Nothing Makes You Free: Writings by Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking collection of Holocaust literature by the heirs to the greatest evil of our time.
History is preserved in the memories of the survivors of the Holocaust and the imaginations of their children, the so-called Second Generation. Nothing Makes You Free considers the heritage of the descendants of those who faced the horrific lie that adorned the gates of many German concentration camps: "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Makes You Free"). In the words of this groundbreaking anthology's introduction: "Other kids' parents didn't have numbers on their arms. Other kids' parents didn't talk about massacres as easily as baseball. Other kids' parents loved them, but never gazed at their offspring as miracles in the flesh....How do you deal with this responsibility? Well, if you were a writer, you wrote." Gathered here are writings of both fiction and nonfiction, ranging from farce to fantasy to brutal realism, from an international selection of writers, including Art Spiegelman, Eva Hoffman, Peter Singer, and Carl Friedman. Contributors: Lea Aini, David Albahari, Tammie Bob, Lilly Brett, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Leon De Winter, Esther Dischereit, Barbara Finkelstein, Alain Finkielkraut, Carl Friedman, Eva Hoffman, Helena Janaczek, Anne Karpf, Alan Kaufman, Ruth Knafo Setton, Mihaly Kornis, Savyon Liebrecht, Alcina Lubitch Domecq, Gila Lustiger, Sonia Pilcer, Doron Rabinovici, Henri Raczymov, Victoria Redel, Thane Rosenbaum, Goran Rosenberg, Peter Singer, Joseph Skibell, Art Spiegelman, J. J. Steinfeld, Val Vinokurov "Nothing Makes You Free is a wide-ranging, exuberant, and altogether powerful collection. A necessary reminder of the lingering effects of the Holocaust and of all the embers—in each generation—saved from the fire."—Aryeh Lev Stollman, author of The Far Euphrates and The Illuminated Soul "What happens to a generation of writers born after but indelibly shaped by the Holocaust? From the bitterly sardonic title of Bukiet's clear-eyed and refreshingly unsentimental collection to its last words, this volume will cause all to see this past in startlingly new and unexpected ways. This is certainly not their parent's Holocaust. But in all their immense variety, dexterity, oppressed imaginativeness, pain, and wonder, these writings show how even as a 'vicarious past,' the Holocaust continues to shape both inner and outer worlds of the survivors' offspring and now, by extension, our own as well."—James E. Young, author of At Memory's Edge and The Texture of Memory "A superb anthology...tenderness mixes with rage, sorrow with bitterness, in this first-rate gathering of pieces by those who refuse to forget."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review "A trenchant array...convincingly demonstrate[s] that the Second-Generation experience and the artistic vision growing from it is not merely a diluted version of the survivors' experience, but a distinct phenomenon and ethos of its own."—Miami Herald "An important book."—Booklist
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"He isn't flying," a young boy explains about a picture he has drawn, "he's hanging. See, he's dead, his tongue is blue.... My father is there, too. Here, he is the one with the big ears." This anthology's memories and fictions contain many more moments that move and shock us. "The Second Generation will never know what the First Generation does in its bones, but what the Second Generation knows better than anyone else is the First Generation," writes Bukiet (Strange Fire), and these 30 pieces (including translations from the Hebrew, Swedish, German, French, Serbian, Dutch, Hungarian and Italian) cover a wide range of topics and emotions. In "Animal" (from Nightfather), Carl Friedman's father confesses that he wants the camp kapo he murdered to come back from the dead so that he can kill him again, but more slowly. In Sonia Pilcer's "Do You Deserve to Live," the author combines reflections on her survivor mother, her own work on a movie fan magazine and musings about Liz Taylor's conversion to Judaism in order to marry Eddie Fisher to generate original insights into the complexities of the survivor experience. The writing here is uniformly strong, intelligent and at times dazzling: Gila Lustiger's excerpt from The Inventory is a model of concise emotional story-telling, and Mihaly Kornis's short "Petition" (a sarcastic play on a legal document detailing the kind of life desired) is a wonderful conceit brilliantly executed. While some of the pieces are by noted writers such as Eva Hoffman, Art Spiegelman and Alan Kaufman, many names here will be new to readers, and the mixture of fiction and more traditional memoir is fresh as well.
