Synopses & Reviews
In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. Along with some 45,000 Jews living in the city, Helga's family endured the first wave of the Nazi invasion: her father was denied work; she was forbidden from attending regular school. As Helga witnessed the increasing Nazi brutality, she began documenting her experiences in a diary.
Review
"The most moving Holocaust diary published since Anne Frank." The Telegraph
Review
"Written in spare prose and infused with a touching mixture of a child's drive for discovery and an adult's dread of a wartime future, touches raw nerves and contains the potential to send shock waves through the oeuvre of Holocaust memoirs." Linda F. Burghardt
Review
"Resounds with a ferocious will to endure conditions of astonishing cruelty." Jewish Book World
Review
"A breathtaking account...a chilling testament to the tragedy of the Holocaust." David Casarani New Statesman
Review
"What's startling, throughout, is the resilience with which her buoyant spirit keeps bobbing up past the hardships, indignities, and cruelties of her captors." Publishers Weekly
Review
"At times the struggle of this young girl in the face of evil becomes so real that you'll notice yourself adjusting your blanket and thermostat right along with her as she shivers in the worst of conditions." Francine Prose
Synopsis
In 1939, Helga Weiss was a young Jewish schoolgirl in Prague. As she endured the first waves of the Nazi invasion, she began to document her experiences in a diary. During her internment at the concentration camp of Terezin, Helga's uncle hid her diary in a brick wall. Of the 15,000 children brought to Terezin and deported to Auschwitz, there were only one hundred survivors. Helga was one of them. Miraculously, she was able to recover her diary from its hiding place after the war. These pages reveal Helga's powerful story through her own words and illustrations. Includes a special interview with Helga by translator Neil Bermel.
Synopsis
"A sacred reminder of what so many millions suffered, and only a few survived."--Adam Kirsch,
About the Author
Helga Weiss was born in Prague in 1929. After surviving the Holocaust and the Second World War, Helga returned to Prague, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, and became an artist. She has two children, three grandchildren, and lives to this day in the apartment where she was born.Francine Prose is the author of sixteen books of fiction, including Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Among her most recent works of nonfiction is the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. A former president of PEN American Center, she lives in New York City.