Entertainment

On The Bookshelf

CHR ONICLING

The Shoal'

Yom Hashoah,

Holocaust

Remembrance

Day, begins this

year at sunset

on April 19.

What follows is

our annual

roundup of

some of the

most interesting

new volumes

published on

the subject of

the Holocaust.

4/13
2001

70

`Displaced Persons'

P

urim always will be a special holi-
day for Joseph Berger, deputy edu-
cation editor at the New York Times.
It was Purim 1950 when the young
Berger and his family reached the
United States to escape the terrible
conditions in post-war Europe, and it
was Purim 2001 when Berger received
his first hardcover copy of Displaced
Persons (Scribner; $25), the book he
wrote to describe his family's experi-
ences adjusting to America.
"I always was touched by the idea
that we arrived on Purim with the
theme of defeating Haman and defeat-
ing Hitler," says Berger, 56, whose
family then consisted of his parents
and a younger brother, Josh.
"I've tried to give a portrait of this
country's refugees who got a little help
but essentially had to make it on their
own. They had to find their own
places to live, their own jobs and their
own sources of support. They didn't
get much attention because what got
attention was what they had been
through.
"To think that 140,000 refugees
came here between 1947 and 1953
and created new lives for themselves
— in many cases very comfortable
lives — is a real testimony to the
human spirit."
The idea for a book about displaced
persons in America came to Berger
more than 20 years ago, when he was
between writing jobs at the New York
Post and Newsday. Although his first
instinct was to try his hand at fiction
based on what he encountered, the
author eventually decided that a mem-
oir would be the right approach for
him.
"It gave me a chance to plumb,
explore and write about some of my
own complicated feelings about my
parents, the lives we led, religion and

independence," explains Berger, a for-
mer junior high school teacher whose
first book, The Young Scientists, was
about academic award winners and the
high schools that produced them.
"Displaced Persons was difficult to
write because of all the emotions asso-
ciated with it and because I'm very
protective of my parents and love
them very much. At the same time, I
wanted to capture
some human truths."
Although Berger's
writing takes his family
into recent years, most
of it has to do with his
growing up and reach-
ing early adulthood.
As it covers the day-to-
day living of one fami-
ly, it also gives some
common ground tread-
ed by immigrants of
various ethnic back-
grounds.
"Their task was to go on," writes
Berger, who was born in the Soviet
Union with a Polish heritage.
Part of going on for the Berger fami-
ly was making some religious compro-
mises (the author's father working on
Saturdays, for example). Going on also
entailed searching for relatives who
might have made it to America while
meeting and making new friends. The
greatest joy of going on was the birth
of the third Bergei child, Evelyn.
Berger, who earned a bachelor's
degree from City College of New York
and a master's degree from Columbia
University Graduate School of
Journalism, joined the New York Times
in 1984 and went on to become reli-
gion correspondent, national educa-
tion correspondent and a bureau chief.
In recent years, before leaving for the
office each morning, Berger was up
ahead of his wife and daughter to
work on his book.

"Displaced Persons is very subjective,
but I also felt my journalistic neutrality
allowed me to be tougher and more
incisive in how I depicted the people,"
explains Berger, whose wife, Brenda, a
clinical psychologist, was the only fami-
ly member to see pre-publication pages.
"Somewhere in the middle of writ-
ing my memoir, an agent suggested
that I ought to have more of my par-
ents' experiences. I decided I
was going to interview them
and then learned my mother
had begun writing down the
story of her life. I found it very
compelling and included large
excerpts as a way of letting the
readers see how my parents'
lives resonated in my own."
Berger, active in a
Reconstructionist synagogue,
,
soon will be active with speak-
ing engagements to introduce
his Scribner release. His fall
schedule, not yet finalized, might
include a visit to the Jewish Book Fair
in Michigan.
Another tie to Michigan comes
through the author's leadership in cov-
ering education news at the New York
Times. The most recent connection
has to do with reporting court battles
over University of Michigan admission
policies.
As Berger thinks of the survival
theme intended for his book, he can
relate that to student violence discussed
on the newspaper pages he edits.
"People do suffer and are victims of
all kinds of terrible experiences, but
they need to see that human life must
go on," Berger says. "Thankfully, in my
own family, there was a natural tenden-
cy to overcome, to fight [without vio-
lence] and to regain momentum and
life, and that's what carried us through."

— Suzanne Chesler

SHOAH on page 72