reviews - Jewish Book Council

BOOK PROFILE
CHILDREN IN FLIGHT
By Marcia Weiss Posner
The universe of memoirs grows larger daily as survivors face up to the shortened
time they have left to tell their stories. The first two memoirs take place in
France, the third, in Germany. All of the writers were children trying to escape the
Nazis—two by hiding, and the third, in constant flight with his family.
Leo Michel Abrami
Outskirts Press, 2009. 216 pp. $18.95 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978-1432734299 (pbk.)
Fred Gross
Mercer University Press, 2009. 220 pp. $ 29.95
ISBN: 978-0881461435
Helen Studley
iUniverse, 2009. 120 pp. $12.95
ISBN: 978-1-4401-4019-8
EVADING THE NAZIS: THE STORY
OF A HIDDEN CHILD IN NORMANDY
ONE STEP AHEAD OF HITLER: A JEWISH
CHILD’S JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE
THE WINTER’S JOURNEY
OF MY YOUTH: A MEMOIR
Evading the Nazis, written by a retired rabbi who was a hidden child, is more than
a story of a Jewish child hidden by righteous French farmers; it is the story of a
dynamic, brave woman whose charisma, moxie, and business sense enabled her to
travel on public conveyances throughout Nazi occupied France, to ask a Nazi soldier
for help in carrying her suitcase, and other audacities. She always had a joke to make
a policeman laugh. Their family of three—the father had abandoned them before the
second child was born—spent the war years with false papers in Paris, until Abrami’s
mother realized that with more SS on the streets, her boys were more and more at
risk. By this time she had built up a “practice” in the French countryside, supplying
farmers with goods, while they supplied her with food for her family. Having some
medical knowledge, she began to act as an unofficial nurse for some of the farmers’
ailing family members. They were loyal to her, and were the best of guardians for her
two boys, whom they treated like family. And if you can imagine, during the whole
time, their daring mother lived in Paris among the Nazis and the corrupt French
police. In her experience, most of the French gentiles were empathetic to the plight
of their Jewish neighbors, but not the police , who were avid tormentors and collectors
of innocent Jews. The latter part of the book is about the son’s experience in
learning about Judaism, becoming a Hebrew teacher and a rabbi, and his changing
views about the denomination of Judaism in which he felt most comfortable.
Oddly enough, the most exciting and moving of the three, One Step Ahead of
Hitler, is a flight not remembered by the author, who was only three when he experienced
it. Because of his talent in interviewing members of his family, researching, and
writing, it is an adventure you will not soon forget. Although Gross knew much about
the Holocaust because of his family history, he didn’t know precisely what his immediate
family, including himself, had experienced. Two decades ago, he tried to query
his mother, asking her to tell him the story of the family’s flight from Belgium as the
Nazis invaded. He learned a bit, but his stiff-necked mother was uncommunicative,
and not until he began to query his older brothers did he learn about what had happened.
Then, he too, began to remember some incidents. He remembered his cold,
non-demonstrative mother pressing her body over his to protect him, as they tried
to escape the strafing by German planes of the refugees streaming toward the coast.
Most of the family’s flight took place in occupied France, where the French police
helped the Nazis round up more than 75,000 Jews for deportation to the death
camps. How was this canny family, interred in the Gurs camp, the way station to
Auschwitz, able to free itself? It was through the cleverness and courage of father
and son. Read how they ran from place to place, believing that they had found safety
in the south of France, only to have the Nazis come there, as well. The brothers and
father used their ingenuity, fortitude, courage, and the help of Righteous Christians
along the way who risked their own lives on behalf of these desperate refugees as
they made their way through France. What makes the book come alive are the many
conversations, colorful descriptions, and narrative talent. It could be a novel, but is
true. This is a tale worth telling, and here it is told particularly well.
The Winter’s Journey is a lively memoir of a horrible experience. The abrupt transition
from accomplished swimmer popular among her peers to an outlawed Jew forbidden
to swim at the town pool, is quickly transitioned by a humorous alternative—a
description of a swimming hole used by nudists, who cordially invite her to join them,
even in a suit. To offset most of the offending actions, there are usually counterpoints
of humor, and also the kindness of some people, especially the author’s boss in the
slave labor camp where both she and her father worked. Through sheer moxie, Helen, a
non-bookkeeper, served in that role to the civilian, German but non-Nazi Mr. Runge,
who befriended her, taught her what to do, and warned her before round ups. The
family of three, the father and his two daughters, were brave and resourceful and greatly
aided by various people. Unlike most tales of a crowded hiding place, there are hilarious
accounts of the various boarders. In fact, if Studley had married a Japanese boarder,
he would have taken her to Switzerland, but she refused to leave her father and they
could not get another visa. Studley was managing to pass as a gentile on the street
until a gentile woman from the same camp, jealous of Runge’s attention to Studley,
exposed her to the SS and she was jailed. What happened next, and how Studley saved
herself among the jailed prostitutes is the best part of the book. Even in Auschwitz,
although tattooed, at that late date, she did not have to cut her hair; and at liberation,
the nurse who tended her during her bout with typhoid, could not believe she was a
prostitute and soon made other arrangements for her. Can you imagine a Holocaust
story that because of its lively portraits of the people with whom they shared various
living places, is entertaining, as well as tragic? That is what Studley has accomplished.
Sequences are not always clear, but it’s worth the effort to unravel them.
Marcia Weiss Posner, Ph.D., is a librarian and program director at the Holocaust
Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.