Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival by Clara Kramer is an amazing story of survival. In addition to surviving with 17 other people in the dug-out basement of a house for 18 months, fifteen year old Clara (at the insistence of her mother) kept a written record of their day to day lives, the fears and sorrows, and the joys. The details of living under such stress are the moments which make this such a compelling story.

As if living under a house in a crawl space dug out with your own hands is not enough, it is incredible who lived above them in the house. Initially the house was inhabited by Mr. and Mrs. Beck who were both German. Before the war, Julia Beck has served as a maid for Clara's family and she convinced her husband, who was known to be anti-Semetic, to allow the families to hide under their house. In addition, the house was inhabited by Nazi trainmen and Nazi soldiers. Many times, the Jewish families lives were saved by only seconds of time - time to hide, time to eat, time to cry. After the war Clara and her family returned to their own home which became a gathering place for the mere fifty surviving Jews of the 5,000 who had lived in Zolkiew Poland before the war. I was stunned, but not terribly surprised, by Clara's statement after her return to life:

From the stories the survivors told us, I realized we had it better than most. (p. 310)

Still, for me, the most poignant paragraph in the book was written in Clara's diary near the end of the war, with the enemy in the rooms above them and the Becks under suspicion:

Tuesday, 9 May 1944. You could think that a person who looks into the eyes of death as many times as we do would get used to it. But it's the opposite with us. The more we are in danger of dying, the more we are frightened. One wants to live no matter what and no matter how. Every day we look death in the eyes and every day has its own history. If at least we had a verdict, a time, how long we will suffer. We are sitting here and we don't even know if it's for nothing. (p. 262)

To continue on day after day, not knowing when it would end - or how it would end had to have been such an emotional strain and yet these 18 people survived. Ultimately Julia and Valentine Beck were honored at Yad Vashem in Israel. The Beck's daughter, Ala, who lived in the house with the eighteen survivors for most of the war came to the service and planted a tree in the Garden of the Righteous. And Clara - she tries still to live her life worthy of the Becks and her sister Mania who died trying to escape the basement during a fire. She considers her work on Holocaust education a large part of her obligation to these people she loved so much.

Harper Collins provides the reader with the following message from the author (this is also in the book):
4/6/2009
To the Readers of Clara's War
Writing this book was like walking out of my kitchen door in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and straight into my home in Zolkiew. Although the events in this book happened over 60 years ago, they have never left me. As with many survivors, I relive them in the present. I am 81 years old, and I am one of the lucky ones. Ever since the day I left the bunker, I have done my best to live a worthy life. I have dedicated myself to the teaching of the Holocaust. The privilege of surviving comes with the responsibility of sharing the story of those who did not. Everything in this book is as I lived and remember it, although I have taken the liberty of reconstructing dialogue to the best of my recollection. I have also used the spelling and names most familiar to me. During the 18 months I spent in the bunker, I kept a diary which today is in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There was little light and less paper and only one nub of a pencil to write with. I documented as much as I could in my diary, but although I often spoke about my life, the idea of writing about it never occurred to me. Thank you (to my cowriter) for encouraging me and for taking this journey with me back to Zolkiew. And thank you for capturing my life so beautifully on paper. I am so grateful that my great-great-grandchildren will be able to meet those of us who came before.

From my memory to theirs, and to yours—

Clara Kramer
{accessed at http://www.harpercollins.com/author/microsite/news.aspx?authorid=35107&newsid=5447#5447}

And here is a YouTube video made by the author.

TITLE: Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival
AUTHOR: Clara Kramer
CO-AUTHOR: Stephen Glantz
COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 339
TYPE: non-fiction
RECOMMEND: A moving story of heroism and determination.
AWARDS: 2010 Sophy Brody Honor Book

The Cat with the Yellow Star

Fate is an interesting thing. I ordered this book from our Interlibrary Loan department without really knowing the story. Of course, I knew it was a Holocaust book for children, but I was wonderfully surprised when I realized that this book was written by one of the Girls of Room 28. (I reviewed this book a short time back.) Room 28 was a room at the Children's Home at Terezin, a holding camp or ghetto in Czechoslovakia. A key element in both books is the children's opera Brundibar. I also reviewed a children's book retelling the opera Brundibar. But back to fate, when I got the book, I flipped through the 40 pages and found a page of photographs - the page looked almost like a yearbook page with fourteen photos of young girls - Handa, Eva, Hanka, Marianne, Lenka, Anna, Helga...I knew them all! It was like seeing photos of friends from middle school. I was elated to know these women through these stories. And very excited to read another book about their blessed experience during the Holocaust.

