having to use the toilet in front three families ... waiting to hear word about how your cousins, classmates and grandparents are doing, or if they're dead ...

Perhaps it's too horrible. That could be why I can't relate.

Instead, it's the Becks that fascinate me. They are the German Poles who hid a total of 18 Jews under their home. They knew that if the bunker was found, the Becks would meet the same fate as Clara. Julia Beck cleaned houses and worked for Clara's family. Her husband was a big-talking anti-Semite who drank too much. Part of why the Becks were so successful in hiding the families under their home is that Beck was known to be very proud of his German heritage and so contemptuous of Jews.

Why did they do it? Because they believed in God. It seems to be that simple and that powerful. "We are in God's hands," or "It's out of our hands," made up Beck's oft-repeated refrain in response to whether all them -- upstairs and down -- would survive.

The Becks are imperfect, 4-dimensional, real-life heroes, and Clara movingly writes of how she has tried to live a life worthy of them. It's an unforgettable story.

It is just heartbreaking to read what this woman and her family went through just to survive, and just because they were Jews. It was hard to read this book, but I found I couldn't put it down either. We have read and heard similiar stories from others about this horrible period in history, people need to continue to read and hear about what happened, in the hope that we will never let it happen again.

Please read.

How incredible to hear about this horrifying experience from someone who survived. No matter how many times I hear stories of survival, I find each one inspiring and heart-wrenching. 15 people in a bunker underneath a house. Incredible. I'm so glad Clara lived and went on to tell her story. The way she describes the family who protected them is so real you can imagine you were there yourself, praying that the father's adultery did not get your entire family killed. My heart broke as I read the book, but I think it is important to make sure these memories live on in the generations to come. A must-read.

Every now and then a book comes along which possesses something so far beyond the words on the page that you are connected to the people whose lives the book illustrates. Such is the immense power of "Clara's War, One Girl's Story of Survival", a book that so perfectly illustrates humanity's duality of good and evil it seems almost spiritual.

Clara Schwarz Kramer's book is based on the diary she kept as her family, along with three other families, hid in an underground bunker for what approached two years. The bunker was previously dug under one of the Jewish family's homes given to the Becks, an ethnic German family, who agreed to hide them. Julia Beck had been the Schwarz's housekeeper, while her husband, Valentin, referred to simply as "Beck" was a known anti-Semite. The Beck's had a solitary child, a beautiful teenage daughter named Ala. While Julia was universally thought of as an extraordinary hard working and caring person, her husband was better known for his drinking and disparaging remarks regarding Jewish businessmen.

The fact that Beck's Jewish hostility was so open went a long way in enabling the Becks to hide Clara and her bunker-mates and serves as an amazing paradox. The Beck's risked not only theirs, but also their cherished only child's, death in the event anything went wrong in the scheme to save these lives. This was a very non-passive, but pro-active thing on the Beck's part in that they constantly had to lie even under S.S. suspicion and interrogation to avoid their home being dismantled and searched. The act they so gallantly put on was almost beyond human strength and it cannot be underestimated that it was a tremendous, constantly dangerous, sacrifice they consciously made.

Ultimately, I do not want to give too much of this story away as it is just so unbelievably moving and powerful it nothing short of reading it can do it justice. It is very sad, but it ultimately proof positive that good is more powerful than evil. Nothing I could write here would prepare you for the amazing story of survival against all odds that is Clara's Story. You must simply read it. You cannot help but be moved. It will bring tears to your eyes without any shame. Only a heart of stone would not be moved by this true life experience of Clara Kramer. I give this book my very highest recommendation and go further to say it is one of the most important stories to come out of WWII and it's amazing to me that it is only now out. Do not miss this, please!

This is the story of Clara's life. A young Jewish girl and her family living in Poland prior to the Nazi invasion in the early 1940's. First her country was occupied by the Russians who were less than friendly, then things took a major turn for the worse when the Nazis invaded her small-town neighborhood. Neighbors turned on neighbors, and friends turned on one another in a futile attempt at survival. I can't get my mind around all of this killing. I've heard it before, but nothing has made it seem so real to me as Clara's story of living in a dirty bunker with her Jewish family and neighbors that were being hidden by a very colorful and compassionate character named Beck. This is a tale of loss beyond comprehension. There are many excerpts from the diary that she kept the entire time she was in hiding...bone chilling, to say the least. It makes me appreciate the peaceful life that I have, along with my family, friends, and my job. If you are considering buying this book, I wholeheartedly recommend it. This woman (Clara Kramer) is a living legend, and I am so grateful to her for sharing her story with all of us.

As an avid reader, I am often moved by books -- inspired, informed, delighted, saddened, challenged.

But this is the first book that I actually cried tears of joy.

I think it is safe to say that Ms. Kramer's work rightfully belongs alongside those of Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel as among the very best of the genre. In many ways it is a more complete and compelling story than that of even Anne Frank.

I was gripped by the clarity of the writing, the cinematic scope of the story, the many characters in the bunker and of course the drunk, philandering, anti-semitic German national Mr. Beck -- who despite his flaws emerges as truly righteous and a hero of humanity.

In sum, I have read no finer Holocaust narrative than this young Polish girl and her family's fight for survival. This book is ripe for a screen treatment and I hope a movie is made of this extraordinary battle for life.

Thank you, Ms. Kramer -- your testimony and your life is proof that the Nazi mission was a complete and utter failure.

I could not put this book down.

As an easilly bored, fidgety ADD fanatic, I couldn't decide what would distract me on my long boring cramped noisey flight. Finally I grabbed this book and jumped onboard. The moment I opened Clara's War, 2009 disappeared and I emerged into the priviledged impoverished world of WWII Germany . . . and didn't look up till page 339.