[.ca] Through the Eyes of the Child: Survival of the Holocaust (ISBN 1419669044)

Thanks:
This book is a great insight into the lives of the author and his extended family and friends...how they and their peers were affected by the trauma of war and the courage they showed in picking up the pieces and starting to make a new life for themselves in a post-war environment. Thanks for sharing.

Oona Eisenstadt review on Amazon.com:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Worth reading, July 18, 2007 By Oona Eisenstadt (Claremont, CA) - See all my reviews This is a work of engrossing honesty, a worthy contribution to the genre of Holocaust memorialization, and a testament to human resilience. Mr. Veffer, who was only four when the war ended, was not in a camp, and has relatively few memories from the period. This does not mean, though, that the book is not about survival of the Holocaust. What it means, rather, is that we see that survival from an unexpected perspective: the bulk of the book, which treats Veffer's teenage years in postwar Europe, shows how his world is dominated and deformed by the event. The book opens with the few scattered memories he has from the war years: here episodes that have nothing to do with history (for instance an accident in which he is burned with hot milk) are twined with those which do (the departure of his parents, later murdered in a camp). This mixture lends an especial poignancy to the recollections: the innocence of a child who cannot rank events in significance is amply manifest, and the poignancy is augmented by the starkness of his style. As he grows older, the line of recollection becomes smoother and richer: we are thus witness, in style as well as in content, to Veffer's growing consciousness. It is here that the book really takes off: in the account of years spent being passed from aunt to aunt, culminating in a long sojourn with a family that does its duty by him while at the same time engaging in routine cruelty. We see a number of other children from this family grow up. Some of them are twisted to the breaking point, some, like Mr. Veffer, emerge with their humanity intact, but none is unaffected: none has grown up as he should. This aftereffect of the Holocaust is what the book mainly explores. It does so without sentimentality or artificiality, and without heavy theoretical overlay.