Customer Reviews

Every Day Lasts A Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In 1986 while going through the possessions of his parents who had recently died in an automobile accident, Richard Hollander discovered a briefcase that contained dozens of letters neatly arranged and held together with rubber bands. They were all addresssed to his father Joseph Hollander and had large hand-stamped Nazi imprints on them. He knew immediately what he had discovered: the correspondence of his grandmother and other family members from Poland who had perished in the Holocaust. This was the family he had never known, the family that his father had never talked about. At first Mr. Hollander did nothing with the letters. Eventually, however, he had them translated from Polish and German into English. They are published here twenty years later in EVERY DAY LASTS A YEAR: A JEWISH FAMILY'S CORRESPONDENCE FROM POLAND, a quotation taken from Hollander's beloved mother Berta in her May 26, 1941 letter to him.

In addition to the letters which make up the heart of this sad, moving book, Richard Hollander has written a chapter about his father Joseph who arrived at Ellis Island on December 6, 1939 and covers in detail his legal battles to avoid deportation back to Poland. His fight included appeals to the highest echelons of the United States government with a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt intreating the First Lady to intercede for him, his wife and a young lad Arnold who had arrived with them in America.
Christopher Browning in a chapter entitled "The Fate of the Jews of Cracow under Nazi Occupation" and Nechama Tec in "Through the Eyes of the Oppressed" provide valuable information about the conditions that existed in Cracow, Poland when Joseph Hollander's family wrote these letters from November, 1939 to December, 1941.

The letters, written by Joseph's mother and three sisters with occasional messages from his two brothers-in-law and two nieces, provide a day-by-day account of a family living in an awful time but making every attempt to lead as normal a life as possible. There are almost no references made to their difficult situation or to the Nazis although Joseph's sister Klara in referring to a failed escape attempt does say that "we lost two suitcases with dresses." Joseph's sister Dola loses a husband by death that she was planning to divorce and seeks her only brother's approval of her second marriage to Munio, whom she describes as a "man of 100% good character." His mother Berta delights in eating the powdered chocolate and marmalade that he has sent to her. His two teenaged nieces Genka and Luisa-- who sees "everything in bright colors" write letters you would expect from young people.

What is at once so life affirming but so heartbreaking about these letters is that they so often radiate hope and optimism. From Joseph's brother-in-law Munio: "the sun will shine again." From his sister Mania: "There is nothing bad that couldn't turn into good." From Dola: "I have felt betrayed by life but I love it anyway, and maybe with my 39 years I still can think about a joyful future?" Again from Dola: "Somehow we will get through this." From Joseph's brother-in-law Salo: "I want to hope we will see each other again." And finally from Berta, the loving matriarch of the family, upon learning that her sister has visited Joseph in America: How lovely it would have been if I could have been there. . . . if it will be possible to see you both. I live in this hope of yet having that good fortune and all of us will be together."

It somehow seems appropriate that I finished these letters while celebrating Thanksgiving with my extended family in beautiful Maine. The deceased husband and father of my friends, himself a first generation Italian American from Virginia, was a veteran-- as was Joseph Hollander who on July 17, 1945, chopped a block of marble from Hitler's desk-- of what Ken Burns calls "the necessary war." As Martin Luther King reminded us so often, we are all connected. Injustice for one is injustice for all.

It is difficult to read "Joseph's Story," the first chapter of "Every Day Lasts a Year," without being moved to tears. Richard S. Hollander's riveting narrative of his father's escape from the Nazis and eventual imprisonment (with his wife and a refugee child) by heartless INS officials on Ellis Island is also impossible to put down. One can feel only shame for the United States' immigration policies of 1939 which turned a blind eye to the plight of Jewish refugees in their desperate attempts to flee a Europe that was already in flames.

Christopher Browning's account of the Jews of Cracow and Nechama Tec's analysis of the letters, which Mr. Hollander found in a suitcase in the attic after his parents' tragic death, are also of great interest. As for the letters themselves, although they are of deep personal significance to the family, because of the censorship of the Nazi oppressors, they have to be read "between the lines." Without the analysis, they give us only a glimpse of the increasingly frustrated hopes of the writers to escape what the reader knows is their inevitable fate. One perceives the noose tightening only by omission in what becomes a catalogue of instructions first, not to send packages and next, thanks for received parcels of coffee and tea, measured out by the decagram. It is as if the repetition of "nothing to write today" and the profusions of "affectionate kisses" stand in juxtaposition to an evil that for the reader remains unseen, and for the writer remains unspeakable.

To a historian, the best source is a first-hand account, and in Joseph Hollander's trove of letters, written by family members lost in the Holocaust, is a new and valuable addition to the history of that war. Moreover, this book gives voice to people - to an entire people - the Nazis had sought to remove from all memory. That their words survive is enough: it makes this book a value.

