Jewels And Ashes [Hardcover]

Arnold Zable (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 1993

Like Schindler's List, this is a haunting document for the next generation of Holocaust survivors. Zable travels from Australia to the Eastern European countryside of his parents' remembrance to understand the present-the inner lives of those who, like his parents, survived the hatred but lost every trace of family. Winner of top Australian literary awards.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Australian writer Zable's powerful, beautifully written search for his roots is one of the most moving Holocaust memoirs in recent years. His mother, Hoddes, escaped Poland in 1933, emigrating to Australia where his father, Meier Zabludowski, joined her three years later. Virtually all of the family members they left behind in the cities of Bialystok and Orla perished in the Nazi genocide. Traveling via the Beijing-Moscow Express across Siberia in 1986, Zable went to Poland to meet Jewish survivors and to re-create the lives of his parents and relatives. Blending history, interviews, travel notes and his parents' recollections, he evokes the vibrant life of the Polish shtetl of the '20s and '30s teetering on the brink of annihilation. Zable also documents in harrowing detail the heroic but doomed resistance of Bialystok's Jewish ghetto and its subsequent liquidation. This fierce yet lyrical odyssey is a noble attempt to forge a spiritual connection with the six million Jews claimed by Nazi savagery.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Forty years after the Holocaust, Australian author Zable visited the Polish city of Bialystok in search of remnants of its once rich Jewish life. His parents had fled Europe before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and their memories, accounts of historical incidents, and the stories of survivors of the period whom Zable met are the substance of what is basically an autobiographical book about a journey. Although allowing characters and events to give the book focus, Zable remains detached enough to keep his passions about time and place in check. Besides describing the annihilation of Bialystok's Jewish community, he conjures up how thriving and energetic it must have been. He also contrasts the Communism that once seemed to be the wave of the future with the deterioration of the Iron Curtain during his mid-1980s visit. His parents furnish what is the most telling explanation for how the world can change so much in only a few years when they counsel, "Do not be overly idealistic. Revolutions and wars come and go, but our inner drives and obsessions remain forever the same." Aaron Cohen

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (October 19, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151463484
• ISBN-13: 978-0151463480
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,951,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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