Synopses & Reviews
Review
"This volume combines the memoirs of two Polish Jews from the same town a short distance east of Warsaw, who survived the Holocaust individually and then met and married each other in 1945. Miriam Kuperhand lived in hiding from the Nazis from 1942 to 1944, eking out an existence in a series of underground hideaways. Her future husband was shipped to the notorious Treblinka death camp where he lost his entire family before escaping. Their memories are understandably bitter, and despite the heroism of some individual Poles, the Kuperhands conclude that the majority of the Polish people actively colluded with the Nazis in their program to exterminate the Jews. Perhaps most unsettling is their assertion that the Poles continued to persecute the Jews even in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet conquest of Poland in 1944-45. These memoirs are not especially graphic but are nevertheless difficult to read because of the immensity of the suffering they reveal." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
Unique and compelling, this husband-and-wife memoir of the Holocaust
will move and inform generations. As we lose eyewitnesses to this ultimate
horror, the Kuperhands present us with an elegantly restrained, yet hard-hitting,
Kaddish to Polish Jewry.
Miriam was the daughter of a prosperous furrier; Saul was the son of
a poor shoemaker. Miriam was sixteen when she and her brother roamed the
wild countryside of Poland, searching for food and shelter--and for their
parents. Saul was only a few years older when he watched the smoke rising
from the crematoria and knew that his parents, sister, and eight brothers
were gone forever. Miriam lived by hiding; Saul lived by escaping from
the camp.
The authors emphasize the essential role that Polish Christians played
in their survival and stress that wit, courage, faith, luck, and even
a strong will to live were worthless without their help.
The travail of their survival is wrenching yet comforting, tragic yet
upbeat, cinematic yet intimate. Shadows of Treblinka will haunt
and inspire its readers.