Jacobsen, a Jewish artist, was six or seven years old when her parents fled with her from Germany to Holland in 1939, taking only the clothes on their backs. They survived the war in hiding, but to minimize the risks, Ruth was parted from her parents and sheltered by a long succession of people. Both parents would later commit suicide after the war. Astonishingly, neighbors had saved the family albums, but 40 years passed before Jacobsen, who had emigrated to the U.S. and had been producing collages and "constructions," could bear to look at them. When she finally did look, she writes, "The photographs evoked feelings I could only express in collage form. I needed to move the photographs out of the albums and into my life." The collages she made with the photos (and with often unsettling painted compositions), appear here in color, along with her episodic and sometimes elliptical recollections. Jacobsen writes with intelligence and unusual frankness. However, the author's voice is invariably that of her adult self, and she appears to take for granted that readers will understand not only the historical context but the psychological forces that affect her memory (for example, after a visit from her hiding place to her parents', "I felt my only option was to hate my parents. That way I wouldn't have to think about their helplessness or worry about them"). Accordingly, this poignant volume may be better directed toward adults than young people. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-Hidden in Holland during the Holocaust, the author explains that she came to write this memoir after years of suppressing memories of her experiences, including the suicides of her parents after the war. Opening family photograph albums that she had kept packed in a box for 40 years released feelings that she was impelled to express through the art that accompanies this narrative: color collages mixing streaks of paint with photographic fragments and memorabilia. They are the most emotionally engaging aspect of the book, combining frightening wartime images with pictures of the author as a child, her family, and her dolls. In contrast, the writing style is deliberate and unemotional, distancing Jacobsen from overwhelmingly sad memories, perhaps, but also distancing readers from an affective understanding of what she experienced and the price she paid for survival. Among the memoirs of child survivors of the Holocaust that have preceded this one, Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures (Greenwillow, 1998) is more successful in re-creating a terrified child's resentment toward her parents for their inability to protect her. Among recent novels, Ida Vos's The Key Is Lost (Morrow, 2000) portrays the loss of childhood and the protective measures that hidden children were forced to adopt with greater poignancy. The art that Jacobsen's memories inspired is the main object of interest in this book.
Linda R. Silver, Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, OH
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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