Castles Burning: A Child's Life in War - Hardcover

Denes, Magda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393039668 ISBN 13: 9780393039665

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1997

Synopsis

A psychoanalyst describes her childhood growing up in war-torn Hungary; her overwhelming encounter with an incomprehensible world of deprivation, separation, and loss; and her painful odyssey through the devastation and homelessness of postwar Europe.

About this title

About the Author

Magda Denes is a professor in the postdoctoral programs in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy at Adelphi University and New York University, and a faculty member and supervisor in the department of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Reviews

This extraordinarily moving Holocaust memoir adds a new dimension to the literature. Denes was five years old in 1939 when her father, a wealthy Hungarian Jewish publisher, left Hungary after his newspaper was seized by the authorities, leaving Magda, her 12-year-old brother, Ivan, and their mother to cope with wartime conditions in Budapest and, ultimately, the German takeover in March 1944. The author recounts with unsentimental candor how she and her family survived years of hiding in Hungry and, later, lived as displaced persons in Germany. Denes endured starvation, the death of her beloved brother and homelessness with a feisty refusal to give way to despair. What sustained her and what makes this recollection remarkable is Denes's ability to recall and express the enormous hostility she felt toward her mother for placing her in homes away from her family, her impatience with her aunt and grandparents, her fury at her father for his desertion and the cynicism beyond her years she used as a defense against an insane world. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The wise, heartbreaking, and very human account of a childhood interrupted. Denes (In Necessity and Sorrow, 1976), a professor in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy at Adelphi University, was five years old in 1939 when her father, a newspaper editor and publisher, fled Hungary for the safety of New York City. As he did everything, Gyula Denes fled in style: first-class and with an entirely new wardrobe of 12 suits and 45 shirts. That, in order to do so, he was forced to throw his young family, who remained behind, on the mercy of their relations did not seem to bother him overmuch. Nor did he contact them or send them help in the following years. At first the Deneses were merely poor, but as the war progressed they became persecuted and finally hunted, hiding under floorboards, in cellars, and even in the vilest bathrooms (so vile that their enemies did not want to search there) in order to survive. Denes's elder brother and hero, Ivan, was killed in the final days of the war while acting as a courier for the Zionist resistance group Hashomer. The Russian ``saviors'' who liberated the family's town sent her 14-year-old cousin Ervin behind German lines to tell the enemy to surrender; he never returned. Denes survived, along with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, largely because of her resourcefulness and innate intelligence; what died in the war was her innocence. Finally the family obtained visas for Cuba. When their ship stopped briefly in New York City, Denes met her father, who told her she was not a very pleasant child. ``I know,'' she replied. ``Starving for prolonged periods of time while simultaneously being fed on by packs of lice tends to corrode one's pleasanter side.'' Denes was 12 years old. Wry and tragic, her story brings the horrifying realities of wartime to vivid life. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Denes, a teacher, psychoanalyst, and author, has spent her professional life helping Holocaust survivors deal with their psychological trauma. After 50 years of silence, she tells the story of her own childhood as a fugitive in Budapest, and later a displaced person, in a riveting account of the psychological consequences of the Holocaust. The physical suffering of Holocaust victims endured is already documented; what stands out here is Denes's description of the paranoia and feelings of abandonment that come with long separation from family and friends. Ultimately, for Denes, the long-term psychological consequences of the Holocaust developed out of the destruction of her family, not only through the death of loved ones but through the alienation from those who survived. Recommended for libraries with Judaica collections.
Frederic Krome, Northern Kentucky Univ., Highland Heights
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393039668
• ISBN 13: 9780393039665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384