I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors

I picked this up second hand as liked the illustrations, and that it was genre-bending, being neither a graphic novel nor a memoir with illustrations. And I am glad I did now.

Bernice tells her parents' stories, and her own. Hers involves tiptoeing about her parents', particularly her father's, hard to read emotional states. Theirs involve being prisoners at Auschwitz up until liberation- hence the emotional scarring. It is not as self-indulgent as it sounds, with the author really wanting to explore parents painful stories, but, so as to spare them the remembering, without asking them. It is a nice portrait of post-war lives, and how the horrors committed upon people take generations to heal.

A short book, an interesting book. This is written by the child of two people who met, then married after the last days of Auschwitz. These parents never spoke about their time there, until finally Eistenstein's mother recorded some camp memories for a Canadian broadcasting company. Eisenstein relied on other family members, on unguarded fragments, on tangible small souvenirs (her father's wedding ring, rescued from the effects of a deceased prisoner in Auschwitz by her mother) to build up an understanding of what her parents had been through before landing in Canada to begin a new life. These survivors put all their efforts into being normal Canadian citizens, normal Jews. The strain on them, and by extension Eisenstein, was sometimes show more almost unbearable, and her sense of alienation is palpable. I'm not sure what, if anything, her pictures added to this record. show less

This is a biography about the child of two Auschwitz survivors.

While she rarely heard all that much about what her parents went through for obvious reasons, she was really curious about the Holocaust and what it did to her parents, especially her father and tried to put together what she could. This isn't so much a story about the war itself, but mostly about the life afterwards with bits of war sprinkled in... for example the story of her father's wedding ring was a tie-back to when her mother was a prisoner before her parents met.

I do think this book is a little confused at times, the cartoony illustrations were at times quite funny, which lessens the gravity of the subject matter although that could simply be the Jewish tendency to show more use humour. show less

This book, being only 187 pages and full of pictures, took me an embarrassingly long time to read because I have been extremely busy lately, what with midterms looming and three English courses starting to take their toll. I kind of feel bad because if I had read the book in a day or two, which it should have taken me to read it, I might have liked it more. But oh well. It is what it is.

I found the premise of this book interesting. Who doesn’t want to read about what it’s like to have parents who have survived one of the most horrifying and shocking tragedies of human history?? However, I found that, even though the book WAS so short, it dragged in places. In fact the only reason I gave this two stars instead of one was because when show more she was telling her mother and father’s stories about the war and all that it was really interesting. But I did not enjoy the parts when she spoke about random things from present day, like “The Group” of her parents friends and things like that.

Like I said before I wish that I could do this book justice by not taking so long to read it, but from reading this book in the time frame that I did, it just didn’t satisfy as much as I would have liked. show less

This memoir combines expressive writing and illustrations to convey the author’s experiences growing up in Toronto. As with many children of survivors, although her parents seldom spoke explicitly of their time in Auschwitz, the specter of their ordeals hung over the family. “Without my family’s knowledge or even their understanding, their past has shaped my loneliness and anger, and sculpted the meaning of loss and love. I have inherited the unbearable lightness of being a child of Holocaust survivors. Cursed and blessed. Black, white, and shadowed.” Ms. Eisenstein learned the complete details of her mother’s past when Regina Eisenstein agreed to be taped for the Archives of the Holocaust project (Steven Spielberg’s Shoah show more Foundation).

This is not a graphic novel, though the artwork is poignant and expressive and includes a portrait of Bernice Eisenstein’s grandmother, mother and aunt with sequential numbers tattooed on their arms. The narrative explores many facets of Holocaust survivors’ lives, including how they tended to socialize and live with other survivors, how their interacted with their families, and their choice of professions. This book is highly recommended for any library whose patrons are interested in Holocaust-related literature, personal memoirs, or Canadian materials. show less

memoir-graphic novel- a sensitive account of life as a child of holocaust survivors during the 1950 and 60's