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Sto caricando le informazioni... Chance: Escape from the Holocaust: Memories of a Refugee Childhooddi Uri Shulevitz
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Uri and his family's escape from Warsaw to the Soviet Union didn't come easy. It was fraught with the struggle to survive, when there was no assurance of where the next meal would come from to where they'd sleep. All the while, Uri is a child growing up in an increasingly hostile world. Reading about Uri's childhood experiences as a refugee is a truly sobering reminder of how we take our freedoms for granted. One of the subject headings for this absorbing memoir is “Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)”. That descriptor doesn’t quite fit with the text’s telling subtitle “Escape from the Holocaust". Also problematic is the decision to shelve the book in the juvenile section of the library. To my mind, this is not a children’s book, and anyone who categorizes it as one hasn’t read it. Calling it young adult is less of an issue: there are mature young adult readers, after all, and the book has illustrations, photos, and maps, all of which increase accessibility. Having said this, I still think the content is more suited to adults. Chance is an atypical memoir in a few respects. First of all, the author's experience of World War II is different from that of many, perhaps even most, Eastern-European Jews. The only autobiographical works I’ve read that compare are Ilona Flutsztejn-Gruda’s When Grownups Play at War and Esther Hautzig’s The Endless Steppe. While some of the women’s childhood recollections are similar to Shulevitz’s, his memoir is more informative about key events in World War II Eastern-European and Soviet history. Visuals, including comic-book/graphic-novel elements, also bring something different to the reading experience, often adding emotional resonance. Finally: this is not just a story of survival; it’s also about the growth and development of an artist. In his beautiful 2008 picture book, How I Learned Geography, Shulevitz writes about a map his father brought him one evening when he and his mother were expecting—indeed, desperate for—food. This was when the author and his parents were living a hardscrabble existence as refugees in Soviet Kazakhstan, an experience which is covered in far more detail in the memoir. Chance, which is divided into eight chronological sections, explains how the Shulevitzes ended up in that part of Asia in the first place. It tells about their long journey across Eastern Europe, to northern Russia, then Soviet Kazakhstan, and it also describes the post-war trek aboard mining trains back to Poland, the time spent in a German displaced persons camp, a further trip west to Paris, France, and the family’s eventual emigration to Israel. The multiple chapters are seldom more than a page long, making this a propulsive read. Shulevitz, who was born in Warsaw, Poland, was only four years old when the German blitz on that city began in September 1939. At the time, he was alone in the family apartment with his mother. His father, having heard rumours that men were to be conscripted for slave labour by the Germans, had presciently gone east. He would eventually send for his wife and son to come to Bialystok, which had become part of Soviet Belarus when Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact and carved up Poland between them. Early in life–in fact, as a baby just home from the hospital—Uri had stared intently at the flowers on the wallpaper. His parents saw this as a sign of their child’s inborn talent and vocation; they named him Uri, after the father of Bezalel, the first artist of the Bible. During the German bombing of Warsaw, the boy sought refuge from the bombs by drawing. He produced only stick figures then, but his parents made the effort to guide and encourage him, even during difficult times, and his skills progressed. Uri’s name seems to have determined his fate and, strangely, that of his family as well. Another thing that allowed the Shulevitzes to survive was a chance encounter Uri’s father’s had not long after he’d left Warsaw. In Bialystok, he briefly had a job painting Soviet slogans on trucks and banners, but work for refugees soon dried up, and he decided to return to Poland. Since crossing the border had become so difficult, he took a route through an abandoned warehouse, where he fortuitously met a Jewish man crawling into Belarus from the Polish side. Mr. Shulevitz should not go back to Poland, said the man; it had become a hell. He advised Uri’s father to return to Bialystok and send for his wife and child. Shulevitz ponders the meaning of this event: Was this Jewish man from God? The Shulevitzes were not at all religious, but they were the only members of their family in Poland to survive. Uri's grandfather, on the other hand, was devout, yet he “died a miserable death at the hands of the Nazis.” Tell me, he asks the reader, “Why was he not saved by divine intervention? I have no answers.” This is a theme he revisits a few times in the memoir. The most memorable parts of the book are those which detail the author's life in Turkestan, a Muslim city in Kazakhstan where life had apparently not changed since medieval times and where hunger and deprivation were Uri's constant companions. Right after the family’s arrival there, Mr. Shulevitz mysteriously disappeared for a time. Uri never learned why, but speculates that his father, always an impulsive man, may well have travelled to Iran hoping to join a Polish army regiment that was forming there. There are many stories of hardship in