Customer Reviews

Day After Night (Thorndike Basic)

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The year is 1945. European Jews are evacuating their former homelands and heading for the British Mandate of Palestine by foot, by leaky boats, by any way they can find. The British stand at the borders, ready to turn them back. Not to be denied, the "illegal" immigrants find ways around the blockaded roads or have to be rescued from floundering boats. For those caught or rescued, the Atlit detention camp becomes their new home.

Anita Diamant examines these double survivors in her new book, Day After Night. She focuses on four women, each from a different country, a different situation, but all intensely avoiding the memories of the past years. The life of the camp and the interactions of the immigrants make a compelling story interwoven with the pasts and the futures of these people determined to make a new life in a land that welcomes them.

The tale is straightforward, never melodramatic, and finally satisfying as the survivors struggle to find their way to safety. This is a story set in the distant past but universal in its humanity and a story that can not be told too often.

I have spent much of 2009 reading excellent novels that relate different perspectives of the horror that was WW II and the effects of the Holocaust on people from different countries. In Sarah's Key, I read what happened at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in France, in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle), I discovered what happened during the war on an island I'd never heard of, in Skeletons at the Feast: A Novel, I accompanied a family fleeing westward ahead of the advancing Russians, in Those Who Save Us, I read what desperate men and women did in occupied Germany. This novel is another wonderful testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable guilt -- the guilt of being a survivor of the ravages of the Nazis and the Final Solution.

This story takes place in Atlit -- the internment camp south of Hafia, Israel, after the war is over when thousands of Jews escaped Europe for their promised land, only to be imprisoned and held by the British military instead of being allowed to join the kibbutzes established there. Four remarkable young women from different backgrounds meet there and attempt to adjust to life and to deal with the consequences of what they did to survive the fates that claimed the lives of their friends and families.

I loved the women -- Shayndel, a Polish Zionist with a heroine's reputation; Zorah, the concentration camp survivor who hides the tattoo on her arm; Tedi, a Dutch girl who escaped most of the ravages of war by being hidden; and Leonie, from France, who avoided the roundup due to her looks and her wartime occupation. The experiences that the girls had during the war are revealed in vignettes as we get to know each one and her secrets very slowly as they suffer a day to day existence in the camp. The jobs they do, the contacts they have, and the relationships that manage to thrive despite the collective horror are heartwarming and inspiring. Both realistic and desperately hopeful, the girls do whatever they can to find some explanation or reason why they did not perish.

Anita Diamant is a superb writer whose prose rings true in every sense. This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.

The dimensions of this treatment of the experiences, range of emotions, and attitudes of characters provides an exceptionally vivid, painful, and enlightening image. Characters all survived the Holocaust in different fashions, and the scope of memories is wide - attitudes not being bitter towards the Nazis alone, to put it cryptically. This is not a 'good guy, bad guy' treatment of the war years - one can see the understandable attitudes towards those of various nations. Nor is the British camp glorified, to put it mildly, for women devastated by horror in the recent past.

The author's style is superb at its best - vivid, with a striking use of language, ranging from beautifully evocative to appropriately gritty and crude. It is not sustained throughout. At times, the characters seem more like 'types' than individuals, and some of the sections do become tedious.

Nonetheless, this gripping book provides history beyond what we learnt in most texts or scholarly works. Thankfully, characters' recollections are not sanitised by political correctness - one can see the experiences of (mostly dead) family members and related comments, as well as the extent of anti Semitism beyond that of a raving German chancellor and his associates. One cannot come away from this book without a broadening of perspective, and widened understanding of the many influences that affected Israel's coming into being as a State.

Anita Diamant's Day After Night focuses on four women of different backgrounds in the aftermath of WWII. They are classified as displaced by the British and are housed with hundreds in a camp in Palestine waiting for permission to immigrate to the *new* Israel. Although life at Camp Atlit is relatively safe and clean, the mobility restrictions, barbed wire, and guards are eerie reminders of Nazi concentration camps. The women become friends despite disparate backgrounds: one is a concentration camp survivor, a resistance fighter, a tainted beauty, and an unassuming (blonde, blue-eyed) Jewess. Their back stories were revealed via flashbacks as they passed their time waiting for news and reflecting on their journey thus far; and it is through these memories we learn of their trials, tribulations, and hopes. While their treks were interesting enough, I would have appreciated a deeper dive into their lives.

