The Seamstress [Paperback]

Sara Tuvel Bernstein (Author), Louise Loots Thornton (Author), Marlene bernst Samuels (Author), Edgar M. Bronfman (Author), Marlene Bernstein Samuels (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1999

"From its opening pages, in which she recounts her own premature birth, triggered by terrifying rumors of an incipient pogrom, Bernstein' s tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania?and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father' s orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher' s vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him?After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women' s concentration camp, Aand? managed to survive?she tells this story with style and power." --Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

A striking Holocaust memoir, posthumously published, by a Romanian Jew with an unusual story to tell. From its opening pages, in which she recounts her own premature birth, triggered by terrifying rumors of an incipient pogrom, Bernstein's tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania between the wars and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him. Ashamed to return home after her expulsion, she looked for work in Bucharest and discovered a talent for dressmaking. That talent--and her blond hair, blue eyes, and overall Gentile appearance--allowed her entry into the highest reaches of Romanian society, albeit as a dressmaker. Bernstein recounts the growing shadow of the native fascist movement, the Iron Guard, a rising tide of anti-Semitic laws, and finally, the open persecution of Romania's Jews. After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbrck, a women's concentration camp deep in Germany. Nineteen out of every twenty women transported there died. The author, her sister Esther, and two other friends banded together and, largely due to Sara's extraordinary street smarts and intuition, managed to survive. Although Bernstein was not a professional writer, she tells this story with style and power. Her daughter Marlene contributes a moving epilogue to close out Sara's life. One of the best of the recent wave of Holocaust memoirs. (b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Sara Tuvel Bernstein was born in Romania, became an expert seamstress, and survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After liberation, Sara married another Holocaust survivor and emigrated to Canada. Wanda McCaddon began recording books for the fledgling audiobook industry in the early 1980s and has since narrated well over six hundred titles for major audio publishers, as well as abridging, narrating, and coproducing classic titles for her own company, Big Ben. Audiobook listeners may be familiar with her voice under one of her two "nom de mikes," Donada Peters and Nadia May. The recipient of an Audie nomination and twenty-five Earphones Awards, AudioFile magazine has named her one of recording's Golden Voices. Wanda also appears regularly on the professional stage in the San Francisco Bay Area.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425166309
• ISBN-13: 978-0425166307
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (86 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Jewish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

109 of 112 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars We Must Remember, March 2, 2003

By 

Allyn "pianogirl" (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Seamstress (Paperback)

Seren Tuvel began her life as a carefree child growing up in a beautiful, peaceful part of Romania. Secure in her intelligence and in the love of her eight siblings and parents, the anti-Semitism that raged in Romania seemed nothing more than an annoyance to Seren and her family. After receiving a full scholarship to attend a prestigious gymnasium (high school) in Bucharest, Seren travels to her country's capital to city to quench her thirst for learning. This dream of gaining knowledge is abruptly ended, however, when Seren throws an inkwell in the face of one of her professors after he makes an anti-Jewish remark. She flees the school, begins work as a seamstress, and enjoys city life. Nazis invade Bucharest and the entire Romanian country; Seren feels that she can take care of herself. Yet soon this feeling of security fades and Seren decides that she must go back to her country home to escape the growing Jewish persecution in the city. Disaster meets her there as well when she and her father are rounded up in a horrifying night raid by the Nazis and sent to a federal prison, where they are falsely accused of being government spies. Seren is released from prison, yet as she receives word that her father is losing his mind, and realizes the destruction of Jewish life around her, she knows that her "journey" is far from over. Indeed, the pages of her story take us deep into the horrors of Auschwitz, and show us how somehow, Seren "rebuilt" her tortured life following the war.

