From School Library Journal:
YA-- As a Jewish child, Breznitz was hidden in a Roman Catholic orphanage during the last, and in many cases most brutal and incomprehensible, year of German domination. He has only recently begun to allow himself to remember the cruelty of the other boys, the fear of the Germans and of exposure, and his awe of, and later love for, the sisters in whose care he had been, seemingly unceremoniously, dumped. His memories come slowly, and in fragments, and he knows much of what he is describing is a result of later experience and layers of truths. These self-described "fields of memory" result in a memoir interspersed with comments on various manifestations of human nature viewed from his present perspective as a professor of psychology. As such, it is less a description of the brutality of the Germans at the time and yet more haunting than many such works. The insights are thought-provoking and place this book firmly and gently in an area encompassing psychology as well as biography. This is a small book, but memories of it will linger long after it has been finished. It is easy to read, yet readers are continually given new views of old ideas.
- Susan H. Woodcock, Potomac Library, Woodbridge, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Publishers Weekly:
University of Haifa psychology professor Breznitz, who was caught up in the Holocaust as a child, has written a spare and eloquent memoir of his experiences. Born into a Jewish family in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, he narrowly avoided transport to a concentration camp, because his parents, who were soon shipped to Auschwitz, managed to place the six-year-old Shlomo and his 10-year-old sister, Judith, in a Catholic orphanage, where they remained until the end of the war. There Shlomo strove to become a good Christian, hiding his circumcision from the other boys, who frequently treated him cruelly, and memorizing the Catholic litany so well that he was chosen to recite for the prelate. The pain of his memories of the convent was reinforced by an anti-Semitic incident that took place in 1959 when the author was traveling through Hungary as a member of the Israeli student chess team. The book is a moving contribution to Holocaust literature. 25,000 first printing; first serial to Parade.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.