In some ways, Cat with the Yellow Star, written by Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger, is a more intimate look at the experiences of the girls of Room 28. Maybe it feels that way because the words are crafted for a younger audience and therefore feel like a story shared by only a few. I am so thankful that Ela shared her story and photographs with Susan. It was interesting to learn that the women who were caretakers for the girls of Room 28 made sure the children learned their manners and kept clean in an easily overwhelming environment.

Ela starred as the cat in the children's opera Brundibar. She talks, as did the previous author, about the importance of these artistic endeavors for the children of Terezin. I knew that the Nazis had promoted Terezin as a model camp and invited the International Red Cross to view how well the Jewish people were taken care of. I did not know that the children performed their opera for the Red Cross in June 1944. Apparently the Red Cross believed what they saw in 1944. They learned the truth about Terezin when the camp was turned over to them by the Nazis on May 3, 1945. This is when Eva was liberated.

Still this was not the end of Brundibar. Fifteen of the children of Room 28 survived the war and since 1986 they have joined one another once a year to enjoy talking about their lives. Ela continues to hear her beloved opera - performed by children all over the world. After one such performance on December 7, 2003 at the Simon Wiesenthal Center - Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Ela spoke to the audience:

Sixty years ago we performed this opera at Terezin. Only a few of us survived. I lost many of my friends. But when we were performing Brundibar, we forgot where we were, we forgot all our troubles. Music was part of our resistance against the Nazis. Music, art, good teachers, and friends meant survival. (p. 35)

Holiday House provides a wonderful Educator's Guide for this title.

TITLE: The Cat with the Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin
AUTHOR: Susan Goldman Rubin with Ela Weissberger
COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 40
TYPE: Holocaust narrative, non-fiction
RECOMMEND: I learned a lot from this small book and the images included are very interesting. It certainly could be used in conjunction with Brundibar. I really liked this book.

37. Yellow Star

Jennifer Roy first learned her Aunt Syvia's Holocaust story almost fifty years after Syvia had been liberated from a Nazi camp, one of only twelve Jewish children who survived the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Ms. Roy knew immediately that she wanted to tell the story to others. After a number of attempts, she decided to write the story in first person verse. She states:

When my aunt recounted her childhood to me, she spoke as if looking through a child's eyes. She made her experiences feel real, immediate, urgent. In the poetry of a survivor's words, this is Syvia's story. (p. n/a)

This memoir in verse is divided into five distinct parts, based on time periods during the War. The author provides brief historical facts about the period as it pertains to her aunt's family and other Jews in Poland and all of Europe.

The author provides free downloads for educators. Pre-Reading, Language Arts, Social Studies, Art/Music, Math, and Discussion Questions. Although our library has the book listed as Grade 4-8, I think that most portions of the book could be read to or by even younger students. The free verse is beautiful and true to the young girl who lived this life from age four to ten. While the story is often horrifying, I believe it is a story we all need to hear. Here is just a small sample of the story:

Yellow

is the color of

the felt six-pointed star

that is sewn onto my coat.

It is the law

that all Jews have to wear the

Star of David

when they leave their house,

or else be arrested.

I wish I could

rip the star off

(carefully, stitch by stitch, so as not to ruin

my lovely coat),

because yellow is meant to be

a happy color,

not the color of

hate. (pp. 7-8)

Ultimately, the yellow stars on their coats help in the rescue of Syvia and her family. What a wonderful tribute to one child's Holocaust narrative.

TITLE: Yellow Star
AUTHOR: Jennifer Roy
COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 227
TYPE: poetry, Holocaust memoir
RECOMMEND: Excellent book

31 & 32: Two Holocaust narratives

The author who compiled these diaries states that this is the first book of this type from this time period. She introduces the diaries with a rather difficult statement:

Perhaps it is so painful to think about the impact of the war on children - particularly their mass executions - that we have not wanted to read about it, even when that has meant refusing to hear from the children themselves. Maybe it was as much as we could bear to designate Anne Frank the representative child of the Holocaust and to think, then, only of her when we thought about children in World War II. But, in some ways, Anne Frank was not representative of children in the war and the Holocaust. Because she was in hiding, she did not experience life in the streets, the ghettos, the concentration camps, as it was lived by millions of children throughout Europe. (p.xiv)

The diaries, written by children from age 10 to age 18, are arranged chronologically by the age of the child youngest to oldest. The countries represented are Poland, Holland, German, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Lithuania, Russia, Belgium, Englan, Hungary, Israel, and Denmark. The children wrote these diaries from many different locations and situations. Many wrote from the time they moved from their loving homes to a ghetto or a hiding spot. One young boy hid in a cupboard for five year, while another lived and died much like Anne Frank. Many of the children died at the hands of the Nazis in concentration camps, with only these written words somehow surviving to tell their stories. Others survived and published their stories so the world would know.

