[bksvol-discuss] Back to the wish list
- From: "jbaugh" <jim.baugh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Bksvol-Discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:14:48 -0500
Submitted another book that is on the wish list, I Have Lived A Thousand Years:
Growing Up In The Holocaust
Born in a small farming town in Hungary, Bitton-Jackson was 13 when Nazis
forced her and her family into a Jewish ghetto and then sent them to Auschwitz.
After a yearful of innumerable harrowing experiences, she was liberated. While
the facts alone command attention, Bitton-Jackson's supple and measured writing
would compel the reader even if applied to a less momentous subject. She brings
an artist's recall to childhood experiences, conveying them so as to stir fresh
empathy in the target audience, even those well-versed in Holocaust literature.
She relates, for example, how the yellow star made her feel marked and
humiliated, reluctant to attend her school's graduation; how existence in the
ghetto, paradoxically, made her happy to be Jewish for the first time in her
life; how an aunt terrified the family by destroying their most valuable
belongings before deportation, so that the Germans could not profit by them.
Her descriptions of Auschwitz and labor camps are brutal, frank and terrifying,
all the more so because she keeps her observations personal and immediate,
avoiding the sweeping rhetoric that has, understandably, become a staple of
much Holocaust testimony. Of particular interest is her relationship with her
mother, who survived with her (in part because of the author's determination
and bravery after an accident left her mother temporarily paralyzed). An
exceptional story, exceptionally well told. Ages 12-up.
Jim B
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