Pearls and Lace: Poems [Paperback]

Magdolna Klein (Author), Susan Simpson Geroe (Author), Susan Simpson Geroe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1997

Magdalena Klein was born in 1920, in Marghita, Romania. In 1944, she was deported with her parents and sisters from their home in Nagyvarad, Hungary (today Oradea, Romania) to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The poetic journal Magdalena kept since a teenager shows the stark contrast between her youthful love of life and the grim reality of the world around her. On the one hand are her intellectual brilliance and her confidence in herself; on the other are the apparent hopelessness of her situation.

Petite and physically frail, Magdalena was able to survive starvation, forced marches and other atrocities during the Holocaust, but not the emotional pain and nightmares, which haunted her later. Her poems bear witness to what a human being can and cannot endure.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hungarian

From the Author

Magda was born in 1920 as the youngest of eight siblings to a middle-class Jewish family. They lived in the northwestern part of Romania, in Marghita, then moved to Oradea in 1938. As a young woman, she witnessed the rise of fascism in Europe and in May of 1944, she and her family were deported from the Oradea ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived the harsh days of concentration camp, but lost her parents, several sisters, other close relatives, and friends.

Magda kept a poetic journal before and immediately after the Holocaust. Several of her poems were translated and published in this volume. These poems reflect the stark contrast between Magda's intellectual brilliance and confidence in herself and the apparent hopelessness of the days leading up to deportation as well as the world to which she returned afterwards.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: Fithian Pr (February 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564741907
• ISBN-13: 978-1564741905
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,862,156 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The private universe of a young girl in the Holocaust, June 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Pearls and Lace: Poems (Paperback)

The work only appears to be a simple volume of poems. It is at the same time the decanted expression of a painful life experience. It is the inner view of the Holocaust, lived by a young woman who survived it in its first phase. As the title of the book suggests, it is the fragile private universe of a young girl, shattered abruptly and brutally by history's "tread mill".

In a short documentary style introduction, the editor recreates the biography and portrait of the poems' author. In the spring of 1944 , Magdalena Klein, together with her entire family lived the horrors of daily life in the Jewish Ghetto of Nagyvarad (today Oradea, Romania), from where she was ultimately deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on May 24, 1944.

In reading Magdalena Klein's poems, as a historian, I distinguish, beyond the poetic form in which her ideas are clothed, the slow and irreversible transformation of a young and sensitive spirit under the mutilating impact of a horrific life experience. Hence, the book has most assuredly a documentary value from this point of view as well. This value is further enhanced by the reproduction of eight family photos taken in Marghita and Oradea dating back to the interbellic and immediately postbellic periods.

The thorough knowledge of both, Hungarian and English languages allowed the editor to achieve a faithful translation, without encroaching on the ideatic content.