Selected by the School Library Journal Best Adult Book for Young Adults 1995, this book is a phenomenal resource for those interested in Holocaust history. Because it covers such a wide range of experiences, I think it could be used in middle and high school as a teaching aid with individual children, or small groups, reading the passage and providing their own expression of the child's experience. Some may argue that middle school age children are too young to read these diaries. The author addresses that beautifully:

To turn our eyes away and refuse to see, or to let children see, what prejudice and hatred lead to is truly to warp our collective psyche...The children teach us, by sharing their own direct experience of oppression, that nothing is more valuable than human freedom. This lesson alone is reason enough to read, and to encourage children to read, these diaries. (p. xx)

TITLE: Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries
AUTHOR: Laurel Holliday
COPYRIGHT: 1995
PAGES: 401
TYPE: compilation of Holocaust diaries
RECOMMEND: Excellent book


The second book that I read containing Holocaust narratives Anthology of Holocaust Literature edited by Jacob Glatstein, Israel Knox, and Samuel Margoshes is probably for the young adult or adult student of the Holocaust. Many of these writing have never been translated to English or published in the English language. Therefore, for many of us, this would be the first time to read these personal experiences. The book is arranged by topic: Occupations, Actions, Selections; Life in the Ghettos; Children; Concentration and Death Camps; Resistance; and The Non-Jews. It is possible to read the experiences of multiple people who found themselves in each situation. While some author's names may be familiar, such as Elie Wiesel, Anne Frank, and Primo Levi, other authors' names are representative of the people who did not live and shared the same past during the War.

In the Introduction, the editors provide the reader with many definitions of anthology and the various reasons why they have collected these specific Holocaust writings. For me, the most important reason is as follows:
There are many faces to courage, and the will to hope, to maintain the simple dignity of daily existence on a human and humane level, to forge the chain of cultural and spiritual continuity from generation to generation, to cherish children by handing on to them the legacy of their people - to do all of this in the midst of peril and deprivation and omnipresent enmity, is a species of fortitude that borders on the sublime. (p. xx)

To be so strong in faith and hope - to continue in the face of darkness. This is what I tried to glean from each person's personal journey as they were translated in this book. Many of the readings begin and end out of the blue, no real beginnings and no sure end. Often I found that I had to read the entry more than once to grasp the setting and events. Again the editors remind us to consider the following as we read:

One can imagine what it must have cost them to tell their story, to recall the facts and details, the total and terrible drama. Yet it is a story that they could not reporess and relegate to the archives of their own private memory - not for history's sake, nor for their own. (p. xxiii)

This book reminded me of a unique and humbling experiene I had as a graduate student. A friend of mine knew a woman who was hospitalized with congestive heart failure. She was able to come home but was very afraid that she would soon die. She had been at Auschwitz and had never told anyone her story. She did not want to die without telling someone and my friend mentioned that I had an interest in studying Holocaust narratives. I went to her home and she told me her story. The impact hearing her, reliving her fear through her words, and knowing the strength it took for her to say them to me - it is something I will never forget. She did not have to share her story with me, a virtual stranger, but she did and I will be forever grateful.

The following words were found inscribed on the walls of a cellar in Germany where Jews hid from the Nazis:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.

I believe in love even when feeling it not.

I believe in God even when He is silent. (p. 340)

Next time I sing that song at my Catholic Church, it will hold far more meaning for me. I thank the editors of this volume for bringing it, and the other readings, to my attention.

