Tales from a Child of the Enemy [Paperback]

Ursula Duba (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1997

A German woman recalls her childhood in the rubble of Hitler's Germany--and the shattering revelation, years later, of the Holocaust in this haunting sequence of prose poems. Interwoven with these are the wrenching stories of the Holocaust survivors and their children who were her neighbors in an Eastern neighborhood in Brooklyn in the mid-sixties. Duba's confrontation with his heritage is unflinching and the stories hard to forget. Online promo.

Editorial Reviews

Review

As You Wish Madam
Aunt Selma
The Baker's Story
Being Groomed For Higher Education
Blind Date
The Child Of The Enemy
A Child's Dream
Das Thema
The Easter Bunny
Family Secrets
Footbinding
The Golden Childhood
The Good Old Days
Guests Of Honor
Her Friend Sophie
How I Learned To Cook
If Only I Had Known
In The Shower
My Cousin Theo
My First Orange
Not Fixable
The Old Woman
The Price Of Gold
Ruins
A Slice Of Bread
The Socialist
The Ss On The Trans
Still Haunted
Still Looking
The Sundial
They Kept Asking
The Victims
Weather Report
Who Knew The Murderers
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014058787X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140587876
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,211,877 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Duba's impact is immediate and deep., June 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Tales from a Child of the Enemy (Paperback)

TALES FROM A CHILD OF THE ENEMY by Ursula Duba compels us to realize that the past is a state of mind. She carries us back into her childhood in post-war Germany, and then quietly returns us to the present. There, through our own time, Duba again carries us back, this time further and deeper and into the psyches of those who were witness to the inhumanity of the Third Reich. We realize that the events of another time and another place envelop and profoundly affect the way our present is seen and tolerated by certain individuals, people whom we might very easily know. We come to realize that their struggle, their understanding, and their insights can have profound influence on the world around us. That this is true, especially for those of us who presumed that our realtionship to the events of WWII and the Holocaust were non-existent or at least, very distant, is stunning. We are inescapably drawn into Duba's mind and heart by the deceptively conversational tone of her poems, by her easy description of events and issues which so quickly become as familiar to us as the events in our own lives. The lives of others and the "then" which has impacted so strongly upon them today, becomes a part of our own lives, our own now

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creative, Moving and Memorable, January 3, 2000

By 

Bob Cole (Bronxville, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tales from a Child of the Enemy (Paperback)

This book belongs on the same shelf as Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" and "Schindler's List." Duba really gets inside her characters -- victims, perpetrators and those in-between. Her poems will leave lasting impressions and have readers returning to the pages many times.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinarily honest, courageous and sensitive!, June 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Tales from a Child of the Enemy (Paperback)

In reading Duba's book, my first inclination was to be suspect of this German gentile who had the audacity to portray the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, but as I read the sequence of story poems that, like blocks, built a picture of the complex, multi-layered experience of all the participants, I began to soften and ultimately came over to join her in viewing the experience from her vantage point. Duba is brutally honest with herself, requiring me too, to examine my prejudices and stererotypes. Her courage to face herself and to face up to others gave me the encouragement to examine my experience, to face down some of my haunting demons and the manadate to speak out. - Second generation Holocaust survivo