My Years in Theresienstadt: How One Woman Survived the Holocaust [Hardcover]

Gerty Spies (Author), Jutta R. Tragnitz (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1997

Gerty Spies was born in 1897 at Trier into a Jewish family whose ancestors had lived in Germany for centuries. Separated from her family by the Nazis, she was sent to the Czech camp known as Theresienstadt. It was a peculiar place: publicised as a retirement city, a Nazi propaganda showplace where Jews could sit out the war. But it was actually a way station for those destined for the Auschwitz death camp. Isolated from the outside world, surrounded by death, Spies retreated to her inner self to concentrate on human, cultural, and other values. Her powerful talent for writing, discovered at the camp; enabled her to transcend and triumph over mental and physical degradations; to keep her own integrity; to not let evil destroy her loving nature; and, finally, to not lose faith in humanity. By the end of the war, 33,000 people died in Theresienstadt from disease and malnutrition. Spies' work exhibits a tension between the expression of camp reality and an imagination of an idealised past. Sensitive and humorous, but never bitter, her stories of the struggle for survival are expressions of her own individual moral poise.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Spies, a Jew born in Germany in 1897, spent three years during WWII in Theresienstadt, the so-called model ghetto established by the Nazis northwest of Prague, where prisoners supposedly cultivated artistic pursuits. In reality, the camp was a holding station whence many Jews were ultimately dispatched to Auschwitz and other death camps in Poland. Because the author was once married to a Gentile--the marriage "ended" after about seven years, notes the translator (Spies herself does not elaborate)--she was not deported until 1942, and her two children were never incarcerated. Spies recalls her daily camp life in vivid and haunting vignettes, describing watching friends and family die, the lack of food and the exhausting labor she was forced to perform. She committed herself to writing poetry and keeping a diary, a selection of which is included here, that she had to keep hidden from the camp guards. She credits her writing with helping keep her alive and convincing her to forgive but not forget her persecutors. After the war, Spies returned to live and publish books in Germany. Photos not seen by PW.

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Holocaust survivor Spies's mixture of prose, poetry, and diary entries was first published in German in 1984. Eschewing a strictly chronological approach, the author moves back and forth in describing her daily life in Theresienstadt, the Nazis' "model" ghetto/concentration camp in occupied Bohemia, which was often just a temporary stop for inmates prior to deportation to Auschwitz. Given the camp's special status, the Germans encouraged artistic and cultural activities, especially to impress the outside observers who were sometimes permitted to visit. Although conditions were miserable and slave labor exhausting, Spies found time to give recitals and to write poems. While not attempting to offer a history of Theresienstadt, this remarkable woman, who remained in Germany after the war and never succumbed to bitterness, tells a moving story of how prisoners managed to maintain a semblance of dignity during a horrific period.?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll. Lib., Jamaica, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 214 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books; First edition (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573921416
• ISBN-13: 978-1573921411
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #378,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > History > Europe > Czech Republic

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