Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust (Nea Heritage & Preservation Series, 3) [Paperback]

Zosia Goldberg (Author), Paul Auster (Author), Hilton Obenzinger (Author)

Book Description

Series: Nea Heritage & Preservation Series, 3 | Publication Date: April 2004

"Du solst starben zwischem goyem!" A fellow Jew within the Warsaw Ghetto, offended by Zosia Goldberg's Polish of no Yiddish accent, spat at her in Yiddish: "May you die amongst the goyem!" Zosia took this 'curse' instead as a message from God. Her dramatic tale begins with her escaping the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewer, whereafter she survived the Holocaust posing as a Gentile. Zosia did not die amongst the goyem, and yet along her dangerous journey she should have died on numerous occasions. She was a 'debrouillarde', someone who could run through fire without getting burned. Hers is a story of resistance at every turn, of continual attempts at sabotage, of perpetually escaping and defeating the enemy. Her account is filled with unique energy and a wonder at the strangeness of human behaviour. For not only did she suffer bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, she also encountered the unexpected sympathies of Nazis, and was at many times aided by her very tormentors. This is not just a story of the Holocaust, but of a woman struggling to make sense of human folly and depravity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Noted in the Jewish Chronicle, June 18th, 2004.

About the Author

After surviving WW2, Zosia Goldberg came to the United States, married, then moved to Caracas, Venezuela, to operate a garment business. She returned to the United States after her husband's death and currently resides in Florida. She has one son. A poet, novelist, and critic, and a recipient of the American Book Award, Hilton Obenzinger teaches American literature and honors writing at Stanford University. He lives in Palo Alto, CA, with his wife and son. Paul Auster is the author of eleven novels, including The New York Trilogy and the bestselling Timbuktu; three works of nonfiction; and three screenplays (including Smoke). He also edited The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry and I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales from the National Story Project.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Mercury House (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1562791281
• ISBN-13: 978-1562791285
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,119,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome and highly recommended, August 9, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust (Nea Heritage & Preservation Series, 3) (Paperback)

The latest addition to the Mercury House "NEA Heritage & Preservation" series, Running Through Fire: How I Survived The Holocaust by Zosia Goldberg is a welcome and highly recommended contribution to the growing library of Holocaust literature, memoirs, and biographies. Zosia Goldberg was a Polish Jew living within the warsaw Ghetto when she was rejected by a fellow Jew who cursed her in Yiddish and spat upon her to die among the "goyim" (non-jews). Taken that incident as a sign from God, Zosia escaped from the Ghetto and posed as a Gentile in order to survive the Nazi Holocaust that led to the almost complete extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish community. Running Through Fire is a gripping story of narrow escapes, help from unlikely sources, bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, and a dramatic struggle against human folly on the one hand and human depravity on the other. After surviving World War II and the Holocaust, Zosia came to America, married, and then moved to Caracas, Venezuela and worked in the garment business. Returning to America after her husband's death, she now lives in Florida where she was materially assisted by poet, novelist and critic in recording her life experiences for the benefit of future generations.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Prewar and Holocaust Experiences of an Assimilated Polish Jew, March 27, 2007

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust (Nea Heritage & Preservation Series, 3) (Paperback)

Zosia Goldberg traces her experiences in prewar Poland, war-torn Poland, and then wartime Germany (as a mislabeled forced Polish laborer).

Goldberg tacitly attests to the fact that the prewar sympathy of Polish Jews towards Communism (the Zydokomuna) was widespread: "When I was going to school, I had feelings for communism, like all the young ones." (p. 7). She also frequently mentions her Communist-involved relatives (p. 8, 16, 29-30, 33). She absurdly refers to all prewar Polish political parties, excepting Pilsudski's, as Nazi parties (p. 7).

In her ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, Celia Heller would have us believe that prewar assimilated Polish Jews suffered just as much from anti-Semitism as did the much more numerous non-assimilated Polish Jews. In contrast, Goldberg writes: "I did not suffer much, but the Jews in Poland did. Especially if you had a Jewish accent and could not speak Polish, people would always say hurtful things, like: `Dirty Jew.' With my dark eyes and hair, I never heard that I was a Jew. They called me a Gypsy instead--admiringly!" (p. 9). (Of course, this was generally true elsewhere. The relative infrequency of anti-Semitism in the west, compared to that in eastern Europe, owed less to the virtue of tolerance presumably possessed by westerners and more to the assimilated state of western Jewry).