Turkestan, but also some amusing recollections about friendships, Kazakh culture, and Mr. Shulevitz's farfetched, unsuccessful schemes to make money. Not surprisingly, Uri was frequently ill—in Soviet Asia and, later, in France, where he and his parents would live for a short period with an uncle and his family. Living in France was a very unhappy time for the boy. As in Poland, anti-semitism was rampant there, and Uri was bullied. Were it not for his art and the companionship of books, he would have been very lonely indeed. The family decided to emigrate to Israel when Uri was fourteen. Chance is a compelling memoir of survival—simply, clearly, and beautifully written and effectively illustrated. It is by turns harrowing, sardonic, warm, and wise. I am so glad Uri Shulevitz survived, and I am grateful for his book. Black line drawings underscore the harrowing wartime journey Uri and his parents experienced as refugees from Poland. Even with all the horrors they faced, the book is child-accessible (mid to upper elementary), with conversational prose and several fleeting memories represented in single-page chapters. The font is large and the page design is white and open. For young readers who are developmentally ready for an introduction to the serious topic of war and the Holocaust, this book will open their eyes. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Premi e riconoscimentiElenchi di rilievo
"The first middle-grade book from a picture book master-a harrowing, heartrending, illustrated account of his childhood escape from the terrors of war"-- Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)940.53History and Geography Europe Europe 1918- World War IIClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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The story begins in Warsaw, Poland on September 1, 1939 when “Nazi planes burst into the Warsaw skies….” Uri was four years old. The bombings continued for days. Shulevitz writes:
“When the smoke settled . . . some people who a second ago had been standing on the breadline lay dead; others lay wounded. It all seemed unreal. Dazed, I watched, frozen in place. The distance between life and death had vanished. One second life, the next death.”
He observed that survival became a game of chance. Interestingly, even Uri’s name figured into the odds of whether his family lived or died. As a newborn, Uri stared at the flowers on their wallpaper all the time, so he was named after the biblical Uri, the first artist of the Bible. In 1940, after the family fled to Bialystok in the Soviet Union, Uri’s father tried to register them as Soviet citizens. The clerk refused, accusing his father of naming Uri after the “Zionist poet” Uri Zvi Greenberg, concluding they must also be “anti-Soviet reactionaries.” Not being able to get official papers changed the course of their lives, and ultimately and improbably contributed to their survival.
Sometimes Shulevitz reflects on the role chance played in his life as opposed to, as some claimed, divine intervention. He asks:
“Why would divine intervention have saved my parents’ lives when they were not religious? Why, then, did my devout grandfather die a miserable death at the hands of the Nazis, when he was a deeply religious man who observed every single commandment of his faith with love and devotion? Why was he not saved by divine intervention? I have no answers.”
This is the same question the famous Holocaust survivor, writer, and humanist Elie Wiesel grappled with, as well as many other survivors of the Holocaust. Shulevitz’s story is replete with events, however, in which it seemed to be only chance that stood between life and death. God was not in the picture. He could relate to the sentiment of the basic Soviet "theology" he absorbed: “Don’t waste your time asking God for beans; you’ll get nothing. Better ask the Soviets - they deliver.” When, after the war ended, Uri was near death in a hospital with diphtheria and scarlet fever, and the principal of his school said they had asked their rabbi in New York to pray for him, Uri writes:
“Dear reader, what saved my life? The prayers of the great rabbi of Brooklyn, or potato puree and a new wonder drug called penicillin? You decide.”
Throughout his childhood, Uri found ways to cope with experiences of intense and unrelenting hunger, combined with constant fear and antisemitic attacks. He wrote “days followed days when we had not a bite of food.” Many, many nights were spent sleeping in trains, sleeping outside, or not sleeping at all. At first, drawing became his primary means to distract himself. He would use a stick to draw in the dirt or burn a twig to use as charcoal. He made colors from flower petals or leaves. Later, when he had access to books, he found refuge in escapism through the adventures of heroes in literature. [After the war, he combined the two interests to make award-winning books.]
The conclusion of the war did not end their troubles, as other Jews in Europe found as well. The family tried to reestablish their lives in Poland, but many Poles had taken over residences and properties owned previously by Jews and they would not give them back. There were even murders of Jews who tried to return. In Kielce, Poland, for example, 42 Jews were killed in 1946 in a stunning episode of violence. Eventually Uri’s family tried living in Paris and then emigrated to Israel in 1949. In 1959, Uri moved to New York.
The book has many of Shulevitz’s illustrations, some saved from his childhood, but most created for this story. Perhaps a third of the book is in a graphic, comic-book style format. It is a saga readers will find hard to forget. ( )