Daniel's Story," for the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Impressed by the insight and elo-
quence, she extended her search and
uncovered 55 diaries, some pub-
lished and out of print.
After deciding that more people
ought to know about them, she
planned her book to include an
introduction for each diary excerpt
so that readers know more about the
diarists and their individual back-
grounds.
The existence of a diary speaks
not only for its writer but for the
millions of young people who per-
ished," says Zapruder, who can recall
keeping diaries and journals as she
was growing up.
"I found echoes across the materi-
al, and that was unexpected. For
instance, I noticed that more than
one diarist wrote about the passage
of time in relation to the oppression
and their waiting for deliverance."
Zapruder, whose family had left
Europe long before the Holocaust,
felt an emotional connection to the
young writers she uncovered. During
the three years of preparing her
book, she held on to her feelings of
compassion while establishing a pro-
fessional distance that allowed her to
complete her work.
"I found the sadness of the stories
was mingled with admiration for
how interesting the writers them-
selves and the diaries were,"
Zapruder says.
Second Generation
Long after many Holocaust victims
encountered the sign "Work Makes
You Free" as they entered Auschwitz,
one survivor's son reaches out to
readers with a descendants' antholo-
gy, Nothing Makes You Free.
Bukiet's premise alludes to the
emotional price exacted by the
Holocaust on generations who never
experienced the physical torture.
Ending with a story of his own
about people chronicling the recol-
lections of survivors, Bukiet includes
a diversity of short pieces.
Tammie Bob, in "The Fate of
Great Love," presents an inter-reli-
gious romance at the same time she
talks about a survivor who lapses
into the past. Thane Rosenbaum, in
"Cattle Car Complex," introduces a
claustrophobic lawyer who envisions
his parents' transport to death camps
while caught in an elevator.
"I would distinguish not between
fiction and fact but between fact and
truth," says Bukiet, 45, author of
other Holocaust books, including
Stories of an Imaginary Childhood
and After.
"Truth interests me in whatever
form it takes, and fiction is capable
of getting at a deeper truth than
mere adherence to facts."
As Bukiet compiled the pieces for
his anthology, he looked for global
writers. He talked to people who
could help him track down foreign
literature and commissioned transla-
tions.
"I divided the book into three sec-
tions," Bukiet explains. "In the first,
the protagonists of the individual
essays are very young and effectively
just becoming aware of this his-
tory. In the middle section, the
protagonists tend to be youngish
adults. The third section
becomes a catchall for the more
idiosyncratic pieces that didn't
seem to fit any category."
Bukiet, intrigued by writing in
which the tone shifts unexpect-
edly, professes no knowledge of
the extent to which the pieces in
his book are based on nonfiction
and to what extent the nonfic-
tion is imagined.
He did notice that the
American writers were more
explicit and straightforward
while the Europeans were more
elusive and metaphorical.
"There's a sense at the bottom
of all of it that despite every-
thing that happened, we're here
to write about it," Bukiet con-
cludes. E
le
very year, numerous books are published on the subject of the
Holocaust. Here is a sampling of works released within the past year.
From fiction to history to memoir, their authors remind us there is
still much to learn about the defining event of 20th-century Jewish life. .
• Part mystery, part memoir, journalist Blake Eskin's A Life in Pieces:
The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski (W.W. Norton;
$25.95) relates the story of the initial lauded publication of
Wilkomorski's Holocaust memoir, Fragments; its receipt of the National
Book Award; and the subsequent accusation that Wilkomirski was a
Swiss-born, gentile imposter.
• Lothar Machtan's The Hidden Hitler (Basic Books; $26) documents the
homosexual milieu in which the young Hitler lived, puts forth the contro-
versial thesis that Adolf Hitler himself was homosexual, and proposes that
one cannot begin to understand him, his entry into politics and the early
Nazi movement without a clear understanding
of this aspect of his personality.
• Anne Frank in the World (Alfred A. Knopf;
$18.95) is a collection of photographs, many
never before published, compiled by the
Anne Frank House in Amsterdam for a trav-
eling exhibition; personal photographs are
followed by images that chronicle the rise of
anti-Semitism in Europe and the horrors of
the Holocaust, and allow readers to see the
world as Anne saw it.
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sr.Pt
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24 252.
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• In From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall
(University Press of Mississippi; $29), Marian Filar and Charles Patterson
write of Filar's journey from child prodigy to inmate/slave in a series of
camps to refugee to world-class concert pianist; it is a story of the triumph
of art over horror.
• The Holocaust Kid (Persea Books; $23.95), author Sonia Pilcer's irreverent
collection of linked, autobiographical short stories about growing up as the
child of Holocaust survivors, is set in the 1960s; Pilcer's alter ego, Zosha
Palovsky, is a tabloid columnist, would-be poet and no-holds-barred rebel.
• First-time author Miriam Darvas' memoir Farewell to Prague
(MacAdam/Cage Publishing; $22) follows her journey from Hitler's
Germany to the Czech capital to London and back to the continent to
search for her family, and reminds us of the millions of people who were
displaced by a war that forced them to flee and start anew in countries
where they knew not the language, culture or people.
• Adam Nossiter's The Algeria Hotel: France, Memory and the Second
World War (Houghton Mifflin: $26) is the author's personal confrontation
. with the effects of awakening to the dark side of the French record during
the Holocaust and a searching narrative of how the French today live their
lives in the shadow of the war and its crimes.
• In By Fate or By Faith: The Saga of a Survivor (Longstreet Press Inc;
$22.95), Atlanta-based Cantor Isaac Goodriend explains how his spiritual
strength allowed him to survive the emotional devastation of losing his
family in the Holocaust without losing his faith in God, and how, when
survival became a matter of life and death, not simply a test of faith, the
hand of fate spared him many times; the cantor went on to sing the
national anthem at President Jimmy Carter's inauguration.
— Gail Zimmerman
Arts 6- Entertainment Editor
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