In many ways, this Holocaust memoir is not extraordinary in its genre. However, in a few key ways, Seren's memoir is supremely effective and unforgettable. First, as I read "The Seamstress", I was amazed by the utter lack of bitterness in the book. Seren simply TELLS about the beatings, questionings, and other forms of torture she and family endured at the hands of the Nazis, and never tries to "play-up" a single horror in her life. After the war, it is apparent that Seren simply tries to recover, find her family memebers, and gain a job. She is happy with the husband that she has found, and tirelessly keeps up hope about her life. Wow! I was so amazed and inspired by the fact that Seren never once complained about the havoc the Nazis wreaked on her her life (although that would have been completely justified), and for that reason alone, I would never forget this book. Seren's intense loyalty to her sister, Esther, and friends, Ellen and Lily, in Auschwitz was also uplifting. I was awed by the way Seren insisted that she would be responsible for her friends at Auschwitz, and swore that she would never leave them, even to get food or clothing (which were virtually non-existent at Auschwitz). It seems that this memoir strove to show the high ideals and strong character that were developed in Seren during the Holocaust, and this characteristic of the book alone is enough to make this book a must-read and an inspiration for anyone.

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique compelling account, July 31, 2005

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Seamstress (Paperback)

This is the first book about the Shoah I've read that takes place in Romania (apart from the excerpt from Miriam Korber's diary in the anthology 'Salvaged Pages'). All of the other books and memoirs are from places like Poland, Hungary, Germany, France, Holland, anywhere but Romania, which also suffered mighty losses during the Shoah, though not always in the same way as in those other conquered nations. Seren was the third-last child of a huge family, composed of both full siblings and half-siblings, and despite having a strict father and living in a nation with rampant anti-Semitism, even among small children who were taught to hate, a land where Jews were not granted civil rights and civil liberties until 1923, and then only very reluctantly, she always stood apart from others. She was willing to fight back and to be her own person, to leave home at 13 to attend the gymnasium in Bucharest, to strike out on her own after throwing a bottle of ink at an anti-Semitic priest teacher and never going back to the gymnasium. Seren loved being a dressmaker, even designing gowns for members of Romania's Royal Family, though she didn't tell her family for some time what she was really doing and that she'd left gymnasium.

Unlike many other Shoah memoirs, this begins when Seren is quite young and continues through her childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. (She is also a bit older than the typical writers of such memoirs; she was 26 years old when she was forced into the labor brigade and the camps, not a teenager or even in her early twenties.) There were increasing incidents of anti-Semitism both at home and in surrounding nations, but things are still relatively "normal" a lot longer than in many other memoirs of this nature. Many start out normally but quickly move to the camps and ghettos; this book doesn't move to that territory for some time. Even after Seren sneaks her way over the new border through the mountain at the foot of her family's house shortly after Romania is carved up by Hungary and the Soviet Union, and she and her father are arrested and treated quite terribly, she still eventually manages to finally be released and go back to her family, whom she is ordered to move to another town. Her father is suffering in prison, but the family is largely still intact. It is while Seren is working in Budapest with her youngest sister Esther and two new friends of theirs that the town they left most of their remaining family in gets invaded by the Nazis along with the rest of Hungary, and but for the ones who have already escaped to the relative "safety" of Budapest or who are somewhere else, most of them are murdered. It is only in the Summer of 1944 that Seren, Esther, and their friends Lily and Ellen (the Helinka later referred to in the Epilogue?) are taken to a labor brigade; after several months of that they are transferred to the first of eventually three camps they would be in. They weren't taken to one of the death camps in Poland, but conditions were just as bad where they were; it's a marvel they managed to survive until the liberation in the Spring of 1945. I also liked how much time was spent to writing about what happened after the liberation; too many memoirs of this nature either have no sequels or only spend a few pages on relating what happened immediately after the liberation, wrapping things up without any real sense of resolution. A lot of people make the claim that many books about the Shoah start to seem all the same after awhile, only with different names, places, and specific incidents, but because of all of the rich detail, many different characters, timeframe, locations, the fact that the author was together with a sister and two friends instead of (as one tends to see more often) mainly surviving for another sibling and not friends, how much time goes by before things really start getting horrible, and the age of the author, this book truly provides a unique and gripping perspective.

52 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating, January 15, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Seamstress (Paperback)

Like others, I could not put this book down. Seren's story was captivating--she was incredibly strong in the face of horror. The fact that she was not German and explains what happened to the Jews in Eastern Europe gave me a perspective I have not had. And, like other reviewers, I found her lack of bitterness amazing. This was the first Holocaust book I've read which made me understand that people had no idea what happened to members of their families. I knew it before; this time I felt it.