Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood

by Nechama Tec

Book Overview

This is the true story of Nechama Tec, whose family found refuge with Polish Christians during the Holocaust. Dry Tears is a dramatic tale of how an eleven-year-old child learned to "pass" in the forbidding Christian world and a quietly moving coming-of-age story. This book is unique celebration of the best human qualities that surface under the worst conditions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195035003
• ISBN13: 9780195035001
• Release Date: November 1984
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I closed my eyes instead

After the terrifying ordeals Tec had to go through to survive, what else could she do but close her eyes? Tec is unsparing in her description of atrocity, fear and suffering, yet I found this autobiography surprisingly unsentimental and fair. She recognises that many people suffered, not just Jews, injects homour whenever possible, even if only wry at times. What touched me was: the incredible resilience and strenght displayed by people throughout the book; the way the instinct to survive and goodness comes to the fore in some people, inspite of the world falling apart around them. Tec does not dwell on the tragic, and the book is therefore infused with hope and will to live. The people in it seemed to always hold on to their vision of survival and adapt with ingenuity to any altered situation. Added to this is the power of knowing throughout that this is not a story, but a memory, a true account of events, which makes it a very different reading experience. In my belief, it is vital, particularly in the spoilt Western lives that many of us live, that we read narratives such as these. It prevents us from forgetting how privileged we are, it helps us to retain a level of humility. Indeed it grounds us in a way and makes us evaluate what is really important and what attitude we should have towards the things we are blessed with, both in terms of freedoms and safety as well as materially.

Incredibly poignant account of passing as a Pole in WWII

As is so often the case, it's the little, seemingly innocuous, niggling details that hit home the hardest, even more than the outright horrific. It's not that the accounts of the brutal murders and unthinkable cruelties are minimized-- it's that the human brain refuses to dwell on, refuses to really wrap one's brain around them, as sort of a self-preservation. But the little details hit you upside the head like a 2x12 and you get it, and your brain wraps around it firmly, and you can understand as well as anybody who has not experienced the Holocaust can understand. Two examples: when the family was going into hiding, they left their city of Lublin to travel by train to Warsaw, before going to their final destination. The parents did not speak Polish well, and because the mother definately looked Jewish, she decided to dress as a woman in mourning, wearing a hat with a veil to obscure her face. Both kids looked Polish, and spoke the language fluently. (The older sister went ahead of the others.) The father repeatedly coached his daughter beforehand, saying, "Don't look sad!" That was how the Nazis and Poles could ferret out Jews trying to pass as Poles. "The Jews have sad eyes." Voila! And why wouldn't a Jew look sad? How could they not be sad? And yet, if they wanted to live, and wanted to pass, they had to act like everything was fine whenever they were out in public. With all the horror, with all their relatives who had been murdered or deported, with all the brutality they saw in the streets, and heard about through the grapevine, with all the hardship of finding a place to stay, and working, and feeding oneself, and worrying about one's family, who was scattered, on top of that, you had to look happy, because if you didn't, a Nazi or Pole would see your sad eyes and know you were Jewish! How excruciating!! Another thing was the author mused about how one's life could change in a fleeting moment. You could just happen to miss an "Aktion"...or just happen to arrive home when one started. Life was so capricious. A Nazi could spot someone entering a home, or selling on the blackmarket, or you could just miss being seen. These fleeting moments were fraught with life or death consequences, and yet you had no control over them. Were you seen or not seen, and by whom? As much as the brutality of genocide, it would seem to me that the constant stress of being on your toes every minute would be like traversing an unmarked minefield every day for years. Think of the psychological toll it took on the survivors! I can't think of another Holocaust survivor's story which articulates those aspects as well as this author does. You know the thing they tell writers, "Describe, don't tell." This author does. You feel you are there with her. It is very telling, that when she first wrote the book, she ended it when the war was over, and they went back to her father's chemical factory. She describes how she's afraid to look, and c

I don't have the words to capture how important this story is.

As I ponder how or what I could write about this story, I ask myself: Who am I to write any kind of critique about this story? For that matter, who are any of us to critique a story as compelling and personal as this one? Neither I nor just about anyone else in this world is in a position to speak critically concerning this autobiography of one family's unlikely survival, a true story of cheating death daily while friends, relatives and peers were slaughtered by hatred. This intensely personal narrative deserves only the reader's respect and appreciation that the author had the courage to put her story on paper and share it with the world. Hers is a story of remarkable, miraculous survival, told from her very personal experiences, thoughts and observations when she was a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her story is simply written, gripping, harrowing, and emotionally exhausting. It is a story I shall remember for a long, long time. I treasured the moments I spent absorbed in her experiences and recollections, the introspection her words conjured in me, and the gratitude I felt for never having been forced to experience the dread, fear and violence that this family endured every minute of their existence for a period of years. I was distinctly impressed with the strength of character and leadership her father displayed. His paternal wisdom, guidance and competence bound this family together and sealed their survival against all odds. Absent his clarity of thought, calm demeanor and strength of will, I think this family would not have survived. He inspired the resolve in his family to keep going; he summoned from deep in their souls the spirit of survival. I could only hope to be half the father he was were I to have been in such a circumstance. This is a story that today's youthful and historically uninformed generation should read and understand. Only through knowledge of such history can we perhaps stave off for a few generations longer the tendency of history to repeat itself (as we now see happening in Africa).

Sometimes there actually are winners in a war.

"Dry Tears" is an autobiographical recollection of life in wartime Poland, during the Holocaust. Not only did the author and her sister have to "pass" as non-Jews and live in constant terror of being caught, they also had to worry about their parents, who couldn't "pass" and who lived in hiding.I've read perhaps a dozen books by Holocaust survivors. This may be the first time that I thought about each individual murder as that: an individual murder, and not as genocide. What happened to the girls' governess in the early pages of the book left me more sleepless than anything since "Anne Frank."Sometimes, however, there are the occasional winners in a war. The author's family survived as an intact unit. That, dear readers, is a victory.This book belongs in every historian's library, be it public or personal. Deeply moving, it's not too much for a mature teen to read, and I will be suggesting it to a friend's young adults."Dry Tears" will haunt me for a long time.

Faith, Hope & Love

Dry Tears,dealt with the survival of a Jewish family during the Nazi Holocaust. The story is told by the youngest daughter, Tec, during her pre-adolescent years. If one does not fully comprehend the power of faith, hope and love, then this book is a must. It is a lesson for any family, group or individual who is struggling with circumstances that seem overwhelming or out of control.