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Informazioni sul libro
A Time to Speak
Di Helen Lewis
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereDescrizione
‘Helen Lewis survived the greatest nightmare ever dreamed by man. Her story is appalling, mesmerising, and one reads with increasing gratitude for her clarity, honesty and courage.’ Ian McEwan
Helen Lewis, a young student of dance in Prague at the outbreak of WW2 was herded, like Madeleine Albright, into the Terezin ghetto, then shipped to Auschwitz, in 1942. Separated from her family, she struggled to survive amidst the carnage of The Final Solution. How she did so, and what she did in order to survive, is a gripping story, told with wit, candour, and controlled anger.
Widely praised by many, including Jennifer Johnston, Michael Longley, and the Guardian, and hailed by the Independent for its ‘elegiac simplicity and lucidity’, A Time to Speak is an elegant memoir of the Holocaust, humbling in its freedom from bitterness, which will leave no reader unmoved.
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereInformazioni sul libro
A Time to Speak
Di Helen Lewis
Descrizione
‘Helen Lewis survived the greatest nightmare ever dreamed by man. Her story is appalling, mesmerising, and one reads with increasing gratitude for her clarity, honesty and courage.’ Ian McEwan
Helen Lewis, a young student of dance in Prague at the outbreak of WW2 was herded, like Madeleine Albright, into the Terezin ghetto, then shipped to Auschwitz, in 1942. Separated from her family, she struggled to survive amidst the carnage of The Final Solution. How she did so, and what she did in order to survive, is a gripping story, told with wit, candour, and controlled anger.
Widely praised by many, including Jennifer Johnston, Michael Longley, and the Guardian, and hailed by the Independent for its ‘elegiac simplicity and lucidity’, A Time to Speak is an elegant memoir of the Holocaust, humbling in its freedom from bitterness, which will leave no reader unmoved.
Informazioni sull'autore
HL![]()
Recensioni
This slight book, only 132 pages, is a worthy addition to Holocaust literature. Lewis describes her journey from Prague,with harrowing months in the ghetto at Terezin and Auschwitz, to her final destination, a "work" camp at Lauenburg, Poland on the Baltic Sea. Although she does not go into great physical detail about the horrors she faced, her understated, elegant prose leaves no doubt about the descent into hell she and her companions endured. When all hope is lost, small kindnesses gave her a extra push to live. And, most surprising, are the human touches provided by a few Germans. There is the fierce guard who saves a portion of his dinner each evening so he can share with the prisoners; the quiet SS officer who smuggles needed medical supplies into the barracks; the commandant who single-handedly saves the prisoners left to die, caring for them until the Red Army liberates the area. He, in turn, is spared execution when his charges rally to save his life. One of the most powerful chapters is toward the end when liberation is so close. Because of hunger, cold and weakness the author, and many prisoners begin to hallucinate as they are forced to march for days to keep ahead of the Russians. Even after she finds a kind of haven with a Polish peasant woman who is reluctantly caring for her after she manages to escape the death march, Helen drifts in and out of reality. This disconnect is, though different than the other horrors she faced, just as dangerous to her survival. In the end, Lewis somehow endures and even she cannot comprehend why. At her lowest ebbs someone or something managed to give her the will to last just one more day.