Customer Reviews

Survival

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
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"Survival" is chilling! The contents give grizly details of three Nazi prison camps.But Magda Herzberger's superb ability to pen her thoughts takes the reader throuh her journey of awe and wonderment that led to her hell-hole of nearly unsurvivable torture.And then she brings us back to the real world.
When I read about Magda's background [ off a well connected family with above average attitudes to make a positive difference in their community],I mentally engaged in that same strength.The when I read how she was shoved into the brink of near insanity,I felt her deep dark pain,and at the same time,I appreciated her tender-hearted goodness throughout the book.I applaud the author's courage to spill her gut-wrenching experiences onto the printed page and show the reader how she maintained her God-loving dignity.
Magda does not give a world-involved view of the war;she writes her daily account from the frame of a teenager.She places the reader within her,so we experience the pain of her flesh and the light of her soul.Her prose throughout the book captures additional heart-felt thoughts that give support to her storyline.
I recommend his book for teenagers as well as adults.We can learn from Magda Herzberger;she doesn't live in a prison of unforgiveness;instead,she looks for life and lives it.I suggest we all take a thankful attitude for the air we breathe.

Mrs. Herzberger's very powerful story bears eloquent witness to the innumerable atrocities of the Holocaust and her remarkable resilency and tenacity. It is a testament to her abilities as a writer that we walk through her journey alongside her, all senses and emotions fully engaged. While displays of the worst results of dehumanization occur all around her, Magda retains her dignity and humanity, giving great honor to the memories of those who did not survive. More than a story of survival, her book is a profound spiritual experience about life and living. As groups of people continue to be marginalized, scapegoated and discriminated against today, SURVIVAL reminds us of the ultimate result of such folly. It should be required reading for all political leaders, teachers and students. I greatly admire Mrs. Herzberger for writing this book.

Gregory N. Shrader, Ph.D.
Psychologist

This is not just another book about a Holocaust surviver. It is a book that tears deep to your soul with the facts, feelings and emotions of one that is a true surviver in what many would consider a hopeless strugle. It is a must read for anyone from any ideology. Dr. Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger said it best when he stated that this book needed to be written. And, I would add, it needs to be read.

I am related to this author through marriage into the family and thought I knew what this book was about. As a reader I was unprepared for the emotional impact of Magda's writing from her perspective as an eighteen year old. Madga tells her story truthfully, without learned defense mechanisms to anesthesize her horror, without a philosophy arrived at through decades of living. The authenticity of her innocence comes through strongly in her thoughts and perceptions. Her descriptions are so objective that I felt I was there with her. I had no idea how gripping her story was for me until I reached the point of her being liberated from the concentration camp and found myself crying for an hour. I think now that this book is primarily about Magda, as a remarkable person. Of course she writes as a voice for victims of the Halocaust. It is clear that this is her mission. I felt that the deep spirituality that pemeates her writing can apply to all recorded monstrocities. Her book is not just an exceptionally well-written story but an experience that can heal.

I just finished reading "Survival".A most profound,poignant,and heart wrenching story.And a most valuable chronicle of history.
It took me 4 days to read the book.Ordinarily I can finish a book of that length in one day.The emotional impact I felt was overwhelming,so I could read only a few chapters at a time,closing the book with tears in my eyes.
I am an avid reader of WWII history,having read most of the books on this subject from our local public library.I've seen the actual movies and pictures taken after the war of the death camps.I know a lot of the facts and was repulsed by the total inhumanity;but I am ashamed to say I didn't really feel any pain.This book gave an insight into the suffering of the Jews that I never got from any writings.
This book should be required reading in every high school.

Man's inhumanity to other human beings is forcefully delineated in Magda Herzberger's autobiographical account as a member of the Jewish community. She grew up a very happy child in a sheltered environment in Cluj, Romania, shielded by the deep love and contentment of a devoted family. This congenial atmosphere was totally shattered by Hitler's Nazi persecution of the Jews when Magda found herself as a teenager uprooted from her serene surroundings to be suddenly transported to the inhumane treatment that was prevalent in the notorious concentration camps of Europe.

How Magda survived this harrowing ordeal keeps the reader spellbound throughout her entire story. Her deep abiding faith in an all-loving Supreme Being enabled Magda to pierce the darkness enveloping her and witness the emancipating light at the end of a long tunnel. Her subsequent accomplishments in poetry, prose and music attest to the indomitable spirit Magda possessed even as a child.

Magda's life story is truly a "magnum opus", so aptly described in the Foreward by Dr. Moshe Carmilly-Weinberger who knew Magda as a teenager. In addition, her book is rich with excerpts from Jewish culture and customs. SURIVAL is both an historical document while at the same time it is a pulsatingly human interest story.

So glad I read this book. Everyone should read this. Makes me appreciate what I have in life.

