The Pit and the Trap: A Chronicle of Survival [Hardcover]

Leyb Rochman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Unites States Holocaust (May 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805250441
• ISBN-13: 978-0805250442
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars " A harrowing Holocaust survival story ', April 23, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Pit and the Trap: A Chronicle of Survival (Hardcover)

This is the most harrowing, painful story of survival I have ever read. It is a document of witnessing, which tells the story of a few Jews struggle to remain alive after their worlds, their families their communities have been destroyed. As Aharon Appelfeld writes in his introduction to this work,Leyb Rochman is " one of the very few writers in whom the entire ordeal of his generation found its Jewish expression". Rochman (1918-1978) along with his wife Esther, his sister - in- law Tzipporah, his friends Ephraim and Froide are for the largest part of the book , over one and half - years hidden behind the wall in the home of an elderly former prostitute called in the book 'Auntie' ,and her brother Felek, who is a thief by profession. These two non- Jews however burdened with an anti- Semitic theology nonetheless risk their lives to hide the Jews. But they are by no means saints and do this for a variety of motives including material ones, and the hope of after the war being made rich by the surviving Jews. Yet they stand almost alone in giving help to the persecuted in a surroundings in which greed and cruelty predominate.

No summary can possibly do justice to the monstrousness of the experiences recorded here. Rochman is an unsentimental, precise writer who seems to let the events which in themselves are so powerful be presented without editorializing self- aggrandizement.

The whole experience of being continually in danger, of being hunted, and threatened by every sight and sound is made palpably present in incident after incident. It is not only the Germans who are murderers and cruel sadists but the threats also come from the Polish peasants who too enjoy and profit from acts of gratuitous cruelty.

Many of the passages of the book are simply horrifying to read. They make the soul cry out in anger and desperation at the thought of how evil humanity can be.

" The Jews were all waiting at the loading platform of the railroad station for the freight train to take them to Treblinka. They're squatting as searchlights aim down at them, and they're shot at from every direction. The guards keep dragging out the women and raping them. "Yes," He smiled, "women, - girls from age twelve, thirteen, and up. The girls cling to their mothers. They're raped right before their mothers eyes! The pavement and walls are splattered with the brains of babies. SS men compete with each other to kill the most children the fastest; they pick them up by the feet and smash their heads against the wall.

After he left Esther again pleaded with me to poison ourselves. We keep remembering her words. Perhaps she is right. We didn't have the courage. We still don't. We want to live. In any condition to live like a dog, but live!

Yes, we want to live, even under the worst conditions. We grasp for all sorts of reasons to justify our desire to live. Now we tell ourselves that it's our duty to go on living , so that our dead won't be forgotten: only we can truly remember them. Sometimes we seem to hear them commanding us "Survive and take revenge. Survive and tell the world what happened to us, how we suffered and how we died. " At such moments how we want to live!"

The five survive in the house of Auntie but as she grows impatient with them , they desperately seek another hideout. Rochman goes out and finds another peasant family( the Szubes') who he persuades to take them in. Here too they go through incident the after incident in which living in inhumane conditions , in this case a pit, they barely survive. Here they are joined by another Jew the young man Konyak the son of a tailor who has been hiding in the forest. They pray and wait for the coming of the Russian Army which does not occur before a great battle in which the German forces are stationed right on top of the place they are hiding.

The diary telling the story which was written partly after the war in Switzerland also has flashbacks in it which tell of the destruction of the whole local Jewish community . The burden of struggle for survival of these few surviving individuals goes on while they live with the terrible knowledge of family, friends, acquaintances destroyed. Rochman especially laments the loss of his mother and beloved sister Miriam.

Two memoirs of the 'Shoah ' stand out above all as having made an indelible place in the consciousness of Mankind, "The Diary of Anne Frank" and Elie Wiesel's ,"Night". The diary of Rochman should certainly too have such a place for more than any other work I know it details a day- by- day struggle for survival in which the cruelty of humanity and the quiet courage of a few isolated heroes are most starkly portrayed.

Rochman does not speak big words about himself. But the reader feels and sees through the action of the work that he is the one whose ingenuity and courage kept this small group of people , the remnant of a Jewish world alive.

This is a book which should be read by every person who wishes to know what humanity at its worse, and at its best, can be.