Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust [Paperback]

Lala Fishman (Author), Steven Weingartner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 14, 1998

Born into a middle-class Jewish family in 1932, Lala Weintraub grew up in Lvov, Poland. When the Nazis came, Lala--who had blond hair and blue eyes--convinced them she was a Christian. This book tells her remarkable story. More than a narrative of survival, this is the story of a young girl's calculated and resolute struggle to defy, resist, and ultimately defeat the evil forces that sought her demise.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Another entry in Northwestern's ``Jewish Lives'' series (for another, see Ruth Liepman, Maybe Luck Isn't Just Chance, p. 1690), this volume recounts the experiences of a young Polish-Jewish girl between 1939 and 1945. Fishman (n‚e Clara Weintraub) was the daughter of secular, comfortable, if not prosperous, Russian Jews. Her father was a successful jazz musician in Lvov and, for a time, head of the musicians' union in that city; her mother's family had enjoyed some success in business. The Weintraubs' world was shattered repeatedly, first by pogroms, then by the Russian Revolution, and finally, and most appallingly, by the Holocaust. At first, fate was kind to them, with Lvov falling under the jurisdiction of the Red Army, but when Hitler invaded Russia and the Russians were driven out of Poland by the Wehrmacht, the round-ups and mass murders began. Lala avoided the fate that befell most of her family because she was resourceful, spunky, and a blue-eyed blonde. She managed to successfully pass for a Polish Catholic under the fictional name Urszula Krzyzanowska, narrowly avoiding arrest and certain death on numerous occasions. Like so many other recent Holocaust memoirs, this volume serves as an important reminder of the cataclysm's terrible cost, of the sheer viciousness with which the Nazis attacked not only the Jews but also the civilian population of Poland. Indeed, the most riveting section of the book is a lengthy recounting of the first day of the war, the chaos, noise, dirt, smoke, blood, and wreckage, as experienced by a teenage girl. At its best, Lala's Story reads like a good thriller. At its worst it is perfunctory but never dull. Among the better recent Holocaust memoirs, with a firm grounding in Polish-Jewish history and an admirable frankness that makes no effort to disguise its heroine's human foibles. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 355 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press; 1 edition (January 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081011500X
• ISBN-13: 978-0810115002
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,929,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rich Detail and Vivid Recollections of a Monstrous Time, January 31, 2007

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Stuart W. Mirsky "swm" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Paperback)

This memoir, rich in texture and detail, reflects the extensive research the protagonist's co-author, Steven Weingartner, seems to have done in preparation for writing this work (since so much of the history and background recalled here would have been beyond the ken of Lala Fishman, the story's narrator). The authors trace Ms. Fishman's family roots, from what was then the Ukraine into the Poland of that era, and provide, in remarkably vivid detail, a picture of what it was like to live through two back-to-back invasions of Poland: the joint Nazi-Soviet attacks of 1939 followed by the treacherous Nazi thrust against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1941. For Jews like Fishman, the advent of the Nazis into eastern Poland made a trying situation, under Communist rule, infinitely worse as the Nazis systematically undertook to exterminate the Jews.

Fishman recalls both the telling details and her own reflections as the Nazi terror swirled around her. From the initial indignities of Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population, to the construction of the ghetto and the unpredictable "actions" that swept Jews indiscriminately off the streets and into oblivion, to the whittling away of her own family members, one by one, as they are taken in the "actions," Fishman describes the growing sense of dread and helplessness that overwhelmed the Jews she knew. Witness to brutal hangings of Jews by Gestapo soldiers in the streets, arrested more than once herself, Fishman, on the verge of adulthood, finally recognizes that no help is coming and that there can be only one end to it all.

"It's a trap," she tells her distraught father and mother when the Nazis initially press them to enter the ghetto, a place to get all the Jews together she insists so they can finish them off. Her family, heeding her words, stays put for as long as they can. But they can't hold out forever and Fishman must finally flee the city of Lvov with what's left of her family (her broken mother and nine year old sister) after her uncles and father disappear and her elderly grandmother is grabbed from their apartment in a surprise Nazi raid.

But flight alone is barely enough, for Fishman can't escape the cruelties of the Nazis and their Ukrainian minions, nor the cold anti-Semitism of many Poles. Yet it's through other Poles, men and women of good will, that Fishman is finally enabled to survive. Relying on false papers and the training in Catholic ritual and teaching she receives in a crash course from Catholic friends, Fishman contrives to "pass" as a Catholic Polish girl. Still, she is taken and beaten by Nazi interrogators, stripped to her underwear for their inspection and finally, on winning a temporary reprieve, flees into the nearby countryside as the Gestapo pursue her and a friend. The journey takes Fishman into a new life, one of deception and paranoia where she must constantly live with the memory of her lost family, including the broken spirited mother and terrified nine year old sister she was forced to abandon to save herself.

Sometimes, though, there's almost too much research here, too much detail about things Fishman could not have known while she was living it all. But the episodes of flight and survival recalled by Fishman, and recounted here, make this story a valuable window into an era which saw the brutal eradication of Europe's Jews.

SWM

author of A Raft on the River the story of a young girl's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust in eastern Poland between 1939 and 1945

editor of Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Received the Carl Sandberg Award in Chicago., December 17, 1998

By A Customer

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This review is from: Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Paperback)

I couldn't put the book down until I read the last page. An exciting adventure of a young lady trying to avoid the Nazi's.

3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reading--very exciting, July 6, 1999

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[e-mail] (SYOSSET, NEW YORK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Paperback)

This is a story of a young women being persued by the Nazi's and her ability to get away from them. She was brought to jail for questioning but with a great deal of bravery she was able to get away. A MUST READ.