Nothing Makes You Free

March 18, 2002
"He isn't flying," a young boy explains about a picture he has drawn, "he's hanging. See, he's dead, his tongue is blue.... My father is there, too. Here, he is the one with the big ears." This anthology's memories and fictions contain many more moments that move and shock us. "The Second Generation will never know what the First Generation does in its bones, but what the Second Generation knows better than anyone else is the First Generation," writes Bukiet (Strange Fire), and these 30 pieces (including translations from the Hebrew, Swedish, German, French, Serbian, Dutch, Hungarian and Italian) cover a wide range of topics and emotions. In "Animal" (from Nightfather), Carl Friedman's father confesses that he wants the camp kapo
he murdered to come back from the dead so that he can kill him again, but more slowly. In Sonia Pilcer's "Do You Deserve to Live," the author combines reflections on her survivor mother, her own work on a movie fan magazine and musings about Liz Taylor's conversion to Judaism in order to marry Eddie Fisher to generate original insights into the complexities of the survivor experience. The writing here is uniformly strong, intelligent and at times dazzling: Gila Lustiger's excerpt from The Inventory
is a model of concise emotional story-telling, and Mihaly Kornis's short "Petition" (a sarcastic play on a legal document detailing the kind of life desired) is a wonderful conceit brilliantly executed. While some of the pieces are by noted writers such as Eva Hoffman, Art Spiegelman and Alan Kaufman, many names here will be new to readers, and the mixture of fiction and more traditional memoir is fresh as well.

April 1, 2002
Excerpts from the works of 30 writers whose parents survived the Holocaust make up this anthology of fiction and memoirs. They include Carl Friedman, the Dutch author of "Nightfather" (1994), "The Shovel and the Loom" (1996), and "The Gray Lover "(1998); Eva Hoffman "(Shtetl" [1997]; "Lost in Translation "[1993]); Art Spiegelman "(Maus: A Survivor's Tale"); and Bukiet ("Strange Fire" [BKL Ap 1 01], "After" [1996], "Signs and Wonders "[1999]). Bukiet writes in his penetrating introduction that "no one who isn't a child of survivors can begin to understand the bottomless depths of rage inside those born into the Holocaust." In these remarkable pieces issues such as guilt, anger, faith, and accountability are explored. They capture not only the experience of the concentration camps but also its powerful legacy, passed down to a new generation through the bond of love that ties parent and child. This is an important book for anyone who wants to learn about the transfer of trauma from victims to their offspring and the second generation's efforts to build a life in which they can succeed. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2002
It has been argued that the Holocaust cannot and should not be a subject for writers something entirely disproved by this wrenching collection of stories and memoirs by second-generation survivors. It is their job, notes Bukiet in a harsh and painfully honest introduction aimed at explaining the second-generation experience, "to cry Never Forget' even though we can't remember a thing." In this world of grief, death, and survival, novelist/critic Bukiet (Strange Fire) has included many different cultures (e.g., Hebrew, Swedish, English, Serbian, Spanish, and Hungarian) and styles or genres (e.g., magic realism, humor, psychological insight, and personal history). Especially powerful are the excerpts from Joseph Skibell's A Blessing on the Moon and Henry Raczymov's Writing the Book of Esther, as well as Sonia Pilcer's "Do You Deserve To Live" and Alcina Lubitch Domecq's "Ur," a story from her collection The Holocaust Kid. Other authors found here include Peter Singer, Savyon Liebrecht, Alan Kaufman, and Carl Friedman, and the cumulative effect of their work is unforgettable. Here, the Holocaust and its consequences are not just memorialized but vividly reimagined. For all libraries with strong Jewish studies, 20th-century history, and literature collections. Gene Shaw, NYPL

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.