I consider myself a fan of the author and was eagerly awaiting this release. However, I'm disappointed to write that this novel simply did not resonate with me as much as The Red Tent and The Last Days of Dogtown. The writing was sense of place was marginally accomplished -- although I like that it was a slice of history revisited, the book fell short for me in its failure to endear me to the women and move the plot along as it seemed elongated and meandering at times.

At first I must admit I was a bit disappointed with this book. I was just not connecting to the 4 women. Then I realized that was the whole point of telling how it was at Atlit a camp for illegal immigrants trying to get to Palestine. These women are so wounded from the war and the terrors they went through they have to keep it locked inside to survive. Taking that into consideration I got swept into the story. I had never read of this camp or circumstance. There is always something new to learn about the Holocaust.

Life in this camp is also shocking at times. The things the women had to do to get what they needed...well I'll say not good. They often had sexually transmitted disease if that tells you anything. Some of the characters that are good down deep had to do bad things to make other good things happen. Sad but true.

These four women are quite brave, they have been through hell, 4 different ways and now here they are again behind barbed wire. It is not as bad a a concentration camp as they have food and are treated better but it is still very much a camp. The Brittish at this time had quota's of how many Jews could go into Palestine and detained any they tried to go without permission.

Most of the book revolves around a big plan to escape the camp, a real event in history! When the hope takes hold that they may get out then you start to hear a bit more about what happened to them during the war. The secret fears each one has that haunts her day and night. Since this is a real event I'm not giving it away to say that after the rescue when they get to Palestine and are safe, much more of their personal accounts of the war experience are shared.

I highly recommend this as yet another part of the big picture of WWII. Anita Diamant is an excellent author as you will see. Press thru the first part when you feel like you are not making the connection to the people, it is written to show a point. By the end you will know them personally.

While I have read many books chronicling the Holocaust, I know almost nothing about the period after the war and what happened to the many people who were liberated from the concentration camps. It was for this reason that I really looked forward to Day after Night by Anita Diamant. And perhaps because the author had written the almost perfect beach Bible book, The Red Tent, and is a well known writer on Judaic topics, I thought this would be a really good read. Unfortunately I was really disappointed reading this book and finished it by skimming it.

Why, in my opinion did this book fail, and why the two star rating from me. To begin with, the writing itself was very ordinary and at times I though some of my high school students could have done a better job. And then there was the failure of the characters to make any impression on me. The characters were never fully developed or even poignant in view of these character's lives in recent years. Finally I never visualized what the camp at Atlit looked like except for the barbed wire exterior. For all of theswe reasons I felt the book was rushed and never fully rang true. Maybe my expectations were just too high for this author but I'm hoping, in the future, I will enjoy a well written book that she writes.

I loved Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent" and I've even read some of her non-fiction, so it was a joy to have the opportunity to read her latest novel, "Day After Night." It tells the story of four women (Leonie, Tedi, Shayndel and Zorah) who meet at the Atlit "Illegal" Immigration Camp in British Palestine, just following WWII. Each of the women has a story of the horrors she suffered during the war--and we are given glimpses of their history throughout the novel. I really liked the characters of the four women--and really longed to read more about each of them. I almost felt that I didn't get enough of each individual woman's story in the book. That, and the sudden ending (not wanting to give away too much of the story) with a few lines about what happened to each, are my main complaints. I would have loved to see Ms. Diamant write a sequel (or even four--one for each main character)... to both learn more about her past, and her future after Atlit. I was left hungering for more. I kind of felt that the ending was a cop-out. I wanted to know more about Zorah, Tedi, Shayndel, and Leonie... and Jacob and Esther as well. The little blurb about who Jacob became was not enough in my opinion. The characters were too engrossing to end the book that way.

