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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a story that must be told, March 2, 2009
This review is from: Crossing the River (Hardcover)
I had the privilege to meet Shalom Eilati, a distant cousin of a lifelong friend, while in Jerusalem a number of years ago. Shalom is one of a handful of child survivors of the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust, and Crossing the River is Shalom's vivid personal recollection of his experiences as a child in the ghetto; his escape - arranged by his mother - and hiding with brave Lithuanians for the remainder of the war; and his perilous journey - alone at 12 years of age - across Soviet-occupied Lithuania and Poland until he reached freedom in West Germany. From there he reached British-occupied Palestine a few weeks before his 13th birthday.
This book is much more than "just another Holocaust survivor's story." It is beautifully written in compelling language that often borders on the poetic. The unbelievable he describes with amazing clarity and detail. The unimaginable he leaves to the reader's imagination.
Shalom shares with the reader his struggles to answer questions that, ultimately, are beyond answer. At the same time, he tempers his story with connections to his life (and the life of the Jewish people) in Israel and beyond after the war. It is a story that encompasses both the horrors of the Holocaust and the hope and rebirth of an individual, the Jewish people, and all of humanity after such an unspeakable experience.
Crossing the River is in its third printing in Hebrew in Israel. Vern Lenz's translation into English is vibrant, and the University of Alabama Press is to be commended for publishing a book that needs to be read by this and future generations.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping Memoir of a Childhood in the Kovno Ghetto, May 12, 2009
This review is from: Crossing the River (Hardcover)
This book is a gripping and beautifully written memoir of Shalom Eilati's life from 1941 to 1946 when he was 8 to 13 years old. Unlike most memoirs about the holocaust written by survivors, Shalom Eilati presents a very detailed and vivid recall through the eyes of a child. This is not only Shalom Eilati's story, but the story of the handful of child survivors who against all odds were shepherded to safety by resourceful family members and brave righteous gentiles. As a child survivor myself, I feel that this book is a must read for child survivors and their families, as well as the families of those who perished.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Special Holocaust Memoir, April 13, 2009
This review is from: Crossing the River (Hardcover)
Among Holocaust memoirs, this book is very special. The story, a very readable account of a boy who at eight survives the Nazi destruction of Lithuanian Jewry and comes out at war's end at twelve -- all seen through the child's eyes --is compelling in itself. The first part tells of his life among the murderous events of the Holocaust. After liberation he finds himself alone, family gone except for his father, who he learns has come barely alive out of a concentration camp in Germany. In the second part we follow the boy's search for his father. Taken up by the Brichah, the underground flight westward of Jews still in turmoil and in danger in the east, he finds his father in a DP camp. In the third part, he makes his way alone to Palestine where he will build his life. What is really special is the fourth part, where the grown man, Shalom Eilati, having become a successful scientist, returns to Lithuania to the sites of his terrors and survival as a way of resolving still haunting questions that trouble his memory. This last part is a kind of prism through which we sense or see all the previous parts of his journey of survival. Eilati tries to establish truth in his childhood memories, and do justice to the people and events that marked his survival. This account goes far toward answering the question we, outside the events, might ask: what is it like to live with the memory of such terrors and miraculous survivals? I understand that the book's original Hebrew was considered powerful and beautiful, and went through several editions. This translation is worthy of that original. Through it we see something of how it is to live through and with memories full of nightmares, and yet find in memory itself a clarifying -- perhaps even a redeeming -- prism.
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