Customer Reviews

Thanks to My Mother

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am in the 7th grade. Most people might think i'm too young to read this, but belive me, i've read much more mature stuff. You should also believe me when i say that this is a really good book. I read this for an English report and i will never forget what i read. what the author went through was a horrifying experience and i hope that something like the holocaust never happens again.

Schoschana Rabinovici, known as Suzie Weksler as a child, was very brave during the harsh conditions that she endured during the Holocaust. I chose to read this memoir because I am interested in the events of the Holocaust and the conditions that people had to live through in the Jewish ghettos. It seemed very fascinating to read a detailed account of what occurred during the Holocaust. In this memoir, Suzie and her mother travel to the Vilnius ghetto and fight for their lives to get to the Kaiserwald ghetto, where their living conditions are even worse. I believe Suzie and her mother survive these deplorable hardships because of her mother's strong wit and courageous nature.
When World War II started, the Germans took the Jewish people of the city of Vilnius, including Suzie and her family, to the ghetto within the city of Vilnius. They were taken from there homes and were only allowed to take their most important possessions. Everyone was frightened and confused, especially Suzie, but her mother Raja, took good care of her. Raja packed all the necessities. They had good food the first few days and clothes for all weather conditions. Suzie found these clothes very useful when it got really cold. Raja also found work, which enabled her and Suzie to receive special passes. "Everyone understood that the passes conferred privileges on those who held them and that those privileges had to be shared (page 38)". Suzie was glad to receive passes because she was too young to work. The author realized that her mother loved her enough to take great care in packing her belongings and sharing her hard-earned work passes. All of these things that Raja took care of were essential for their survival throughout the duration of the time Suzie and Raja spent in the Vilnius ghetto.
Suzie had been hiding underground with other Jews during her last days in the Vilnius ghetto. Her mother and father made these arrangements because they were fearful that they would be among those that were exterminated. The people who joined Suzie and her family in their hiding place, the Malina, remained there until they found it unbearable to hide there any longer because they weren't getting enough oxygen. "The ventilation was so poor that some among us who were susceptible began struggling for breath (page 73)." Suzie hated the Malina because she felt suffocated down there, but she was very grateful for her parent's arranging the hiding place because she probably would have been sent to her death without it. The Jews who were hiding in the Malina came out and turned themselves in to the Germans.
They were then taken just outside of the ghetto, joining many other Jews, and were ordered to get into a line. When the Jews got to the front of the line, the German soldiers decided if they should go to the right or left side. The right side, which consisted of the strong people, was the line that would live. The left side, which consisted of the weak, the old and the children, was the side that would be exterminated. Since Suzie was a child, Raja and Suzie, were directed at first, to the left side. Raja refused to go to this side and went to the back of the line, to try again. She tried many times to get them to the right side. Suzie finally succeeded in getting to the right side by hiding in Raja's backpack as she was accepted to the right side. Suzie says, "We had won the fight for our lives (page 94)." They had lived because Suzie's mother, Raja didn't give up and made sure that she tried everything she could for their survival. This event was very important to Suzie because getting to the right side was the difference between life and death and she also realized how determined her mother was to protect her and assure their survival.
Suzie and Raja traveled by train to a new ghetto, called Kaiserwald. This ghetto was very uncomfortable because four people had to share each narrow bunk. Also the food rations were very small there. Starvation was probably the worst factor of their suffering. Raja always made sure that Suzie had enough food. She first did this by trading jewelry that she had secretly kept from the Germans, with people outside of the ghetto. They took the jewelry in exchange for food for Raja. Raja gave most of this food to Suzie. Later on during their stay at Kaiserwald, Raja succeeded in getting a job at the clothing depot. This was a very desirable job because Raja was given food there in addition to the food given at the camp. Suzie then received much of her mother's food. "Therefore, my mother felt she could sacrifice her food ration in camp and leave me her bread and soup (page 133)". This was important to Susie because she was always hungry from working hard at the battery factory where she was forced to work. This is another example of Raja's careful planning that helped Suzie to survive: this time from starvation.
Schoschana Rabinovici learned a vital lesson about her mother. Through all the hard times Rabinovici and her mother went through, and all the hate directed at them by the Germans, they both never gave up hope for survival. Her mother wouldn't let her lose hope and always encouraged her. Rabinovici was a helpless child during her occupation of the ghettos, so her mother, Raja knew it was up to her to enforce their survival. She learned that her mother was tenacious, courageous, and a survivor. After the war had ended, and the remaining Jews had been freed, Rabinovici knew that she owed her thanks to her mother, for being brave when she wasn't, and for always finding ways to protect her.

This is a haunting book. It is amazing what the human spirit can endure when there is bit of hope. Susie's mother not only was determined that they both would survive but she retained her humanity in the process often sharing rations and thinking of ways to help the other prisoners. Sometimes the writing is stiff but is reminds you the story is being told by a child's viewpoint. This would be an excellent book to recommend to students who have read The Diary of Anne Frank and want to know more about the Holocaust.

