To See You Again: The Betty Schimmel Story - Hardcover

Schimmel, Betty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684858053 ISBN 13: 9780684858050

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1999

Synopsis

In the romantic city of their youth, two lovers face the most heartwrenching decision of their lives--can they leave their families and begin a new life once more?

Betty Schimmel's memoir has already sparked the enthusiasm of publishers around the world and is destined to receive similarly great acclaim from the broad audience of readers who will no doubt be captured by her powerful story. This true story of love and devotion begins in Budapest during World War II. Two wartime lovers vow that, if ever separated, they will find each other no matter what happens, and no matter the cost. Thirty years later--having survived life in a concentration camp, and now married to another man--Betty Schimmel returns to Budapest to confront her past and rediscovers the lost love that has shadowed her life for decades.

About this title

About the Author

Betty Schimmel was born in 1929 in a small village in Czechoslovakia. She has served as president of Hadassah in Rockland County, New York, has been active in B'nai B'rith and is currently involved in Holocaust survivors' organizations. The founder and owner of a travel agency and an embroidery business, Betty lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her family.

From Kirkus Reviews

Probably the only obsessively romantic Holocaust memoir ever written. Her nickname was Baby, and she had the time of her life, but this Jewish teenager had the love of her life with rich, handsome Richie Kovacs in prewar Budapest. Schimmel (active in Jewish womens groups and Holocaust survivor organizations), assisted by coauthor Gabriel (a former Newsday editor), effectively uses evocative description throughout, including scenes of the lovers courtship in fascist Hungary as sunset falls over the Danube: ``the sky itself was slashed with vivid arcs of fuchsia, purple and gold, a last flash of brilliance before night fell. The night of wartime dislocations, crowded and starving ghettos, a long, freezing death march (during which Eichmann ``came by many times in his car''), and the deadly depravity of Mauthausen camp fell between the lovers. Before their separation, Baby repeatedly broke curfew and risked death so they could kiss in Richie's boat, boathouse, and on the Danube bridge, where a lovers' heart was carved in bronze. Baby was ready to go all the way, although several pregnant women were later shot. This recklessness enrages Baby's widowed mother, a diminutive giant of stoic responsibility and spiritual strength who makes her daughter seem comparatively vain and dreamy. Despite typhoid and unspeakable horrors, Baby survives to liberation, thanks to her mother's strength and her love-fueled hopes. Her search finds only a record of a dead Richard Kovacs. She is then pushed into a loveless marriage and new home in America. Thirty-one years and three children later, Baby visits the scene of her ever-mourned love, and, not far from their carved lovers heart, is . . . but, for the first time in this genre, there is plot to not give away. (8 pages b&w photos) (Book-of-the-Month Club selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684858053
• ISBN 13: 9780684858050
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256