Days of Remembrance - spotlight on Ben Sherwood and 'The Survivors Club'

This whole week I have been dedicating most of my posts to Days Of Remembrance which are in truth going on not for one day (April 21) but 7 days (April 19-26). There is a lot that I will probably miss around the blogosphere in terms of reviews on books that deal with Holocaust and WWII. However, there is one book that I am grateful for not missing. This book is The Survivors Club by Ben Sherwood. I have heard a lot of good things about it and can't wait to read it and review it on my blog. Why am I writing about the book in a post about Holocaust? Because the author writes about the survivors of this horrific time in our history and in my opinion survivors are to be talked about just as much as those who perished because they are witnesses and carriers of the message so that the world does not forget.

Before I post my review of The Survivors Club I would like you to take a closer look at Mr. Sherwood's article recently featured on The Huffington Post in honor of Days of Remembrance. It gives you a taste of Mr. Sherwood's writing as well as some interesting facts about Holocaust survivors and why and how they survived while others didn't.

The title of the article is Holocaust Remembrance Day: The Remarkable Strength (and Success) of the Survivors and I hope you'll enjoy it as I did.

Days of Remembrance - spotlight on blogs.

"Remembrance obligates us not only to memorialize those who were killed in the Holocaust but also to reflect on what could have been done to save them. An engaged citizenry that embraces the power of the individual to make a difference is the frontline defense for strong, just societies. What we do—or choose not to do—matters." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Today is another day in a series of Days of Remembrance commemorating Holocaust and organized by United Holocaust Memorial Museum. In this post I would like to spotlight some of my and other bloggers' posts that either mention this event or talk about books about the Nazi atrocitites.

1. My review of A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal - a memoir of a boy who survived a Jewish ghetto, Auschwitz and two other camps and lives to tell his story.

2. Several months ago I also wrote a post with quotes from Medallions by Zofia Nalkowska, a Polish writer and journalist who put together stories of people who lived through the genocide and WWII.

3. Softrdrink from Fizzy Thoughts wrote a post in which you can find out interesting facts about the origin of a word 'genocide' as well as read her review of The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.

4. Amy from My Friend Amy also wrote a piece mentioning Days of Remembrance and relevantly writing about The Secret Holocaust Diaries by Nonna Bannister. The Questions and Answers part is great, make sure you check it out.

5. Devourer of Books also has a great review of A Lucky Child and RAnn from This That and the Other Thing reviews A Lucky Child and gives aways 5 copies of this book. Make sure you hurry up because it ends on April 24th.

6. Anna from Diary of an Eccentric and Serena from Savvy Verse & Wit have a separate blog set up for War Through Generations where they host WWII reading challenge. There are a lot of links to awesome reviews on WWII there.

Okay, that's it from me for now. And all I ask you, dear reader is: Please, Remember.

'A Lucky Child' by Thomas Buergenthal

Today is another Day of Remembrance and, as I mentioned in my previous post, I am writing here about a book that is just perfect for the remembering of Holocaust. First however, I would like to say a little bit on my experiences with the Nazi concentration camps and the horrifying legacy left by WWII. Having been born and raised in Poland I had been educated on the horrors of the extermination of the Jewish people quite thoroughly I thought. But it was all textbook knowledge that for a child in school had no other meaning apart from that of just another thing to study. It all changed with my first visit to Auschwitz as a high school student. When I finally had a chance to go through the barracks, to look at the gas chamber and the crematorium, when I could look at the chimney and imagine the smoke drifting upwards with the souls of all these innocent people, that’s when the cruel reality of the suffering hit me. That’s the reason why I believe that simply learning the dry facts at school is not enough to really try and understand the nightmare of genocide. This is also the reason why I think that books like A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal are relevant today and should always remain as such.

A Lucky Child is a little different from other books on Holocaust because it is a memoir of a person, who as a child survived not only Auschwitz, but the ghetto that, like all Jewish ghettos, was liquidated, and two other labor camps. The miracle in it all is, only a handful of children came out of Auschwitz alive. Most of them had been murdered and burnt before they even got a chance to enter the camp, or were sent to Treblinka straight form ghettos where the same fate awaited. The author of this memoir is Thomas Buergenthal, an International Court of Justice judge, who devoted his life to making sure that what had happened in WWII, doesn’t happen again. Mr. Buergenthal arrived at Auschwitz when he was ten and was abruptly and cruelly separated from his mother but thankfully was still together with his father. He went through the life in the camp and through the rest of the war trying his best to live, to survive and to finally get reconnected with his parents. He was a truly lucky child because while all the other children he managed to become friends with were killed, he always escaped that same, gruesome fate. Mr. Buergenthal, Tommy, was also miraculously reunited with his mother just when he started losing the hope that either of his parents survived Auschwitz.

Thomas Buergenthal essentially wrote a book of hope, resilience and a child’s spirit that could never get extinguished. I absolutely loved it. It’s a work of a great mind and heart and because it was written straight from the heart it takes on a deeply moving meaning. The prose is beautifully simple and almost dainty, which spoke to me clearer than any convoluted, rich in hyperboles and metaphors pieces ever could. And in this simplicity, the true questions shine through. Who does truly survive: the one who refuses to compromise their morality, dignity and soul, or the one who gives that up to preserve or prolong their life no matter what? How insane did the people who served up such a fate to the millions of innocents had to be? These and many other deep issues are what Buergenthal thinks about and also gives a reader the freedom to answer them individually. One aspect of the book that I particularly loved were the photographs of Thomas and his family. I thought it was wonderful to look at all these people, his mother, his father and many others, and be able to put a face to them, to their great spirit and personalities. And just like my experience in Auschwitz, these photographs make it more real, make you look at them and know that this is all true, that it isn’t a dry historical fact only but many personal tragedies that can never be forgotten.

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Special Thanks to Anna B. from Hachette Book Group for sending me a copy of this book.

It's Monday and it's time for...Borrowed Words

From April 19 to April 29 we are celebrating Days of Remembrance, established by United States Congress in commemoration of Holocaust so we never forget. This year's theme is Never Again: What You Do Matters. I will be posting a few more pieces relating to the Holocaust over the week but I think it's fitting to start with giving you words borrowed from Tadeusz Borowski, a famous and Polish writer and a concentration camp survivor:

"There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it."

from This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen