Customer Reviews

The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Esther's wonderfully sincere and illustrative writing will hold even an adult's attention from cover to cover. I have read it over and over again for the last 22 years. As a child in 1979 at age 11, I found myself in my family's frozen garden pretending to be Esther herself, wandering through Siberia in search of frozen potatoes. When I would take a bath, after playing in the snow and getting chilled, I would revel in the marvelous heat of the water and imagine I had just been given a rare cake of soap. When thirsty, I would make myself wait for a drink of cool water from the tap until my throat was parched, so that the first drip of water on my tongue would be heavenly. I would then suck the water into my cheeks as Esther did and swallow very slowly, trying to make it last. My younger sister and I would walk into my dad's livestock truck and pretend we were on a cattle car headed for the Steppe, and we would make a makeshift hut under a log fort we had near the barnyard. Esther's life story filled my thoughts, my days and my head for years following, and reminded me to always care for others and not to take my life in rural United States for granted. Esther wrote in a way that made me feel as if I had somehow managed to form a personal friendship with her.

In 1995, I was able to speak with Esther on the phone, and I have never forgotten that wonderful conversation. Talking with her (she still has a very noticable accent) was as if the book itself came to life, because I realized I was actually visiting with the woman who was the couragous child in the book. Esther's writing encouraged me to be thankful, to be grateful, to be kind, and to never give up. I majored in journalism in college, and though I have never had such an extreme happening in my lifetime, I hope to eventually put down in words something that will touch other's lives as Esther Hautzig touched mine.

Here in America, when someone mentions the atrocities of World War II, most people think immediately of the Holocaust and Hitler's plan to rid the world of Jews and establish the German "master race".

However, Hitler was not the only one during this time committing atrocities which killed millions of people. The Soviets were guilty of this as well, though this is not as well known to Americans.

This is the story of a young girl who is a victim of the Soviet forced-labor camps. Her family did nothing wrong, but with the Russian invasion of Poland, her parents and grandparents were considered "capitalists" and therefore deported to Siberia.

This book is very well written. The characters are very well deveoped, which is especially important since this book is autobiographical. Reading this gives a real sense of how far out in the middle of nowhere these people were. There is the beauty of this pristine land versus the terror which haunts the people who have been sent here, as well as the true desolation of the place. In time, Esther, who is 15 by the end of the book, really feels that this is the place her life is, rather than Poland, where she lived before, even though this is the place of her imprisonment. Hautzig also does a good job of describing the constant suffering and scrabbling for humanity that these people went through as political prisoners. It was a hopeless situation, but the one thing that they could least give up was hope.

This is one of the very few children's (or young adult) books that does focus on what was happening in the Soviet Union during this time. There are many kids books which focus on the Germans and the Holocaust, but that was only part of the story, and to forget the rest of these people who suffered and died because of the same sort of tyranny is an affront to them.

The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig, is the true story of a young Jewish girl named Esther Rudomin, and her family living in Siberia. The Story takes place during World War II, when the wealthy Rudomin Family are pronounced capitalists. They're removed from their beautiful home and loved ones in Vilna, Poland. They are taken by train, along with peasant families to an endless steppe in Siberia where they are forced to work in various places, including a gypsum mine. Siberia lacks many necessities. The only way they are able to survive the harsh Siberian conditions is the thought that they must never be brought down. With the help of many friends along the way, the Rudomins eventually learn to fit into the Siberian puzzle. Every obstacle becomes part of their everyday life for five long years. I thought this was a great book because it shows how a wealthy family could survive in complete poverty during the worst of times. The book also showed how a once spoiled little girl, learned how to see life on the other side of the fence.

Like many other reviewers here, I discovered this book at the age of 8, during the 1970s and have re-read it many times since. When I moved to New York in the early 1990s I found myself living only a few blocks from Esther Hautzig, and acutally met her daughter once in a store. I had to tell her that her mother's book was one of the most memorable I had read as a child - and I was a bookworm who consumed a minimum of four books per week. Several years ago I discovered another book by Ms. Hautzig, "Remember Who You Are" - a series of autobiographical stories, written for adults; many of these stories tell what happened to the people the reader first met in "The Endless Steppe". I was fascinated to learn, for example, that Miss Rachel - Esther's governess in Vilna - was also sent to Siberia and one day took the risk of illegally hitching a ride (during that time in the USSR one needed permission to travel internally from the local commissar; failure to do so could result in imprisonment or worse) from the village where she was living to Esther's village, showing up totally unexpectedly. (Miss Rachel now lives in Israel.) Evidently Ms. Hautzig's editors advised her to leave that incident out of "The Endless Steppe" because readers would not find it believable. Also related in this collection is the fate of Esther's beloved cousin, Salek, in the Vilna ghetto, and the heartbreaking deaths of her maternal grandmother and her favourite aunt at Ponar. At any rate, I advise any parent who wishes to give his/her child a book to be cherished and re-read, a book about the strength and importance of the family, about a place and time that is rapidly fading into history, to buy this book. And for the adult who read and loved "The Endless Steppe" as a child, try to find "Remember Who You Are" at the library as I believe it is out of print.