Goldberg herself experienced hatred of exceptional virulence not from Poles but from her unassimilated fellow Polish Jews. She comments: "There was a Jew with a big beard who I had never seen before, and I went over to him and asked, `What's happening? Could you tell me?' I could not speak Yiddish, so I spoke Polish to him. I think he understood me, but he got very angry that I did not speak Yiddish, so he spat on me, `Du solst starben zwischem goyim!'...'May you die amongst the goyim!'" (p. 39).

The author provides a telling commentary on German conduct during the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939: "It was a tremendous job to get to Warsaw because German planes were shooting everyone on the road. Everybody was running, and the Germans were shooting the refugees...They bombed the national shrines." (p. 12).

In referring to Poles and Jews under the German occupation, Goldberg writes: "Everybody stole at the time..." (p. 20). This corrects Jan Tomasz Gross (FEAR) and his tacit mischaracterization of thievery as something in which Poles were the sole perpetrators and Jews the sole victims.

From the earliest days of the German occupation, Goldberg had to contend with Jewish collaborators, including the Jewish Gestapo (pp. 23-24, 44), and Jewish informers who betrayed other Jews (p. 48, 133-134). She describes one roundup of Jews: "Along with the German Nazis, there were Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Jewish police." (p. 34).

Throughout her book, Goldberg makes a sage distinction between ethnic Poles on one hand, and the Volksdeutsche on the other. For example, her experience with the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) was a positive one: "So the police came, a plainclothes Volksdeutscher. The real Polish police would never come. The Germans would not trust them because the real Polish police would do anything possible against the Germans." (p. 62).

While in the Warsaw Ghetto itself, Goldberg observed the arrival of some German Jews, and commented on their behavior: "One day these German Jews were marching off to work past the SS men on guard. These German Jews were raising their hands, hollering, `Heil Hitler!' and the SS men did not even answer them, did not look at them, did not even spit at them." (p. 24).

For all the talk about Poles and Jews being "unequal victims", it becomes obvious that Germans didn't see the Poles as having any more inherent right to live than the Jews. When in Germany for forced labor, Zosia Goldberg, concealing her Jewishness and saying that she was a Pole, went to a German doctor to treat her hepatitis. His reaction was revealing: "'You are from there?' he said. `All these Jews, these Poles and Jews, they should die. They should all be killed. I don't know why we are using them for workers.' `You are very sick', he then said. `You think I will give you medicine? You are very much mistaken. We need medicine for our soldiers, for our Germans. For foreigners--for Poles and Jews--nothing! The Poles, the Russians, and the Jews--nothing!'" (pp. 113-114).

While a forced laborer at Erfurt, her fellow Polish forced laborers kept her Jewishness a secret and helped her (p. 147). Earlier, while seriously ill, Goldberg had been helped in Germany by a Polish woman who blamed the Jews for systematically cheating Poles (pp. 115-116). This adds to the numerous other accounts of ostensibly anti-Semitic Poles helping Jews.

Goldberg inadvertently touched on the Pilsudski-Dmowski factionalism as to who was Poland's worst enemy: "Pilsudski had made believe that he was with the Germans against the Russians because he wanted the independence of Poland. He did not like the Germans. As a matter of fact, he hated them all. He only wanted Poland to be independent." (p. 119).

Goldberg alludes to the anti-Christian character of Nazism: "While I was in prison, I always prayed regular Catholic prayers, not because I wanted to pray, but because it was forbidden. Prayers were not allowed. It was against Hitler." (p. 110).

Goldberg repeatedly found that older Germans were less likely to practice Nazi anti-Semitic polices than younger ones (p. 50, 67, 95, 99, 121). But one of them opined that she could return to Warsaw, which would in future be part of Germany (p. 67). Although Goldberg doesn't develop this further, her experiences show once again that, while virulent German anti-Semitism is a relatively recent development, German Polonophobia is of ancient vintage.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars must read, June 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust (Nea Heritage & Preservation Series, 3) (Paperback)

This is an amazing story that depicts the strength of a young woman in an impossible situation who relied on her bravery and intelligence.