Shards of Memory: Narratives of Holocaust Survival (review)

The photograph of Rena S. appears to be that of an ordinary teenage girl from the early 1940s. But as we read on, we learn her harrowing story of survival—from the Krakow ghetto to the camp known as Plaszow and finally beating the odds of imprisonment at Auschwitz and then Bergen-Belsen. Liberated by the Americans in 1945, Rena made her way to Canada to join her mother, and as of 1994 and the recording of her testimony, she still lived there with her husband and numerous grandchildren. Rena’s story is one of many in a collection entitled Shards of Memory: Narratives of Holocaust Survival. This volume, edited by Yehudi Lindeman, is part of the Holocaust Video Documentation Archive at McGill University known as Living Testimonies. The book offers twenty-five narrative accounts of survivors and one rescuer, all based upon actual video-taped interviews. The book separates the narratives according to the gender of the survivor as well as their particular experience during the Holocaust, whether inside or outside the camps. While these gender differences are not explored specifically in this volume, this has been an area of research and discourse by other Holocaust scholars.

In the chapter on women surviving the camps, Rachel G. shares her story of moving from Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1939, only to find her husband and brother relocated to slave labor camps. Arriving at Auschwitz in 1944, she somehow escaped being killed, only to be forced on a death march and relocated to Ravensbruck and then Malchow. She survived typhus and eventually emigrated to Israel. By 1952, she and her husband and daughter had settled in Montreal. Also a survivor of Auschwitz, Toby Elisabet R., from Slovakia, was eventually transferred with her sisters to the concentration camp known as Stutthof. She barely survived a death march in 1945 when she was shot and left for dead. Also included are the narratives of two sisters, Ilse Z. and Marti D. who grew up in Amsterdam, where they belonged to the same synagogue as the Frank family. They managed to avoid deportation until 1943 but were soon after deported to Bergen-Belsen. It was here in 1945 that Marti recalls speaking to Anne Frank across the barriers that divided their Lagers. At the end of the war, the sisters returned to Amsterdam only to be shunned by their neighbors, a fate not unlike that of many Jews returning to the Netherlands. All of these women as well as many others commented that they had difficulty speaking of their experiences but they felt they owed it to their children as well as future generations. For many, the Living Testimonies project gave them their first opportunity to share their stories in a supportive environment.

Men who survived the camps shared experiences similar to their female counterparts. David A., for example, was born in Hungary and recruited for service in a labor battalion in 1943. After escaping and being recaptured, he was sent to Balf, a village in the Austro-Hungarian border where sixty percent of the prisoners perished from 1944 to 1945. David was shot and left for dead in what was to be a mass grave only to be rescued hours later by Russian soldiers. Another story is that of Israel B. from Poland, who by 1940 had been moved into the ghetto along with his family. By 1942, the ghetto had been liquidated and all were deported to Treblinka. Israel managed to hide in the ghetto for a while but was eventually captured and sent to a gunpowder factory near Pionki. He eventually landed in Sachsenhausen and was led on a death march. Surviving this was no small miracle, and by 1948, Israel and his new family arrived in Montreal. Also considered a miracle, Paul L. managed to survive three years after he was captured. Originally born in Poland, Paul and his family moved to Paris in 1926. After the German occupation in 1940, Paul and his family...