TITLE: Anthology of Holocaust Literature
AUTHOR: Jacob Glatstein, Israel Knox & Samuel Margoshes eds.
COPYRIGHT: 1977
PAGES: 395
TYPE: compilation of original source materials from the Holocaust
RECOMMEND: Excellent book

28. The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary

The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary by Erno Szep and translated by John Batki covers only one small period of time and life as it was lived by only one man of fifty. The war was nearing its end and the bulk of Hungarian Jews had already been deported. In October 1944, Szep , a sixty year old Hungarian Jewish poet, and 49 other older men were rounded up by young Arrow Cross Youths. Just days before Governor Horthy declared a unilateral cessation of hostilities - for which he was deposed. The Germans and their Hungarian allies used these last Jewish men to dig and build an earthworks around their city of Budapest to protect the city from the oncoming Russians. Szep was released on November 6 when the Russians reached the perimeter of the city and managed to live while many others did not. This is a story of only 19 days. But we learn many things from the attitudes of the author, his eye for details, and the brilliance of his thoughts. I would like to share a few passages that struck me as very important to the understanding of his writings:

A man's biography consists of his thoughts. Everything else that happens to me is something alien. As we slipped and slid around in that mud the work was slowed down, providing an occassion for more conscious reflection. We are always thinking about something, although we may not pay attention to our thoughts. Now, writing ten months after the events, I cannot recall a speck of what I had been thinking then. But I do remember trying to recall the thoughts of that day on the march back. And I was unable to recover a single snippet of what my mind had dug up during that day. Thoughts sink into forgetfulness as quickly as rain into the earth. (p. 130)

With bombs falling all around the area where the men slept and worked, Szep wrote about his feelings:

I saw, not for the first time, that one did not fear death in its immediate presence. Thinking stops at such times. Within seconds a process of shutting off takes over within the brain, so that the mind (and, we might say, the soul) rejects, refuses to acknowledge all the horrors accosting us. There is a beautiful wisdom in this built-in self-defence. (p. 142)

Much like shock perhaps. Or the disbelief that something so horrible could happen. I have often hoped that people faced with these tragic endings might believe to the end that there is truth and beauty just on the other side of the river or hill. And then be surprised by death, maybe bewildered. And sanctified. I have often said that while I do not want to die, I am in no way afraid of death. So many people have faced it before me and in less gentle ways perhaps, that I should follow them with delight in our spiritual reawakening.

TITLE: The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary

AUTHOR: Erno Szep

COPYRIGHT: 1945 in Hungary, 1994 in English

TYPE: memoir Holocaust

RECOMMEND: a work of great interest

26. Saving What Remains

Saving What Remains: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey Home to Reclaim her Ancestry by Livia Britton-Jackson is a remarkable voyage through the bureaucratic entanglements and emotional upheavals experienced by the author as she returned to post-war Communist Czechoslovakia to locate and retrieve the bodies of her Jewish grandparents who had died more than fifty years earlier. Her husband Len, who did not speak the languages of the country, stood by her side and helped as she navigated through all of the necessary bribes and steps to successfully taking their bodies to Israel. Her determination is remarkable and through her efforts a monument to the past shared lives has been created for all of her family. While this book only touches on the author's Holocaust experiences, the emotions of Britton-Jackson certainly remind us of the past and remind us to mind our futures.

TITLE: Saving What Remains: A Holocaust Survivor's Journey Home to Reclaim her Ancestry

AUTHOR: Livia Britton-Jackson

COPYRIGHT: 2009

PAGES: 196

TYPE: non-fiction, biographical

RECOMMEND: Read as a wonderful tribute to your own family

23. A Woman in Amber

I think perhaps that I have owned this book for quite some time and if I have read it before, I don’t remember it – I find this highly unlikely. At any rate, I am honored to have read it now. A Woman in Amber by Agate Nesaule is a startling memoir of the author’s childhood experiences during the Russian and German occupation of her homeland of Latvia. While the horrors of the war were bad enough in her own country, her Lutheran father and mother, along with other family members, were forced to flee from the competing armies. Their journey was remarkable in complexity and perhaps luck.

As I read her accounts of war, I wondered what the appropriate age level would be for this memoir. The scenes described are brutal and difficult to think about or discuss. The author solved my problem in two ways. First, as a new immigrant to the United States, she learned English by reading tremendous works of literature. Her teachers questioned whether she was old enough to read such works. Her life experiences and understanding of the beauty and sorrow of the world made her absolutely capable of reading Anna Karenina at 10 years old. Second, I would like to share some of her final words in the book:

But the world is full of pain. Anne Frank, Heidi, and Hilda are dead, but Kurds still freeze on the hillsides, Bosnian women have to live on after rape, Rwandan children stand waiting, too emaciated to beg….But then the sun touches the blossoms again. We have to believe that dreams are meaningful, we have to believe that even the briefest human connections can heal. Otherwise life is unbearable. (p. 280)