This book is more than a collection of letters from the Krakow ghetto; the editors have thoughtfully provided three essays. One is a thoughtful introduction by Richard Hollander, Joseph's son, about his father's precarious arrival in the U.S.A. and attempts to free his family. The other editors wrote two well-footnoted essays on the fate of the Jews of Krakow, and on the fate - and surviving sources - of other Jews there. They are helpful to future historians, quite consciously so.

Richard Hollander's essay perhaps should have been footnoted as well, but no matter: he makes enough reference to the INS and other records of the time, and Joseph Hollander was enough of a cause celebre in immigration court that historians should have little trouble finding his record.

It's also helpful that Joseph Hollander had the foresight, and his son the wisdom, to keep all the other paperwork of his day-to-day life at that time: receipts, photographs, passports, financial records, and so forth. Richard Hollander was able to put the letters into this context, and it enriches his own account.

The essays are lucid and helpful; the correspondence is well translated and poignant - and the editors have helpfully annotated them. Though the letter-writers had to be circumspect, even cryptic, in their letters through the Nazi mails, the editors have helped us understand.

Not to be missed, by those interested in the fate of Europe's Jews, or that dark period in general, or in original works of history.

This is one of those rare treasures of a book that hardly seems real at first. Primary documents are the foundation of history. For me this is especially true when the documents are not official political or military papers but are instead a reflection of the average person within a certain context or era.

And that is what these are. Every Day Lasts a Year is a collection of letters from Poland to America, from a variety of family members to a young man who had emigrated not long before. These notes of various lengths and topics span from November 1939 to early December 1941. America entered the war. Joseph Hollander's family went silent.

They were Jewish.

But this isn't a book about the Holocaust or World War II or Polish history. This is a book about a family living in the midst of a crisis, trying to live as they could. It is a book about the contrasts between history on a grand scale and mundane details of daily life. In these all too often mundane details, however, the specter of Nazism is ever present, even if not mentioned.

The letters themselves take up about 180 pages of this 280 page book. They are well edited and formatted so as to make for easy reading, presented without commentary except for the occasional footnote clarifying a point of history or making note of a translation or transcription issue. These are not great literature, but that is the point. They are the kinds of letters sent by family members to one of their own far away. And they are amazing insights into life.

The first hundred pages is made up of three essays. The first by the son of the letters recipient. He tells the story of Joseph, his father. While the prose is not the best, the story is well told and quite interesting. We get to know the one who is so present and yet so silent through the later laters. It is an engaging story, not only because he was able to escape Poland but also because of the immense legal troubles he had when he got to the States. The US tried to deport Joseph back to Europe just when Europe was exploding into war.

The second two essays are much more academic in tone. The first details the Nazi rule in Cracow throughout the war. The second is broader in scope, giving a background to Jewish life in Poland before and during the war.

Overall this is an incredible book, amazing for anyone interested in World War II, Holocaust studies, social history, or Poland. My only critique, and it's a picky one, is that I felt the book was a little unsure who to target as an audience. It is very accessible to a popular audience interested in the topic, but at times the essays feel a bit too rigid and stolid. It takes a while to get to the actual letters, and at that point it is a huge shift in reading style. I almost would have liked to have the letters at the beginning with the two academic essays at the end for reference.

Again, a picky complaint. Overall, Every Day Lasts a Year is an extraordinary book, mostly because those we meet in it were not extraordinary at all but just regular men and women caught up by hell on earth.

I find this book hard to review, and here is why:

On the one hand, I was quite taken with the background story of how Richard Hollander found these letters and with it an extraordinary glimpse into his family's tragic past. The profound love and admiration Mr. Hollander feels for his father Joseph is very apparent on almost every page of this book. I also found the introductory chapters very insightful and although already possessing a good general knowledge about the Holocaust, I learned a lot of new things from these chapters - for example there are a lot of references made to a book about the Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy which I had not heard of before and will now try to get my hands on. What was also interesting was a lot of the general information on the situation of Jews in Poland before the German occupation. I was unaware, for example, that the Polish government in 1938 had undertaken an exploratory mission to Madagascar to find a "homestead" for Polish Jews, i.e. rid Poland of its Jewish population. And this was even before the Germans invaded.

I also appreciated these chapters for creating the necessary background for the letters and was very much looking forward to reading them and learning more about the Hollander family, their ordeal and the times they had to endure.

This was, however, where a certain disappointment with this book set in. The letters are all in all very unremarkable in content, except for a few that are more detailed. I perfectly understand that this is due to censorship and fear and don't want this to be understood as criticism of any kind. But I am not sure that I would have had these letters published had I been in Mr. Hollander's position. They might hold a certain research value because they do NOT reveal many things (thus underscoring the enormous pressure people lived under), but in my very personal opinion these letters do not stand on their own, i.e. even with all the background information I did not get that much out of them, precisely because they are too short, too general and "too veiled".

