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Observer & Eccentric
streets, members of the Polish -Union of
Jewish Students, a Passover seder in
Lublin, a Jewish kindergarten in
Warsaw, abandoned cemeteries and a
Polish soldier who serves with the
United Nations peacekeeping force in
Lebanon and wears an Israeli army uni-
form when he returns to his hometown
of Kielce. "I am from Poland," he says,
"but I am not a Pole."
The author and photographer are
both American descendants of Polish
Jews; Mayer is the son of Holocaust
survivors and his text includes
reportage and personal reflections.
The memoir The Girl in the Red
Coat (St. Martin's; $25.95), by Roma
Ligocka, begins with a scene in a
beautiful hotel in the Cote d'Azur in
France, where the author is vacation-
ing.
At lunch, surrounded with luscious
fruits, she sees a young girl nearby
with her parents; she writes, "I feel as
though I am sitting across the table
from myself in another life, another
time."
The young girl reminds her of the
little girl she once was or might have
been; this girl seems to have the kind
of safe and happy childhood — filled
with loving parents, chocolate and toys
— that she never had. Suddenly, she is
pulled back into "the abyss of memory,
back into the dark hole. The Ghetto."
And she flashes back to her story.
The author was inspired to write
this memoir when she saw the Polish
premiere of Schindler's List and was
haunted by an image of a young girl
— about the age she had been — in a
red coat, just like the strawberry red
coat her grandmother made for her.
But unlike the girl in the movie,
Ligocka survives, along with her
cousin director Roman Polanksi.
Here, she tells of her childhood in
the Krakow Ghetto and of her later
life in Poland under Communism and
her involvement in the Polish human
rights movement.
Also, she writes with candor of the
guilt of survival, the joys of being
alive, the search for meaning and
beauty. Illustrated with photos
throughout, the memoir has been
translated into 10 languages.
The Gold Train: The Destruction of
the Jews and the Looting of Hungary
(Morrow; $26.95), by Ronald W.
Zweig; reads like a story of espionage
and politics.
This is the story of the fate of hun-
dreds of millions of dollars worth of
property — including jewelry, Old,
gems, cash, furnishings, silver, rugs —
taken from the 437,000 Hungarian
Jews deported to Auschwitz and
loaded onto a train in 1944 to be
transported out of Hungary as the Red
Army was approaching. The fate of
this property has been the subject of
rumors and conjectures since the war.
Zweig, a senior lecturer in modern
Jewish history at Tel Aviv University,
explains what happened to the train,
and the ongoing disputes, based on
newly available archival records.
The people involved include
Hungarian and German Nazis,
American and French armies, Jewish
leaders from Hungary and Palestine
and officials with international refugee
organizations. Among the book's bold
claims is that American soldiers were
among the looters of the goods.
In The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence
from the Irving Trial (Indiana
University Press; $45), Robert Jan va
Pelt provides an account of the trial of
David Irving vs. Penguin Books and
Deborah Lipstadt before the British
High Court, in which he served as an
expert witness.
Here, as in the trial, the author makes
the case forcefully for historical evidence
of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, refut-
ing the Holocaust deniers. The author
is professor of architecture at the
University of Waterloo in Canada and
co-author with Deborah Dwork of
Auschwitz 1270 to the Present. The new
book they have recently completed
together is Holocaust: A History
(Norton; $27.95).
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Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir
of Music, Love, and Survival (Warner
Books; $23.95).
Lisa Jura was one of 10,000 Jewish
children saved from the Nazis by the
British and sent on the
Kindertransport to safety from Eastern
Europe. This at once heartbreaking
and uplifting tale weaves the stories
Golabek's mother told her about pre-
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tion from her family, life at the
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SOUTHFIELD-DETROIT
4 4 ,
ienna 1938. In the city of
Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven,
and Strauss, 14-year-old musical
prodigy Lisa Jura looks forward to a
promising career as a concert pianist.
Hitler has other plans.
With the breaking of glass on
Kristallnacht, Lisa's dreams are shattered.
Internationally celebrated concert
pianist Mona Golabek, with journalist
and poet Lee Cohen, has crafted a lov-
ing, lyrical tribute to her mother, Lisa,
in The Children of Willesden Lane —
THE WESTIN
$139
,1
`The Children Of Willesden Lane'
concert hall and closes with the fulfill-
ment of that dream as she makes her
debut before an exhilarated crowd.
power of music to help her survive.
And, in between, the pages burst
As Lisa's mother, Malka, puts her on
with melody: Lisa pounding the caden-
the train, she says the prophetic words
za of the Grieg Piano Concerto to drown
that will sustain and inspire her daughter
out the sounds of bombs during
and future generations: "Hold on to your London's blitz; Lisa visualizing Chopin
fleeing a flaming
music. Let it be your best friend."
Warsaw as she strug-
In a world turned ugly, the
gles with the somber
beauty of music becomes Lisa's
coda of the Ballade,
strength, and, against tremen-
Lisa remembering
dous odds, with the help and
°LAB:7K Atrtt LEE COHEN
her mother's Sabbath
encouragement of the 30 other
candles as she plays
displaced children at the orphan-
the soleffin opening
age, she wins a scholarship to
of Beethoven's
London's Royal Academy.
Pathetique.
- "Each kid saw something in
On her syndicated
my mother's music that
radio show, The
reminded them of what they
Romantic Hours,
had left behind in
which highlights stir-
Czechoslovakia, in Austria, in
ring writings against
Germany," says the Grammy
a musical backdrop,
nominated Golabek, "and that's
author Golabek often quotes the poet
what I tried to do in the story, not
only to pay homage to my mother, but Jean Pail Richter: "Life fades and with-
to all these kids and to their bravery."
ers behind us, but of our immortal and
sacred soul all that remains is music."
The book opens with Lisa's tantaliz-
ing daydream of performing in a great
OFF
TOTAL
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