Survival

This is not just another Holocaust book. Magda's story is a slap in the face to the "historians" and racists who deny that the Holocaust ever took place. But this book is so much more than a historical document; it is the story about one woman's courageous life, and a life that has been lived to the full.

I had the pleasure of hearing Magda share her story at our Messianic Congregation. Magda is willing to share her story with both Christians and Messianic Jews because she loves God and loves people. She is a bundle of energy, and if you ever get the chance to see her in person, I would highly recommend that you do so.

The book seems to fly by as we see the life of Magda transition from a happy, athletic child to a left-for-dead survivor, to her development into vibrant adulthood. The part where she is re-united with her mother is priceless; Magda's mother saved a change of clothes and some chocolates in case her daughter would ever return, and Baruch HaShem she did. Magda is also a poet, and she has many poems mixed in; one that stuck me in particular was one she recited when she thought she would die near the camps. The poem is a chilling reminder of the powerful emotions one would feel at that time when normal words cannot adequately explain our emotions.

What I really loved about her work, oral and written, is that she has a wonderful balance of remembrance and hope. She does not forget or ignore the past, but neither does she let it impede her. We remember the horror, but we also get to hear about how after the war she went to medical college, found the love of her life (recently celebrating 60 years of marriage), and became a poet and an inspirational speaker.

This book is important for both Jews and Christians to read. Both will walk away blessed. But also to those who feel that there is no hope in the world, this is a great example to demonstrate the opposite. Don't miss an opportunity to see what one woman did who was described as "saved by God." It will warm your heart.

I've known Magda Herzberger almost 30 years and during that time I saw in her compassion, a love of life, an intellect and a strong heroic desire to be a voice and tell what happened to 6 million Jews in Hitler's death camps of Auschwitz, Bremen and Bergen-Belsen. She can be that voice because she was there from 1944 to 1945.

"Survival" begins with 18 year old Magda writing about her loving family, mother, father and aunts and uncles. It is memories of these peaceful and happy days that will help Magda in the death camps where horror, humiliation and cruelty reign.

To write this book Magda had to summon all the horrors she endured in the camps back into her conscious mind and relive them. While writing the book, she endured many nightmares as she summoned the grisly past to the present. To continue on writing this autobiography is a tribute to her courage.

She writes she was shipped with thousands of other Jews jammed into cattle cars that would take them to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. In her book, she takes us through a week by week account of the "work" assigned to her in the camp. Death was next to her every moment. The daily living was so abhorrent that many of the women found themselves in deep depression and committed suicide. Magda's strong belief in the Almighty kept her from doing the same. The reader will see how Magda uses many different positive thinking techniques to keep her sanity.

The reader will find a book that gives living testament to what it was like in the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the streets of bombed Bremen and finally, the trip to the camp of starvation in Bergen Belsen.

This book begins with a wholesome, loving teenager who is snatched along with her family and other Jews to arrive at a death camps and end a year later with an emaciated woman with her arms wrapped around a birch tree coming to terms with death knowing it is not far away.

This is not to be her end. She does find happiness.

I think this book should be in every library, school, and book store.

Magda Herzberger's book Survival is the moving autobiography of an 18-year-old Romanian Holocaust survivor, who struggled between life and death in three German concentration camps: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bremen and Bergen-Belsen.

Magda's story is told through the eyes of a young girl who is embraced by a warm and loving Jewish family. Yet, at only eleven years old she witnessed discrimination when the first anti-Jewish law was passed allowing only 6% of students who were Jewish to enter school. As subsequent laws were passed, Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David sewn on their garments, Jews were prohibited from marrying Romanians, Jewish teachers and college professors lost their jobs, and Jewish employees of public offices were fired. Finally, Magda's father lost his job at the engine factory.

Magda's story unfolds in the concentration camps when she provides extraordinary details about the day-to-day pain and suffering she and her fellow victims had to endure. Her story weaves the reader through sadistic, pathological Nazis, some of whom were physically handsome or beautiful, but who lost all compassion and feeling by dehumanizing and then beating or killing others. Silent collaborators benefited from victims' suffering when they stole property at every chance possible. Then, sadly, there were the prisoners themselves who decided to either try to live, commit suicide, or sometimes even become betrayers to seek an advantage in the camps. In the end, the betrayers lost everything to either the Nazis or their fellow prisoners. Death was often the penalty for betrayal.

Yet, the beauty of Magda's book is not in death and suffering, but in life, love, faith, hope, family and freedom. Her story is one of understanding how her faith and personal relationship with God through prayer saw her through death and to life as she trusted in Him. The spiritual lessons she learned as a child in a loving home gave her great strength and endurance, and her hope and positive attitude gave her the ability to transcend all odds. Magda shows you there are angels and miracles and God, and they come alive in the pages of her book. She discovers through suffering, that life has purpose and meaning, and so despite the death of many of her dear friends and family, like Job she finds love and happiness as she begins again with a new family and a new future.

Marian G. Stone
Associate Professor
Arizona State University East