William & Rosalie (Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series) - Hardcover

Schiff, William; Schiff, Rosalie; Hanley, Craig

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157441237X ISBN 13: 9781574412376

Publisher: University of North Texas Press, 2007

Synopsis

William & Rosalie is the account of two young Jewish people from Poland who survived six different German slave and concentration camps throughout the Holocaust. In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually candid view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people.
The lovers' story begins in Krakow's ancient neighborhood of Kazimierz, after the Germans occupy western Poland. A year later they marry in the ghetto; by 1942 deportations have wasted both families. After Rosalie is saved by Oskar Schindler, the husband and wife end up at the Plaszow work camp under Amon Goeth, the bestial commandant played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. While Rosalie is on "heaven patrol" removing bodies from the camp, William is working in the factories. But when Rosalie is shipped by train to a different factory camp, William sneaks into a boxcar to follow, and he ends up at Auschwitz instead.
Craig Hanley narrates the struggle of the lovers to stay alive and find each other at war's end. Now in their eighties, William and Rosalie come to terms in this book with the loss of their families and years of torture at the hands of Nazi captors. Unique among memoirs from this era, the book connects directly to the present day. The Schiffs' ongoing and highly effective campaign against prejudice and discrimination is a heroic culmination of two lives scarred beyond belief by racism. William & Rosalie combines biography with timely lessons on the nature of mass hate, a stubborn phenomenon that continues to endanger every life on Earth.

About this title

About the Author

WILLIAM and ROSALIE SCHIFF live in Dallas, Texas, and devote themselves full time to teaching American children the dangers of prejudice and hate. CRAIG HANLEY is a graduate of Harvard University. His writing appears in D Magazine.

From Booklist

William Schiff is now 88, and his wife, Rosalie, is 84. Coauthor Craig Hanley spent months interviewing these Holocaust survivors, who told of the loss of families; their time spent in the Kraków, Poland, ghetto; and their subsequent journey through six Nazi slave and prison camps. In 1941 they had just married and were separated; later they were both sent to the Plaszow slave-labor camp outside of Kraków, where the notorious Nazi Amon Goeth was the commandant. William worked in the factories there, and Rosalie removed bodies from the camp. First-person quotes from the Schiffs that describe the agony suffered in the camps are set in italics, and the book contains 25 black-and-white photographs. The richness of the Schiffs' memories and the sheer intensity of their experiences record for posterity the horrors of the Holocaust. Cohen, George

About this edition

• Publisher: University of North Texas Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 157441237X
• ISBN 13: 9781574412376
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192