Memory Fields

by Shlomo Breznitz

Book Overview

In Memory Fields, Shlomo Breznitz shifts from past to present, from a child's perspective to an adult's, to tell a poignant, gripping, and often terrifying story. Caught in Czechoslovakia during the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679404031
• ISBN13: 9780679404033
• Release Date: December 1992
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

A Jewish Boy remembers surviving the Holocaust in Slovakia

A fine, well written memoir of one of the few Jewish survivors of the "Shoah" in Slovakia. A young boy and his sister are sent to a Catholic orphanage to survive WWII. Very human, often sadly humorous; a wonderfully touching Christmas scene where the author and his sister sing "Silent Night", in German, to one of the occupation officers -- since the Slovak orphans do not know German... The author intimates, but does not divulge many, harsh Nun disciplines; but dispensed fairly to all. There are interesting notes about playing chess, learnt from his father; the whispered myth that a Jew would convert into a Christian and become Pope -- with the author learning many Catholic prayers by heart, in Latin, fanning hopes for such a possibility; snippets of fervent Nazi anti-Jew, anti-Catholic actions ("Jesus was a Jewish child..." as the Nazis murder a priest). A sad, moving ending. Recently translated into Slovak.