In the Unlikeliest of Places: How Nachman Libeskind Survived the Nazis, Gulags, and Soviet Communism by Annette Libeskind Berkovits (review)

In the Unlikeliest of Places is a peculiar kind of memoir: it is perhaps more of a daughter's tribute to her father. Annette Libeskind Berkovits writes about her father, Nachman Libeskind, and his optimism and successful overcoming of the challenges he encountered during his life. In the foreword to the book, the author's brother, world-famous architect Daniel Libeskind, describes the book as being "told not from an objective or independent point of view but rather from the insight, intelligence and love of a daughter" (x). This seems to be a fair and accurate description. The narrative about Nachman Libeskind's life is integrated with sections in which the author describes the conversations she had with her father and her travels to Poland. Even if Nachman's life story (which she recorded in a mixture of Yiddish and English on a series of cassette tapes) is the titular subject of the book, the book tells us more about how the author struggled with the story she heard while trying to weave it together with her own life. The reader sees the problems that first-generation American Jews have in understanding their parents.

Nachman Libeskind was born in pre-WWI Łódź to an impoverished and traditional Jewish family. Early in his youth he was imprisoned for his involvement in a Bundist organization. When WWII war broke out, he managed to avoid the fate of the other Łódź Jews, who were rounded up to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and eventually deported to a death camp. He escaped to the Soviet Union, where he was almost immediately imprisoned and sent to a gulag. In 1941, after Poland signed a treaty with the Soviet Union which granted amnesty to many Polish prisoners, he was released as a Polish citizen. After his release, Nachman moved to Kyrgyzstan with a group of friends, where he met his future wife, Dora. There, in 1943, their daughter, the author of the book, was born. Soon after the war, the family returned to Łódź, Poland, where they remained until 1957, when they decided to move to Israel. After some problems with getting a job in Israel, Libeskind and his family emigrated again, this time to the United States, which, the author notes, amazed her with its modern appliances and luxurious living. Towards the end of his life, Nachman surprised his family once again by becoming a very prolific painter. He died in 2001.

This book is missing a larger historical context, as well as any historical references. As a historian, therefore, I found the book difficult to read. It is mostly based on family anecdotes which, unfortunately, are not free of historical inaccuracies. I tried to search for some background on the camp where Nachman was imprisoned, which the author identified as Opalicha Camp (near the Rybinsk Sea). I was, however, unable to locate Opalicha. Also, the Rybinsk Sea did not exist before 1941 (the author mentions that her father worked on an artificial lake, which probably became the Rybinsk Sea). This is all part of the fascinating background that is missing from the book. In addition to lacking a vital historical context, certain sections of the book, such as the life of the family in the Soviet Union, are heavily romanticized. Although Berkovits does write of some of the hardships they encountered there—hunger, for example, and Dora's typhus—the narrative focuses on a rather rosy image of their lives. This raises many questions; for example, how, despite the wretched hunger so common in the period, did her mother manage to feed little Annette milk and meat? It is a book that celebrates family love but deprives the reader of any context in which their lives should be understood.

The Holocaust is strangely absent in the book. There is a sense of doom over the fate of the Jews...