This is kind of tough to conclude because I have enomous respect, understanding and empathy for the Hollander family and what they had to go through. But these letters regrettably did not deliver too much insight into the times and circumstances of the late 1930s/early 1940s in the Cracow ghetto - with a few exceptions of course.

I would therefore rate this 3.5 stars because I still learned a lot, just not from the letters themselves.

For a year now, I've been writing a movie about the downfall of great societies in war--as exemplified by the Nazi invasion of Poland. Contrary to pop history, the campaign was difficult and costly for the Germans. Many of the weapons and tactics which made the Whermacht seem invincible by the summer of 1940, were tested first in the Spanish Civil War, and then baptized in Poland. And yet here is also where Germany is cursed, and its eventual defeat foretold.

So it's a happy coincidence that Amazon offered some research material to preview. The journalist Richard Hollander sadly lost his parents in a car-crash, only to find a treasure trove of letters from a bloodline he never knew existed--and which presumably ceased to exist under the Nazi regime. The only known survivor was his own father, Joseph...

Since I'm an Irish-Italian ex-Catholic myself, I welcomed this opportunity to get an inside look at Jewish Poles surviving under national madness. I leapt at the anthology *Every Day Lasts a Year: A Jewish Family's Correspondence from Poland*. Unfortunately, it didn't provide as much material as I was expecting, but it's still worth it for people interested in seeing how one family coped with the stresses of oppression.

Right away, readers might be tempted to tag this tome as a Polish *Diary of Anne Frank.* But the comparison would only be accurate in general theme. As co-writer Chris Browning states, "This collection of letters to Joseph Hollander from various members of his family in Cracow is precisely that--a collection of family letters." Indeed, Joseph's own letters, and hence much of his thoughts, were lost to the Nazis.

The man himself was almost lost due to the shameful xenophobia of pre-war America. Indeed, the central theme of this book is family against almost global oppression, in which humanity dithered, stalled, or otherwise enabled the Germans to commit genocide.

And so the first part of the book chronicles Joseph Hollander's journey, from an immigrant denied entry into every nation he tried, to an American soldier who returned to liberate his own homeland, and finally his resolve to build a new life. Part Two delves into the Nazi hell which descended over Hollander's native city, as described by Chris Browning. It includes a background analysis, by Nechama Tec, of the correspondence written by the subjects of occupation.

Which takes me to the letters themselves. Readers looking for eyewitness detail of Poland's Jewish Ghettos will not find it here; as the authors explain, the Hollander family was forced to write in code or generalities to avoid mail censors. What readers will find are the attempts to maintain family connections, and relate family affairs, over a tense, two-year period leading up to Germany's declaration of war against America. Here, the correspondence is cut off, as are their authors. Until then, the letters show a family increasingly dependent upon their patriarch to rescue them, even as he battles tooth and nail to prevent the INS from deporting him back to fascist-controlled Europe.

For the most part, the record on this branch of the family seems next to nonexistent, and that undermines the very foundation of the book as history. Due the depredations of the Nazis, few family documents survive beyond these letters. Nazi documentation in the book is little more clear, and the actual fate of the family is never conclusively demonstrated; at best, Joseph tracks down vague witness testimony that his family might have been shipped to the Bergen-Belsen forced labor camp, coinciding with a train schedule here or a depopulation order there. Yet the prose suddenly announces with authority that the family is deceased.

Otherwise, the book relies heavily on outside records and testimonies to fill in the story behind the anthology. The authors clearly tried to find survivors who remember the Hollander family, to little avail. Ultimately the segments on the Cracow ghetto are filled in by accounts of people unrelated. Some of these pieces are nevertheless fascinating.

That's the one other thing, aside from the thin family record, that bothers me. The authors did employ original interviews from Polish survivors, as well as heavy amount of documentation on Joseph's side of the story. Yet none of this material is reproduced in the book. I consider items-- such as ruling statements in which appeals court after appeals court tries to deport Joseph; interview transcripts; and German documents relating to the Cracow ghetto--to be anthology worthy. Also, the book cites Joseph's unfinished autobiography from time to time, a piece which I feel also should have been included.

It's these gaps in fundamental aspects of the narratives, unavoidable or not, which makes this anthology average instead of good. Now that the Red Cross has declassified its World War II archives, it may be possible for researchers to track down more conclusive documentation, and in a future edition of this book I think it would be worthwhile to include some of its source material, especially the original interviews.

Otherwise, *Every Day Lasts a Year* achieves its own title, in providing the accounts of a family under siege, a family which did not relent hope for their fortunate son, brother, or brother-in-law, even as their own chances of survival faded away. As far as the niche goes for World War II and Genocide related correspondence goes, I can recommend this book as a fair representative of a Polish-Jewish perspective in war.

