My Eyes Looking Back at Me: Insight Into a Survivor's Soul - Softcover

Meinstein, Menucha

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0986129305 ISBN 13: 9780986129308

Publisher: One to One, 2015

Synopsis

You will admire the strength and resilience of this determined woman, weep over human hatred and evil, and the senseless loss of lives. Rejoice over the bonds of love, friendship and forgiveness, of finding relatives, and share the triumph of unexpected turns in Leah's story that will inspire you, leaving you breathless. "How did she do it?" You'll find it all here, as you follow Leah through the many phases of her life, her redemption and revenge against Hitler's evil, and to grateful happiness during her 90th year. When Leah Cik Roth decides to write her secret memoirs for her children, writer, Menucha Meinstein, walks into her life as a volunteer. The two develop the deepest of human bonds as together they uncover Leah's lifelong bitterness and suppressed Holocaust memories. Through Soul-Writing, they struggle to relive Leah's stories, revealing heroic patterns of resilience from the young age of five. Her memories bring out fresh pain, and renewed feelings of loss and loneliness. The Holocaust is merely a backdrop to Leah's life. Together, the two women share joy in the legacy that Leah leaves for the world.

About this title

About the Author:

Drawn to working with the elderly since she was a teen in Seattle, Menucha Meinstein volunteered at hospitals and old age homes. After retiring to Miami, armed with an M.A. in Psychology from Antioch University, she developed a technique of self-guided therapeutic journaling, Soul-Writing, to nurture optimism and resilience. She used the technique in a Chai Lifeline class for mothers of medically fragile children.
Menucha participates in the Para-Chaplaincy Volunteer Program of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation (GMJF) in collaboration with Jewish Community Services, and utilized her Soul-Writing skills to work with a Holocaust survivor wishing to write a memoir. Menucha, paired with Leah Czik Roth, began working on fashioning Leah s compelling history.
Through the writing experience over these last four years of storytelling, recording and crafting, all done in the Aventura, Florida home of Menucha and her husband, Eddie, Leah became such a constant and beloved presence, they invited her to move in with them. As Leah s biographer, Menucha is the driving force for the publication and promotion of My Eyes Looking Back at Me: Insight Into a Survivor s Soul. Together they are deeply involved in cultivating Holocaust awareness to students and adults through educational programs in the Miami area.
Menucha has participated in a myriad of programs that provide support to the elderly, the sick and the bereaved. She volunteers with Bikur Cholim and Chevra Kadisha Societies, and participates on the (GMJF) Mishkan Miami Leadership Council. She is a member of the South Florida International Press Club, and a founding member of Aventura Authors.

Review:

Beautifully done. The author has structured her story well, beginning with how this book came to be. We sense a guarded spirit here, yet a great bravery and generosity in delving back into horribly difficult memories in order to pay tribute to Leah's ancestors, teach readers more about what happened during the Holocaust (details we haven t heard before), and yes, make her husband proud. We admire the courage it takes to go back to heartbreaking times, and we re inspired by her fortitude. Well done. An honorable book. Beautiful phrasing throughout, such as describing her as lonesome among the treasures of her past. Such a tiny sentence, but so packed with emotion, imagery and gravity. Beautiful. Dialogue is natural and differentiated throughout, giving us a realism in encounters, and and showing relationships in lovely, subtle ways. Settings, particularly of Leah s childhood days on land populated with cows, are drawn especially well. There is an innocence in that time, a child s wonder...that all too soon slides into mind-numbing sadness and palpable fear. We are changed and brought to empathy by this story. Very moving. I am alone said in her old age, and then repeated again when she is a child, is so resonant, it s heartbreaking. Tears emerge from the reader. Discovered details, such as the Jews being instructed on how to make their own yellow stars from fabric they can find, are jaw-dropping. Calling them stars of scorn is one of the marks of the author s fine writing. A great economy of words that captures so much. The first conversation with Menachem is written especially well, the first glimpse we get into the innocent young girl she still maintains inside. Their initial small talk hold so much hope and promise. This is an especially sweet scene. And I loved how Leah handled Menachem s initial doubts about their relationship due to their differences in education. That she would make it seem as if she s walking away makes us love her even more. She is one strong woman, even at a tender age, so fresh from her wounds. A very strong story, given great honor with excellent, nuanced and revelatory writing. Excellent work. --Writer's Digest Commentary

Meinstein's biography of Holocaust survivor Leah Cik Roth, told from her subject s perspective. Roth's story begins in Brustury, Czechoslovakia (now part of Ukraine), with her earliest memory: the death and funeral of her mother when Roth was 5. Traumatic as that event was for Roth, she reminds the reader that in years to come I would see death every day without the dignity given to my mother. Roth tells of her childhood among the Orthodox Jewish community of her Carpathian village and of her desire to leave at age 14 due to a tense relationship with her stepmother. Following the Hungarian invasion of Carpathia, Roth traveled to the city of Chust to work as an apprentice basket maker and wig maker. She was in Chust in 1941 when she learned that most of her community, including her father and nearly all her siblings, had been forced over the Polish border by Hungarian forces and executed by firing squads. So begins the truly terrible account of Roth s journey, which brought her to the ghetto of Sekernice, then to Auschwitz (and face to face with Mengele himself), then to Birkenau, Stutthof, and Brano, and finally to a forced march in the final months of the war. She subsequently escaped to Israel -- she offers insight into the early years of that nation -- before eventually immigrating to the United States. Meinstein is an eloquent writer, suitably skilled for describing both the lighter and darker chapters of Roth's life. It's an idiosyncratic volume -- part personal scrapbook, part primary document of several disparate eras and locales -- accompanied by various supplementary materials, including a reading group guide, letters written between Meinstein and Roth, lengthy acknowledgements, and thick fanfare: a full 14 pages of reader reviews of this very book. Flourishes aside, the story serves as a particularly unnerving account of the camps and their aftermath as well as a testament to how treasured the survivors remain for succeeding generations of Jews and non-Jews alike. Meinstein is clearly working her hardest to deliver a book worthy of Roth's story. The result is a collaboration that is affecting on many levels. A charming, life-affirming biography of survival and community. --Kirkus Reviews

My Eyes Looking Back at Me is the powerful collaboration between two friends, both committed Jews, one a Survivor of the Holocaust. The story that is told is painful, but not only painful. The world before the Shoah is revealed, one rich with community and family, most is lost, remnants survive but memory endures. And the world afterwards is also presented, the journey back from the abyss into a life in Israel and in the United States, to a life of normalcy and ultimately to a life filled with dignity and decency as Leah Cik Roth moves from being a helpless victim to a poignant witness. Her story of the life during the Shoah is told with depth and painful honesty. She takes the reader into that darkness without glossing over the anguish and indignity. Above all, this book is a tribute to a friendship between two women, who had the courage to look back on the past together and the skill to tell of that past so compellingly. --Michael Berenbaum, Ph.D., Professor of Jewish Studies, Sigi Zieirng Institute - LA

About this edition

• Publisher: One to One
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0986129305
• ISBN 13: 9780986129308
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Cohen Esq. Marcia, Basha Esther