Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (Gb772)

RGG: Memoir about a Jewish family's hiding with a Polish family to survive the Nazi occupation. Told from the point of view of the author as a young girl, who can pass. Written in a rather matter-of-fact tone, story may lack emotional impact. Also many young adult readers may require more historical context than the author provides.

This well-written memoir is a lovingly written tribute to Tec's parents, especially her father, who had the foresight, connections and appearance to arrange for the author's family to spend the duration of World War II passing as Polish Christians. The author presents a different and more ambiguous struggle for survival than is typically given in holocaust biographies and memoirs. The poor Homar family accepts Tec's family to ensure their own survival during a time of deep rations and deprivation. The Jewish family essentially foots the food bill, the rent and the start-up for one of the Polish family member's black market vodka business. The author insists the Homars are kind, affectionate, and generous to them in spite of being deeply anti-semitic. My edition includes an epilogue in which the author explains something of what happened after the war when the family returned to Lublin Poland. Compared to the rest of the book, this section is quite sketchy and unsatisfying. The author states that dealing with this aspect of her personal and family history is still painful. Dry Tears reads like narrative and the author provides clear characterization of the poor Poles her family lived with. This is a book worth reading for a completely different view of the Holocaust experience. ( )