I found this book in the school I teach at and brought it home to read one day. I got so into it I couldn't put it down. AMAZING story of a girl and her mother's love for her. The passages are gut renching and can make your stomach turn, but at the same time you want to know what is going to happen in the end so much it makes you keep reading. One of the best books i have read about the holocaust, very much recommended!!

The eye-opening story Thanks to My Mother, written by Susie Weskler, is a true outlook on the hardships Susie and her mother Raja endured for the three years in Nazi concentration camps. When reading Susie's story, I sometimes had to remind myself that this was actually happening to real people. It turns my stomach how cruel human beings can be.
If someone is interested in World War II and what was happening to innocent people beyond the front line, then this book will be a good choice. If family history, anger, suspense, or violence interests you, then Thanks to My Mother would be a book to read. They story of her life has made a huge scar that will never go away, but she lives on, and it shows in her writing.

The two best books I have read on what it was like to live through the Holocaust have been "Childrens" books. This is one of the two books. It is not a childs book. It is a stirring story of survival through experiences that would severely try anyones will. It is a book for everyone.

I am a researcher and writer of this time period. Sometimes, I pick up a book like this, and I feel I have read it already before I have even begun. After awhile, and enough research, you think you are becoming somewhat numb to the evil. Then I read something like this book and my heart is pierced once again.

Should the author read this review, I wish to say to you:

May God bless you for the rest of the years that remain.

This is an incredibly well-writtten and involving account of how young Susie Weksler was able to survive the Shoah because of her mother's determination, love, courage, and hope. For someone who was as young as Susie was when they were in the Vilnius Ghetto and later the three camps, there are a lot of details about just about everything; these people, places, and events are doubtless so strong and vivid because one is more likely to remember traumatic memories than mundane everyday ordinary things, even at a young age. One really comes to feel for and to know Susie's many friends and family members, and feels sorrow that so few of them managed to survive. It even works in the other way; there were many times I just wanted to shake some sense into her older stepsister Dolka, who didn't seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation the way she was acting on numerous occasions, like she didn't want to preserve her own life even if it meant doing things like eating disgusting-looking soup or working in indoor quarters despite how she wasn't feeling very well. One also gets a vivid picture of how a child as young as Susie was able to survive three camps; there were actually a number of children in the first camp, Kaiserwald, but before long Susie was the only one left. And she didn't think it was all part of some elaborate game and stay unaware of what was really going on, untouched by the horror around her, like the kid in the unrealistic movie 'Life Is Beautiful'; this is a real portrayal of what life was like for one of the lucky few children who made it through the camps. She was worked as hard as any adult, be it in the battery factory, standing naked in the snow for hours before starting a death march, or getting beaten by guards. It's also a change of pace to read about a Lithuanian survivor; most Shoah memoirs are written by people from other places in Europe, so here we have a different perspective and experience, such as being transported from camp to camp by ship, the selection taking place in a graveyard during the liquidation of the ghetto, and a camp where a number of young children were initially allowed entry to.

I was especially drawn to this book for its depiction of events in Vilna, the home of two Holocaust survivor friends, the great late Israeli poet Abba Kovner, and also a maternal great-grand-father. The book is equally appropriate for adults as young adults.

Certainly, the SS-Einsatzgruppen death pit near Kiev --- at Babi Yar (made famous both by the novel of A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov) and the equally great poem of Yevgeny Yevtushenko) --- are far better known than the pit at Ponary. But history should also make it better known that an enormous number were shot into pits near Vilna, where the post-Soviet Lithuanian government has recently pressed outrageous charges against many surviving members of the anti-Nazi resistance, simply because they are Jewish.

By itself, the scale and inhumanity of Nazi murder of Jewish people in and near Vilna, makes this book worth reading. I recommend it highly.

---Alyssa A. Lappen

The story by Shoshana Rabinovici-Weksler about her family in Pre-WWII Vilnius(Vilna), and how the whole family found different ways to survive daily nazi actions in Ghetto Vilna, through the liquidation of the Ghetto when basically almost all Jewish population of Vilnius was killed in a matter of four days.
Then her and her mother's struggle to continue thru a concentration camp, the Death March and the liberation.
But the most powerful image in the story is her Mother, who did for her daughter more than anybody can possibly imagine or even trying to imagine.
Very very painful and tragic story, highly highly recommend to anybody whether he/she knows about Holocaust or knows very little.
Thank You Shoshana for sharing with us!

This was a truly amazing book. Since the author (not even going to attempt to spell the name) was alive and went through the holocaust she knew first hand what it was like. I remember at the beginning I was waiting for like talking and dialouge but then I realized it wasn't happing and at the beginning it just kind of seemed like the author was introducing something but as you get farther and farther in the book you don't have that feeling anymore you keep wanting to know what else could possibly be worse than what this people are going through and waiting for what is going to happen to these people next! Great to learn about Holocaust and easy EASY non-fiction read!