Other Annotated Titles

The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank

Night

Wartime Lies

Hide And Seek

On the Other Site of the Gate

The Cage

Katerina

A Scrap of Time and Other Stories

Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor

Maus

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

 

Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor



Isaacson, Judith Magyar Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Judith Magyar Isaacson begins her biography when she is thirteen years old. Her family was very much assimilated and integrated into the Hungarian culture and society. While the Nazis were storming through Europe, Judith continued her education. She lived through four years of occupation before being deported to the concentration camps. The book is well annotated with photographs and footnotes explaining both pre-war, wartime and post-war Jewish life. Most striking, is the detailed map of Auschwitz. After her liberation, the author immigrated to the United States. While teaching at Bates College in Maine, a student asks her, "How can you smile after Auschwitz? It was that question that prompted her to write this stunning detailed memoir.

[This book was chosen because it is probably the best written and documented book about an individual and society surviving the Holocaust. The author's ability to deal with the past, present and future is without parallel.]

While in Europe doing research for her book, she is asked to speak at a public gathering honoring the 700th year of Hessich-Lichtenau (where Isaacson worked in a labor camp):


I closed my eyes to reflect. How to speak for one thousand comrades, most of them dead? Could I say it in German, so everyone would understand?

Microphone in hand, I soon faced the hundreds upon hundreds of Deutsches Volk. Dressed in my classic American suit, and looking down at the crowd from the height of a raised platform, I couldn't help wondering about my audience. How many had seen us trudging along by fives, barefoot, bald-headed and clothed in rags?

"Meine Damen und Herren--" I started and I continued in German, forcing my voice to sound calm. "I am an American, but as a young girl I used to be a Hungarian Jewess." (Will they boo at the word Juden? The crowd remained silent; I continued) "That is why I did forced labor here at Hessich Lichtenau, together with my comrades.
We cannot forget, but we must learn to forgive--from you." (Here I stretched out a hand instinctively toward them, and to my surprise, the crowd responded with spontaneous applause). "For the next seven hundred years," I ended, "we wish you peace and good luck."
pp.164-165




Main Page