I appreciated how Ms. Diamant did not portray all of the Arabs or British as "bad guys" or Anti-Semites. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the Iraqi Jews as well. The history of the creation of Israel is a fascinating one--and one that very few Americans know very much about...both from the Israeli and Palestinian/Arab points of view. Ms. Diamant's novel is not only important from the standpoint, but also for reminding people just what hell so many went through during the Holocaust and WWII...and sadly, people continue to go through during the wars of today. Sadly, genocide has continued. Bosnia...200,000 killed. Rwanda, 800,000. Cambodia 2,000,000. Kurds in Iraq...150,000. East Pakistan/Bangladesh... 1,500,000. Women are still raped non-stop or forced into prostitution. War is hell. We should never forget that.

Anita Diamant, loved and praised for "The Red Tent," has written a novel approaching the other side of the Holocaust, the post-war internment camps for Jewish refugees and Zionists pouring into Palestine. To many people, these camps are like a footnote in historical texts--barely known or acknowledged, and Diamant's "Day After Night" helps expose the unjust situation the survivors found themselves in, suffering more after suffering much.

"Day after Night" chronicles the expriences of four women at the camp, held prisoner by the benign British bureacracy. This is a story of survival and renewal, of finding one's place in an altered world. Diamant excels at providing a forward-looking story (the chance to escape to a kibbutz) while weaving in the horrific memories they must leave behind in order to heal.

My main concern with the book is that this book could have been 200 or 300 pages longer so that we could have known the characters better (a la Leon Uris in "Exodus," "Mila 18," and "QBVII." In this book, the reader may find herself somewhat passionless about Tedi, Leonie, Zorah, and Shayndel, who never quite leap to life.

A good book that could have been great.

Based on a real event, this story takes place in Atlit, a British detention camp in Israel which temporarily housed "illegal immigrants". It is 1945, and holocaust survivors are fleeing to Israel to start a new life. But for the four women who are central to this novel, they first were sent to this place, a place reminiscent of the horrors they had just experienced, but where there was ample food and clothing and hope. They all expect to leave this camp sooner or later and are slowly rebuilding their lives, learning Hebrew, flirting with the men in the camp, and looking forward to a future life in a Kibbutz.

Then, there is a dramatic event. In an act of courage, and with the help of the Israeli Palmach fighters, everyone in the camp escapes. There is a lot of drama here and I just couldn't put the book down during this part of the story. The ending is happy. I'm so glad for that.

The strength of the novel lies in its concept. I shuddered as I read about the lives of these women and the horrors they had experienced. The author tried her best to individualize them but, somehow, they blended together in my mind and I had to keep looking back to associate their names with their back stories. Also, in her desire to tell everyone's story, including that of the British officer who was having a romance with the cook, the Israeli nurse who worked in the infirmary, the Iraqi Jews who seemed different from the Europeans, the Polish servant who rescued a Jewish child and the German woman who had been a concentration camp guard I felt that the story was just a little too rushed an underdeveloped. The book is too short for its subject, a mere 294 pages. I would have preferred it longer.

I enjoyed the book. I read it fast and didn't want to put it down. I learned a lot about a part of history I knew nothing about. And I applaud the author for bringing this story to the world.

"Day After Night" is set in Palestine in August 1945 and, for most of the book, takes place in a British internment camp for Holocaust survivors. The book focuses on four young women who survived the Nazis. As their friendship grows so does their ability to trust and love again.

I agree with other reviewers that the characters never leap to life, but then Diamant may have done that intentionally since the women she portrays were numbed by the horrors they witnessed and survived. They would have to learn to live again and thus would, in fact, be nearly robotic in the early days of their "freedom." If that was Diamant's intent, then, obviously, she succeeded wonderfully.

Diamant has chosen to set her book about these four young women in the Atlit Internment Camp run by the British and Diamant's camp is based on the real camp by the same name. She clearly shows the British insensitivity to the survivors who lived behind barbed wire and when they arrived in Palestine, they were once again placed behind the barbed wire of Atlit.

If you are at all interested in the aftermath of the Holocaust, you should read this book because it tells the story of a little-known segment of this period.