Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood

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 show more 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. show less

I liked the first chapter or so, but I just couldn't get into it. The book is written in such a way you can't really "feel" for the characters - they are all written as two dimensional characters. I understand it's probably the only way the author could write the story, but even though she's living in remarkable times and dealing with horrifying things, you can't really feel for her because of her writing. I muddled through a few more chapters, desperately hoping the book would get better, but the voice is just too flat for me.

"This is the true story of Nechama Bawnik Tec, whose family found refuge with Polish Christians during the Holocaust. It is a dramatic tale of how an eleven-year-old child learned to "pass" in the forbidding Christian world... a quietly moving coming-of-age story... and a unique celebration of the best human qualities that surface under the worst conditions." Excerpt from the back cover of the book.