I read this book many times as a child, and always felt moved by the story. She and her family were deported because they happened to have made money and, incidentally, this took place around the time Stalin became very paranoid about the Jewish people (at first he considered them his most likely supporters, but he always turned on everyone sooner or later). I was pleased to see so many others are enjoying this book today. However, I was surprised by the comments by the reader from LA who referred to Esther as a "spoiled brat" and asked "what's wrong with communism?" On paper, nothing seems wrong with it. Wherever it has been put into practise, it always ends up with a few people taking all the power and wealth while the common workers live in absolute poverty--making his/her quote "power to the people, workers, and laborors" dreadfully ironic. That is exactly what never happens with any communist government humans have set up, although it is supposed to be the goal. I only wish the LA reader had submitted an email address so I could recommend some Solzhenitsyn to give him/her an idea what it's like to live under Stalin. What's wrong with communism? Over 60 million dead in Stalin's gulags sounds wrong to me.

All parents should read this to 8 year old kids and older!!! The author, Esther Hauzig, goes through some amazing and unbelieveable experiences, all beginning when she is snatched from her Poland home at 10 years old. Her family learns the true meaning of love in this book. Although this book is really sad, it's a must read for anybody 8 years old and over. This'll deliver a message deeper than probably any book you've ever read.

The Endless Steppe is about a young Jewish girl named Esther who lived in Vilna, Poland during World War II. She is convicted of being a capitalist, an enemy of the people. She and her family are put into a cattle car along with 40 other people and taken to an endless steppe of Siberia where she will spend the next five years of her life. Esther has to learn how to adjust to the steppe including making friends, the tempature, the amount of food given to her daily, and dealing with the normal worries a teenager has to face. As if that were not enough, Esther has to face physical pain while working in the potato fields. Then when a snow storm hits, her mother has to go out looking for her. At the end, the Russian soldiers came to get them and Esther is so attached to her new home she doesn't want to leave. At certain times in the book it really seems like God is there with them. She and her family go from having a life full of privilege to a life with barely any food or water. I think Esther Hautzig tells this story with wonderful energy and excitement. It has beautiful descriptions of the setting and characters. The conversations take your breath away with fascination. This book is a drama, comedy and an exhilarating story. I think if you are interested in a story that sort of gets you ready for bigger books about the Holocaust you should definably read this book. It is an exciting yet fascinating story, although it would be better for people ages ranging from 8-14. It is a difficult but intriguing story that will fascinate young adult readers!

I was 12 years old when I read this book in Kingston Jamaica as part of my 8th grade English Literature Programme. It was my first introduction to the inhumanities human beings inflict upon each other. I have read Esther Hautzig's story at least 25 times over the years and each time I read it, my heart and soul is filled with compassion, fear, tears, joy, courage, and a whole gamet of emotions. Her ability to describe the events of her and her family's exile to Siberia in such explicit detail is one of the most incredible attributes I could bestow upon her. I believe that the greatest crime one can commit is a crime of the spirit, and Esther Rudomin, in spite of her ordeal, managed to find a way to hold on to her zest for life. Her spirit just completely explodes in every page, every word of her book. She lives within my heart, and her courage to live has been a guiding force in my life since I was 12 years old. I am now 38.

I read this book in junior high school and was thrilled to find it again, although the reading is no less sad now than it was 30 years ago.

Adolescent Esther is arrested along with her family and sent to labor in Siberia. Given only minutes to pack, she seizes photo albums - and her mother packs her clothes instead. Bereft of her home and all she owns, her memories and her family members are now all she has left.

Her grandfather is sent to a concentration camp and never seen again. Left alone with her mother and grandmother, she struggles to survive yet manages to find some happiness among the desolation. A moving story of the Polish holocaust from the eyes of a teenage girl. Highly recommend for young adults, and everyone else

Young Esther Rudomin lived a charmed life in a small Polish city, despite World War II raging around her. She and her wealthy family had always felt removed from the war, until a knock came at the door one Sunday morning.

The Russians who had taken control of Poland were arresting Esther's entire family for the crime of "capitalism." They were loaded into foul-smelling, crowded cattle cars and shipped all the way to a Siberian outpost. Once in Siberia, the whole family, including nine-year old Esther and her frail but feisty grandmother, were forced to toil in dangerous mines or to work outdoors in brutal weather.

As the days stretched into months, Esther and her family became accustomed to the harshness of their new lives. Their priorities changed; Esther learned to value things she previously took for granted, such as a day at the fair, a chance to attend school, and a costume party.

This true story (Esther Rudomin became Esther Hautzig) serves as a reminder that indignities and cruelty happen everywhere, and that the human spirit can be resilient enough to overcome any obstacle. Despite the deprivations she suffered, Esther matured into an articulate and vivacious young woman.

Although the story could perhaps benefit from some editing in its long middle sections, it is a solid introduction to an important part of history, told through the eyes of one who lived it.