Customer Reviews

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Holocaust occurred over six decades ago, and the survivors of this episode are aging and dying. In fact, calling the Holocaust an "episode" seems to be trivializing one of the darkest periods in human history. I apologize for any such characterization. The Holocaust was a monstrosity, an aberration, a blot on the record of humanity. Millions died.

Yet some lived. And these survivors had a life, children, a home.

This book, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, is author Bernice Eisenstein's recollections of growing up in a family that had both mother and father with tattooed arms. Even as a youngster, Eisenstein grappled with the knowledge of her parent's past, the stigma of being defined by this past, and the responsibility of maintaining memories without adding more pain to the world.

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is not a first person account of experiences during WWII as you can read in Night, by Elie Wiesel, although some of her parent's stories are recounted. However, Eisenstein's experiences and memories are also real. She hungered to understand what her parents experienced. She cried harder than her parents when she watched films about the Holocaust. The Holocaust has shaped members of a succeeding generation.

She exists because of the Holocaust, with her parents finding each other at liberation, and shaping her through their language, actions, and social life.

The book has illustrations throughout... haunting depictions not of life in concentration camps, but how a child (and later a young woman) came to view her heritage.

We all come from some place. Eisenstein comes from a place darker than we should ever have to see. I hope this book is picked as one to discuss in high schools and colleges.

Never forget.

I too am a child of Holocaust survivors. I read this book (picked up by surprise in a bookstore) in one several hour reading. It is touching, moving, eloquent, great art, and deeply personal. Life and death, of all sorts. Happiness and sadness, of all sorts. I'm deeply appreciative for the author's letting the world in on her (my) life.
David

this book is both illuminating and moving, I have already lent my copy to two other people. An important new voice on the Holocaust and it's survivors and descendants.

I read the one star review saying that the author only sought to know what happened to her parents, not getting to know them personally. I would hate to presume to know what that persons experiences were, but as the child/grandchild of victim/survivors.... everyone is dead, my father made it impossible for me to get to know the "real" him because his desperate need prevented him from being a parent to me, his needs so desperate that manipulation was his means. I will never know these people because alive, they were cold and distant. She nails my feelings on the head, the desperate need to find the story, so I can remember what they needed to forget. So I can understand that the things I hated about them, it wasn't really them. It was what was created for them.

Eisenstein, sharing her take on the visual, with her cinematic namesake, is also touching in these words that begin her book's inscription: "Without my family's knowledge or even their understanding, their past has shaped my loneliness and anger, and sculpted the meaning of loss and love..." In this one line, she captured "the unbearable fragility (my word) of being" the child of holocaust survivors, lives with forever, like their parents live with until they die.

In this world where anti-semitism reigns supreme again and holocaust denial persists despite reality and evidence, the Jews are still felt by the more outspoken fringe or majority (? ) to be the bane of society, the most consistent target for hate, for blame, forever it seems. When this type of cruel thinking becomes exterminating, we get Nazism and their holocaust, and our survivor parents.

Well done, Bernice! L'Chaim.

I received my order in a few days and it was in perfect condition. Very reliable seller.

All I can say is that I hated the book. The author was so intent to find out all the sordid details of her parent's life during the Holocaust that she never got to know them for who they were. The book is boring and the drawings are silly and juvenile.