The Last Selection: A Child's Journey Through the Holocaust [Paperback]

Goldie Szachter Kalib (Author), Sylvan Kalib (Author), Ken Wachsberger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Goldie Szachter was the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family in a small Polish town. After an idyllic early childhood, the German occupation of Poland turned her world upside down, as she was first sheltered from the full force of the Holocaust by Christian families, then sent with her family to a labor camp and, at age 13, to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where most of her family perished. Because the family was able to evade some of the initial brutality of the Nazi's Jewish policies, this account differs from some others. But filtered through the lens of childhood and set down nearly 50 years after the events, the memoir lacks the searing immediacy of contemporary descriptions, such as Emanuel Ringelblum's Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto ( LJ 9/1/58; Schocken, 1974) or The Diary of Anne Frank . Nevertheless, a useful addition to larger Holocaust collections for both adult and YA readers.
- Barbara Walden, Univ. of Minnesota Libs . , Twin Cities Campus
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Kalib was born in 1931, the beloved youngest child of a wealthy, large, and close-knit family in Bodzentyn, a town of 4000, including 1400 Jews, near Cracow, Poland. She is neither a poet nor a theologian. The form in which her husband and a colleague have helped her recast her reminiscences is straightforward, even plodding at times. But from the accretion of details emerges a picture with fresh power to shock and disturb. No novelist could invent the German policeman who shot Jews for sport, photographed them as corpses, and then buried them in a sort of private cemetery for his trophies. Even more upsetting than the account of barbarism is the story of Jewish attempts to survive and carry on in a human way: hiding textbooks under flowerpots because by October 1939 Jewish children were forbidden to study; sneaking past Auschwitz guards in 1944 to keep in touch with family members. The youth and vitality that helped the author survive illuminate the horrors she went through with primary colors. Her father's wealth and resourcefulness protected the family for a time. In 1942, as the Germans were rounding up the Jews in nearby villages, Kalib was sent into hiding with a Polish landowner and her communist nephew. She paints a moving portrait of this woman, compassionate and courageous but, like many Poles, so anti-Semitic- -with Church encouragement--that she saw what was happening to her Jewish neighbors as punishment for their murdering Christ. Later, Kalib joined the rest of her family in a labor camp. In 1944, they were shipped to Auschwitz. In 1945, the survivors went on a death march to Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank had gone that same way. Kalib's child's-eye view of Auschwitz's maniacal orderliness and the world's-end chaos of Bergen-Belsen makes a useful complement to the famous diary. At a time when revisionists are running ads in college newspapers claiming the Holocaust is a hoax, this affecting memoir should go into every high-school and college library. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 266 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr (April 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558490183
• ISBN-13: 978-1558490185
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,517,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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