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Loading... The Endless Steppe: A Girl in Exile (original 1968; edition 1975)▾LibraryThing recommendations ▾Will you like it?
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 Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. ▾Work-to-work relationships Has as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a student's study guide
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This story would not have been told without the help of many, many people. It is gratefully dedicated to all of them.  | |
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The morning it happened - the end of my lovely world - I did not water the lilac bush outside my father's study. | |
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Those of us who were lucky enough to have had a slice of that watermelon that night - like me - must count it the most delectable food ever eaten anyplace by anyone. I bent my head closer to the vines; I didn't want to see the dunce. But as a member of the collective dunce, I too called out, "No, no." We were not humanitarians; we were just hungry children who didn't want to starve, and I think it likely that collectively we had it in us to stone the next child who pulled a potato. Later, I would occasionally watch my mother work with the jack hammer, but the woman whose guts seemed about to be shaken out of her, whose face was contorted to ugliness, would seem a stranger. Hadn't I learned by now that it was not all that easy to die? The flatness of this land was awesome. There wasn’t a hill in sight; it was an enormous, unrippled sea of parched and lifeless grass. “Tata, why is the earth so flat here?” “These must be steppes, Esther.” “Steppes? But steppes are in Siberia.” “This is Siberia,” he said quietly. In our family, as in most European families of my childhood, old people were treated with special reverence. Now to see old men and old women sprawled on the bare floor without a tiny shred of comfort for their old bones seemed, particularly to a child, like a shocking breach of etiquette. That night the room was almost as hot as the cattle car. I watched Mother go off to dynamite, Father to drive a cart, and Grandmother to shovel. There was not so much as a second to say good-by. Until now, we had been together day and night for six weeks … I felt dismembered. At the close of the day’s work, the exhausted people in our room had made one gain: they had achieved a reserved fellowship, a subtle something that said, “Well, here we are in a gypsum mine in Siberia, it is a fact that we are in it together, and together we have survived.” | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
None ▾LibraryThing members' description ▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 006440577X, Paperback)
Exiled to Siberia In June 1942, the Rudomin family is arrested by the Russians. They are "capitalists -- enemies of the people." Forced from their home and friends in Vilna, Poland, they are herded into crowded cattle cars. Their destination: the endless steppe of Siberia.
For five years, Ester and her family live in exile, weeding potato fields and working in the mines, struggling for enough food and clothing to stay alive. Only the strength of family sustains them and gives them hope for the future. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:54:12 -0500) (see all 4 descriptions) ▾Library descriptions During World War II, when she was eleven years old, the author and her family were arrested in Poland by the Russians as political enemies and exiled to Siberia. She recounts here the trials of the following five years spent on the harsh Asian steppe.… (more) (summary from another edition) |
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