The Tree of Life, Book Three: The Cattle Cars Are Waiting, 1942–1944 (Library of World Fiction) - Softcover

Rosenfarb, Chava

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299221245 ISBN 13: 9780299221249

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

Synopsis

The third volume in this powerful trilogy, The Cattle Cars Are Waiting follows the tragic fate of the inhabitants of the ghetto. Chava Rosenfarb, herself a survivor of the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, draws on her own history to create characters who struggle daily to retain a sense of humanity and dignity despite the physical and psychological effects of ghetto life. Although the novel depicts horrendous experiences, the light of faith in the human spirit shines through every page.

Winner, Georges Bugnet Award for Best Novel, Writers Guild of Alberta

About this title

About the Author

Chava Rosenfarb is a Holocaust survivor who has published poetry, prose, and drama in both English and Yiddish. Her English titles include Survivors: Seven Short Stories; Bociany; and Of Lodz and Love. She now resides in Alberta, Canada.

Reviews

Originally published in Yiddish in 1972, this final volume of a trilogy depicting daily life in the Lodz ghetto recreates the frantic desperation as thousands of Jews were forced to board cattle trains bound for Auschwitz. Revisiting characters from the first two books, Rosenfarb—herself a Lodz ghetto and concentration-camp survivor—gets very close to the horror. Adam Rosenberg, who once owned the biggest factory in town, hides under an assumed name and shovels excrement for a living until he is found out and becomes an informant, identifying other Jewish industrialists and sniffing out their hidden valuables. The poet Bunim Berkovitch discovers that his wife and children, including a newborn, have been arrested while he was out fetching their potato ration. And the hated leader of the Jewish Council who composes the dreaded transport lists can't save himself or his loved ones when the ghetto is "liquidated." In this third volume, the prose is denser, the translation more ungainly, and the plotting more chaotic than in the previous two volumes (also available from Wisconsin), but it carries potent witness. (Sept. 20)
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299221245
• ISBN 13: 9780299221249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376