The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister (Hardcover)

~ (Creator), Denise George (Contributor), Carolyn Tomlin (Contributor)
Key Phrases: Great House, Uncle Zhenya, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Russian refugee Bannister (1927–2004) rarely spoke about her brutal experiences under the regimes of Stalin and Hitler, not even to the American she married after the war. In this memoir, she reveals how a privileged childhood in the 1920s and '30s gave way to horror and loss in the 1940s. Although the sound quality of this production is poor (lots of rustling papers), Rebecca Gallagher does reasonably well with the multiple languages and wisely avoids attempting to replicate European accents. What is irritating, however, is the constant interruption in the form of unnecessary editor's notes, which make the narrative choppy and disjointed. More helpful is the seventh disc, which contains an interview with Bannister's husband and son, a precious audio reminiscence from Nonna herself, recorded in 1993, and abundant PDF materials, including maps, photographs and genealogical data. A Tyndale hardcover. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

How this story came to be written is a big part of the drama. The only World War II survivor of her wealthy Russian, devout Christian family, Nonna Lisowskaya came to the U.S. in 1950, married Henry Bannister, and never spoke about her Holocaust ­experience––until a few years before her death in 2004, when she revealed her diaries, originally written in six languages on paper scraps that she had kept in a pillow strapped to her body throughout the war. Now those diaries, in her English translation, tell her story of fleeing Stalinist Russia, not knowing what was waiting in Hitler’s Germany, where she saw her mother murdered in the camps, escaped a massacre of Jews shot into a pit, was nursed by Catholic nuns, and much more. The editors’ commentary in different type constantly interrupts the memoir, but the notes are helpful in explaining history and context. The added-on heavy messages celebrating Nonna’s Christian forgiveness seem intrusive and unnecessary, no matter how heartfelt. --Hazel Rochman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.; 1 edition (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1414325460
• ISBN-13: 978-1414325460
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #75,177 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #47 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Holocaust
  #93 in	Books > History > Europe > Germany > Holocaust

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tea with Nonna, April 15, 2009

By	Susy Flory (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews

I bought The Secret Holocaust Diaries a few weeks ago and started reading it. What an amazing book! Nonna Bannister was a gifted young Russian girl from a loving, warm, and wealthy family. Caught up in the horror of World War II, she watched everything and everyone she knew and loved disintegrate before her eyes. Yet Nonna miraculously survived, with her faith intact and her secret diaries hidden away, known only to her until recently. What is most astonishing to me was Nonna's lack of bitterness and hatred for the perpetrators of the savagery she witnessed--possible only with divine forgiveness, I'm sure, but still difficult to fathom.

Reading The Secret Holocaust Diaries is like sitting down to tea with Nonna, as she unveils the secrets carefully packed away in her locked green trunk in the attic. Even her husband didn't learn about her past until their twilight years, when she decided it was finally time to tell him. I'm so glad she decided to share. Nonna's voice is powerful; after I read a passage and close the book, her lovely and heartwrenching prose stays with me. This is the type of book you don't want to read too fast; I'm savoring it, page by page.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another Important Narrative, April 23, 2009

By	Shelly Kelly (On the Island) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

[...]

When 23-year old Nonna Bannister arrived in the United States in 1950, she closed the door on her disturbing past. She married and raised three children and never told a soul about her experiences in Russia, the Ukraine, and Germany during the Holocaust. After 43 years of marriage, she finally introduced her husband to her past, the photographs and diaries she had miraculously saved and painstakingly transcribed into English. This book is her story.

The book, a compilation of Nonna's diary entries and family stories, opens with her 1942 transport from the Ukraine to Poland, bound for a "labor camp" in Germany. The horror is quickly realized as fifteen year old Nonna witnesses firsthand the murderous brutality of the German soldiers toward the Jewish prisoners.

After this shocking opening, the editors return us to Nonna's earliest childhood memories and stories about her unusually comfortable life in Russia post-Revolution, embracing family and Russian Orthodox Christian religion as the foundation of her character. Embedded in these childhood tales, Nonna becomes more aware of the outside world and dangerous influences. In the mid-1930s, the communist Soviet laws were heavily enforced, ending her Grandmother's prosperity and Nonna remembers that everything had to be "donated" to the "collective farms." Religion was forbidden and her parents send away her older brother to an unknown location for his safety. Nonna never saw him again. As German troops approach from one front, the family chooses not to evacuate with the retreating Soviets and hide in the cellar. They later learn that Aunts, Uncles, and cousins who did retreat were killed.

When the Germans invade in 1941, Nonna and her mother are sent to another village for safety, while her father hides; but he is discovered. The rest of the book cover Nonna's darkest experiences. After her father's death, she and her mother are transported to Germany. Nonna's compassion and brief futile attempt to help a young Jewish boy leads her to be put in the middle of a massacre, where she is miraculously saved by the same boy, who dies seconds later.


She survives her experiences at the labor camp and soon her knowledge of five different languages, especially German, is recognized as a valuable asset. She and her mother are moved to a Catholic hospital where Nonna works as a clerical translator and her mother serves as a nurse's aide. But an incident that happened on that first train ride from the Ukraine causes the Gestapo to arrest Nonna's mother and transport her to Ravensbruck and then Flossenburg.

Nonna's story is a valuable contribution as a primary source and witness to the Holocaust. While the editors notes interrupt the flow of the narrative, and should have been added as sidebars or footnotes, they enhance the reader's understanding with background information. The book would benefit greatly from a map showing the various locales discussed, and despite being told that the diaries and photographs survive, there are no photographs included in the book and would be a valuable addition.

Don't pass up reading this book because it addresses an uncomfortable topic. If this teenage girl could live through this and write it as it happened, then we, in our comfort sixty years later, can definitely read it and be witness to her life and the truth. Despite the struggle, this is a tale not only of survival, faith, and courage, but also forgiveness, strength, and hope.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Horrifying, Yet Touching, Midcentury Saga, April 16, 2009

By	James W. Crawford (Brookline, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Readers will find this memoir of the mid-twentieth century a powerful reminder of the heights and depths of the human condition. It tells the story of a woman who lives contentedly in the late twenties and early thirties in Western Russia, moves to the Ukraine in time to be caught, in 1939-40, between the fierce invasion of the Nazis and the fearful retreat of the Russians, each hating the other, and destroying the innocents in the territories between the two nations. The woman, Nonna Bannister with her mother, finds herself captured by the Germans and sent to a number of camps in Poland and Germany to serve as slave labor. What she witnesses and its impact on her life lies at the heart of this autobiographical reflection - assembled late in her life from diaries and scraps hidden in secret recesses. Nonna's story contains all the violence and horror we associate with the Holocaust. It also illustrates the powers of courage, incredible bravery, human solidarity and hope in face of the worst we can do to one another. The two collaborators in the story's telling, Denise George and Carolyn Tomlin inevitably discover themselves engaged in Nonna Bannister's life, and eagerly seek to assist us in interpeting that life as a unique testimony to an undergirding Christian faith. They - and Ms. Bannister- succeed fabulously well.