The Beautiful Days of My Youth: My Six Months In Auschwitz and Plaszow - Hardcover

Novac, Ana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805050183 ISBN 13: 9780805050189

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 1997

Synopsis

On scraps of paper hidden by friends and strangers until their dying moments, young Ana Novac kept a diary in Auschwitz, a testimony that deserves to become one of the most treasured books of our time.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

From School Library Journal:

Grade 7 Up. A brilliant, literary memoir. At the age of 15, Ana Novac (nee Zimra Harsanyi) recorded these impressions during six harrowing months in Auschwitz and Plaszow concentration camps, from June to November 1944. Of the eight camps Ana passed through, she remembers only these two. She wrote on strips of German propaganda posters torn from the walls and on sheets of toilet paper. She hid the pages in her shoes and memorized them when they grew too bulky, summarizing them with a few key phrases. In each camp, she angled to get the top sleeping platform to take advantage of the dim ceiling light. Sophie, her camp "sister," thought she was crazy, but nevertheless helped her conceal the scraps of paper. Ana wrote about the horrors, the narrow escapes from death, the ludicrousness of the situation. She described her camp "family" in hilariously on target, if "sick," metaphors. She wrote about the "angel-makers," the women who saved pregnant women from the gas by aborting their fetuses or by delivering their babies and then disposing of them. She observed, she thought, she wrote, she existed. Like Gerty Spies, an older woman who also found her salvation in writing (My Years in Theresienstadt [Prometheus, 1997]), Novac's will to write was stronger than her body's will to die and so she survived. We are gifted with this work of art, this word tribute to the human spirit.?Marcia W. Posner, Holocaust Memorial and Educational Center of Nassau County, Glen Cove, NY
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805050183
• ISBN 13: 9780805050189
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256