This book presents a collection of correspondence from a family of Polish Jews during the years from 1939 to 1941. The family is that of the author, Richard Hollander. The book is divided into three main parts: the story of Joseph Hollander(the author's father), The fate of the Jews of Cracow and the Hollander family in particular under Nazi occupation, and the letters themselves.
I found the letters very touching and interesting, but, in particular, I found the story of Joseph the most enlightening, for in this story we get a unique glimpse into a dark side of American history--the effort to prevent the rescue of Europe's expelled Jews. How often in America's past have we turned a cold shoulder to those fleeing from a certain death? Today's debates on immigration deal with economic issues, not rescuing immigrants from death.
So, this book contributes to this dark period of history on several levels. Put this next to "The Diary Of Anne Frank" on your bookshelf.

Reading people's personal correspondence can feel a bit voyeuristic, and such letters can be boring to an outsider. This would be true with these letters, except for the historical context in which they were written. There is so little record of what life was like for the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis that these letters become a valuable part of the history of the period. The introductory essays help to establish the historical context for the letters, and help the reader to fill in many of the blanks that are created by having only one side of the exchange, or by the caution of the writers, who knew that their letters were subject to inspection by the Nazis. As a result, these letters tend to be mundane assurances that all is well, without any details about what was happening in the world around the writers. Even so, with the help of the background essays, it is possible to read between the lines, and get a glimpse of the increasingly difficult situation this family found themselves in. The abrupt ending of the letters, perhaps the result of the entry of the United States into the war, mirrors the untimely demise of the family at the hands of the Nazis. This is an intimate reminder that the victims of the Nazis were not faceless numbers, but individual people, each with their own story, hopes and dreams. That so many stories are forever lost is part of the great tragedy of this monstrous crime. This book, while not easy to read, is an important contribution to the body of work about this horrible chapter in human history.

The problem with giving a bad or even a mediocre review to a Holocaust book is the fact that you risk sounding like that 15-year old who said that he liked Night (Oprah's Book Club) better than Anne Frank, the Diary of a Young Girl. These are not literary abstractions. You can't judge them on artistic or literary value alone. They are real people who thought that the world was civilized up until it murdered them.

However, not every Holocaust memoir can be a Primo Levi or an Eli Wiesel meditation on suffering, civilization and survival. Of course, Wiesel's memoir written 10 years after the fact is going to have more to offer a reader than Ann Frank's diary (however had she survived the Holocaust she would have probably been the better writer). And primary sources are more important to historians than they are to readers.

Even though these are letters from an entire family to one man in America, I don't get the feeling of individual personalities from the letters themselves. The introduction and the history of the family and the probable fate work better for the historical but I feel like the book would have been better served by notes throughout the book in order to give more insight to these people.

That said, it's heartbreaking how normal everyone acts. They are worried. They are starving. They are fighting eviction as if they live in a place that cares about them as people. This is an interesting book but it's not as compelling as it could have been.

Publisher's Weekly calls this book, "A precious gift to historians," and they may be right, though I'm not enough of an historian to judge.

As a general reader I found the introductory essays to be more interesting than the letters themselves.

The book is divided into three parts: Joseph's Story - the book's central, though absent character; Cracow - a history of the ghetto; and the Letters.

Joseph's Story: Joseph is Joseph Hollander, a successful businessman in Cracow who escaped Poland with his wife just 17 days after the Nazi Blitzkrieg. Joseph's Story recounts the escape, the trials and tribulations of finding a country that would accept them, his return to Europe as a GI (with a wonderful tale of an event in Hitler's office in Berlin,) his travails in trying to secure the emigration of the relatives he left behind - all of whom (except his mother who died of natural causes) eventually died in the camps; and the incidents that led to his son's discovery of the letters.

Cracow is comprised of two essays. The first gives a history of the Jews in Poland, Cracow, and the ghetto. All the usual Nazi villains make an appearance - may they be forever remembered and reviled - as well as the generally lesser known heroes like the Gentile pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz - may he be remembered and revered - whose memoir, "The Cracow Ghetto Pharmacy," (currently unavailable at Amazon) provides insight into ghetto life (and may be the more accessible book for the general reader.) The second, and most informative in terms of the letters to follow gives a deeper history lesson and also teaches us how to read the coded references in the letters, e.g. Visiting Uncle Tolstoy is a reference to crossing the border into Russia.

The letters themselves are deeply focused on family concerns, and are very circumspect (needfully so considering who may have had access to the correspondence) about conditions and politics. Unfortunately, the circumspection is what causes the letters to be less than compelling to a reader like myself. The drama is implied, rather than explicit; and, because Joseph's letters aren't included, we only get a one-way correspondence.

I've given the book four stars because I don't want my review to discount its importance in the library of Holocaust literature, and because the book may be more compelling to historians both professional and amateur.