So I think any child interested in learning about human pain and human healing should be able to absorb the richness of the story that Nesaule was finally able to tell. She endured the war, shameful indignities at the hands of Americans, a disastrous marriage, and finally through therapy and trust, Nesaule has given us her story; a unique memoir of the horrors of World War II. The other part of her equation of survival and hope is education. Early in her life, she learned from poet Karlis Skalbe that, The riches of the heart do not rust. (p. 121) To the Latvians, this meant that even if you lost every material thing, family, and country – no one can take away that which has been learned. In spite of near constant fear and depression, Nesaule completed her Ph.D. in Women’s Literature and taught at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The book won the 1996 American Book Award.

While you will need to read the book to understand my final comment, I am very happy that she reconciled with her mother, if only in a dream. Sometimes dreams represent more clearly our reality.

TITLE: A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile
AUTHOR: Agate Nesaule
COPYRIGHT: 1995
PAGES: 280
TYPE: memoir, World War II
RECOMMEND: Stunningly beautiful book with so much we need to hear and learn.

3. Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz

Rena Kornreich was the 716th Jewish female to arrive at Aushwitz and this is her story and the story of her sister and friends. It is a story of survival, love, friendship and sharing. It is a beautiful story in all of its brutality. Rena was only 21 in 1942 when she left her home in Poland to live in Slovakia, hoping to escape the fate of Jews in her native land. Instead she was on the first transport of Polish Jews to the death camp.

Her goal throughout her captivity was to protect her younger sister, Danka who arrived at the camp a few days later. Rena's story is brutal in its detail and heart-warming in its sincerity. The two young women lived to tell about Aushwitz and the deaths there, being moved to Birkenau, and finally marched from camp as the war came near to its end.

Written with the assistance of Heather Dune Macadam, the following sentence describing the suicides of prisoners who threw themselves at the electric fences is full of meaning and sadness:


They hang, charred, in the electric wires of humanity. (p. 144)

It reminds me that this story does belong to all of us. To learn more about the author and her story visit The History Place: Writer's Corner. The authors point out that Rena's Promise is important because it is one of the few narratives from a survivor who was imprisoned so early and also female.

TITLE: Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
AUTHOR: Rena Kornreich Gelissen with Heather Dune Macadam
COPYRIGHT: 1995
PAGES: 275
TYPE: biography
RECOMMEND: Certainly to help us remember

LibrarysCat

43. Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend

I have been to Amsterdam. I have walked from the center of town, along the canals, to visit the house where Anne Frank and her family hid. I walked through the small spaces and stood in front of Anne’s diary. It was a humbling and emotional moment. It brought the book Diary of a Young Girl to life; intensified the feelings I remembered from multiple readings of this classic Holocaust biography.

But Reflections of a Childhood Friend is more than the story of Anne Frank, it is the story of Hannah Goslar who was friends with Anne from age four until Anne died shortly after being reunited with Hannah in Bergen-Belsen. It was not until after the war that Hannah realized that Anne had not lived but had died shortly before the camp was liberated. I am grateful to Hannah for telling her story and for Alison Gold for recording it in a way that young people can read and appreciate.

Hannah’s story is equally compelling as she was separated from her family with only her younger sister to care for as they were “relocated” from Amsterdam to Westerbork to Bergen-Belsen. The courage of these women who were but young girls is inspiring and through Hannah’s memories, readers will gain a greater understanding of the hardships which were endured and the friendships which were held so close.

TITLE: Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Childhood Friend
AUTHOR: Alison Leslie Gold
COPYRIGHT: 1997
PAGES: 135
TYPE: non-fiction
RECOMMEND: I found this book, with photographs, to add to the Anne Frank story, as well as introducing me to another survivor.

LibrarysCat

7. Four Perfect Pebbles

Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story
Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan

This is the story of Marion whose family fled from Germany during WWII. While waiting for immigration to the United States, the family was held at Westerbork, Auschwitz, sent on the death train, finally rescued, and spent time in a refuge camp. Marion was only 4 when this nightmare began. She hoped that her magical thinking about always finding four perfect pebbles, which represented her family members, would keep them safe. This book is intended for middle school readers and would serve as an excellent Holocaust narrative if students want to read beyond some of the classics.
The author maintains her website at Four Perfect Pebbles.