Despite the interpolations and footnotes of Gelissen's coauthor, a freelance writer who doesn't seem to fully understand the...
The amazing story of one of Auschwitz's longest survivors.
There's no such thing as a typical Holocaust story; the "Final Solution'' was so atypical as to effectively nullify the concept. Still, Gelissen's story is particularly unusual in that she was on the first transport to Auschwitz in 1942 and survived until the camp's liberation in 1945. The number on her arm, 1716, was so low that guards were disbelieving, thinking nobody could have lived that long. But Gelissen survived: a woman in her early 20s who was neither mistress to a guard nor a kapo; who received no preferential treatment except that which she ``organized'' for herself; who was so honest that she was chosen unanimously by over a hundred starving women to divide ten Red Cross packages that somehow made it into their block. Gelissen explains that it was precisely because she was on the first transport that she lived: As the Nazis were perfecting their death machine, she was honing her ``organizing'' skills, learning to acquire things through barter and cunning. When her sister Danka contracted malaria, for example, she got her quinine with the help of sympathetic fellow Polish male prisoners. She arranged for Danka and herself to be chosen by Dr. Mengele for what she believed would be easier, indoor work, but discovering that they had been chosen instead for experiments, Gelissen pulled Danka off the doomed line and the two blended back into camp life. Later, as winter approached, Gelissen had herself and Danka chosen by Mengele again, this time for the relatively humane laundry detail, where they worked until the death marches that immediately preceded liberation.
Despite the interpolations and footnotes of Gelissen's coauthor, a freelance writer who doesn't seem to fully understand the culture of prewar Polish Jewry and who provides verification in an unnecessary attempt to strengthen Gelissen's testimony, this is an uplifting tale of courage and humanity.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-7070-X
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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