Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki by Michel Mielnicki (review)

HUMANITIES 357 there and on >As It Happens= was enough that, by the early 1970s, his notoriety as a broadcaster overshadowed his renown as a painter. In fact, one of Belton=s two main points is that while (as he says in his opening and closing lines) >William Ronald was a painter,= other things often impeded Ronald=s realization of that central aspect of his personality. Belton=s other major argument is that this interference has impaired recognition of the quality and significance of Ronald=s art. Giving this œuvre its due is a considerable part of Belton=s project. This revision of Ronald=s reputation is valuable, and The Theatre of the Self generally is good. Nonetheless, I have two complaints. First, Belton employs biography, history, and speculation without connecting these modes B which conceptual muddiness occasionally leads to historical turbidity. For example, the chapter on Ronald=s student years begins with his antipathy to the Group of Seven and concludes with his indebtedness to Jock Macdonald. Macdonald, though, owed much to the Group of Seven: Fred Varley taught him to paint (they later opened a short-lived art school) and he sketched and painted with Lawren Harris. These ties mean that Ronald=s simultaneous hostility to the Group of Seven and respect for Macdonald requires comment, which Belton does not provide. Second, forty dollars is steep for only ninety-seven pages of text and eight modestly sized colour plates (the numerous, small, black and white pictures do not outweigh this shortfall). With additional text, Belton could fill out his account; more and larger plates would strengthen his argument that Ronald painted well, and better raise the profile of Ronald=s art. At a more appropriate price, I would not hesitate to recommend this book: Belton=s discussion of Ronald=s vibrant personality and compelling art is informative and highly readable. (CHARLES REEVE) Michel Mielnicki. Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki Ronsdale Press and Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. 248. $19.95 It is difficult to review memoirs written by Holocaust survivors. Most survivors went through experiences so traumatic that they see the entire world through black >Holocaust glasses= for the rest of their lives. Arguing with their interpretations or questioning their stories is cruel and pointless. After years in the Nazi inferno, it is impossible to hold views which are not subjective, emotional, and biased. And yet, a dilemma remains: should we accept everything the survivors tell us, even if their testimonies are mutually exclusive or contradict other credible sources? What is the historian=s role in this context? Should the historian abandon his or her professional rules when facing the inexpressible horror of the Holocaust? It is impossible not to ask all these questions when reading the powerful memoirs of Michel Mielnicki. Born in 1927 to a family of a Russian Jew in 358 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 the small town of Wasilków near Bialystok, Poland, Mielnicki survived the German aggression of 1939, the 1939B41 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland, the first weeks of the German occupation, and a pogrom in his shtetl in July 1941. Later, he lived in the ghettos of Bialystok and Pruzany and, in December 1942, he was sent to Auschwitz with his entire family. His parents were gassed instantly after their arrival. Mielnicki and his brother and sister miraculously survived. But after two years in Auschwitz and a death march in December 1944, after three months of slave work in an underground factory of V 1 and V 2 missiles near Weimar, and after a month in the camp of Bergen-Belsen, Mielnicki was B as he recalls B >a human bag of bones, too weak at seventy pounds to move much more than my cracked lips.= Mielnicki saw almost everything that a survivor could have seen in the Holocaust inferno and therefore, after the war, in Poland, in France and finally in Canada, his friends and family members asked him many times to put his story on paper. After several stressful and unsuccessful attempts, he managed to do this, with historian John Munro=s help, in 1995. The book is shocking testimony of Jewish suffering during the era...