Review: ALL BUT MY LIFE by Gerda Weissman Klein

Christina from Jackets & Covers recently reviewed Gerda Weissman Klein’s Holocaust memoir, All But My Life.  Here’s an excerpt:

…there is something you can only get by reading the memoir of a survivor. The “I” makes it personal; the “I” makes facts visible realities.

Even on the written side, All But My Life is one of the most, if not the most, well-written written memoirs I’ve ever read. It’s heart-wrenching, emotional, and personal when other Holocaust memoirs are distant. You relive Klein’s past, and I can understand why in the preface Klein says she is now, finally, emancipated from her burden.

Read the rest of her thoughts here.

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Reviews: ALL BUT MY LIFE and THE HOURS AFTER by Gerda Weissmann Klein

Carol from Magistra Mater recently reviewed All But My Life and The Hours After:  Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath, both by Gerda Weissman Klein.

Here’s an excerpt from her review of All But My Life:

All But My Life begins at 9:10 a.m. on September 3, 1939, when the Nazis invaded the Weissmann’s home town of Bielitz, Poland.  Immediately her family lost any sense of safety and security. … The book chronicles the progressive losses which accumulate one after another after another through the days after the end of the war.  It is staggering.  Layer by layer, everything Gerda treasures is stripped away.

Here is an excerpt from her review of The Hours After:

Gerda’s story continues with The Hours After:  Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath.  The first American soldier to see Gerda on Liberation Day was Kurt Klein.  In spite of her filthy, broken down, emaciated figure, there was a spark in Gerda which immediately attracted Kurt.  A Lieutenant in the Army, Klein was also  Jewish, born and raised in Germany before he emigrated to America.  Two months after meeting her and the evening before he was shipped to another location, Kurt asked Gerda, alone in the world, to marry him.  Their letters during their year of separation before they could marry form the framework of this book.

Read both reviews here.

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