Reviews
"Elaine Siegel presents us with the fascinating story of her
survival as a Jewish child in Nazi Berlin. Full of detail and laced
with pungent observations of the adults around her, Siegel's memoir
recreates the child's view of, and emotional reactions to, the Nazi
coming to power with astuteness and clarity." -- Susannah Heschel,
Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College Product
Description
"We spied on our families, just like the Hitler Youth had
exhorted us to do, but not to catch them in the midst of illicit or
illegal acts. We had a different purpose: We wanted to keep our
grown-ups alive and away from the police. This was not always
easy." -- Elaine V. Siegel, from "Chaos Unbound"
In 1925, Charlotte Resca, a German-Jewish girl of 18 years, was
so enamored of her handsome German-Protestant fiance that she
followed him to America. There they would would marry and begin a
new life. The marriage failed, but not before a daughter, Elaine,
was born on December 29, 1928. In the summer of 1931, Charlotte,
unaware of the horror soon to unfold, left her husband and returned
to Berlin with her two-and-a-half-year-old Jewish daughter.
Beautiful and ambitious, she would pursue a career in banking while
her child was raised by the grandparents. Young Elaine would bond
with her remarkable maternal grandmother, a midwife, herbal healer,
and counselor of local renown, and grow up with an odd assortment
of friends, neighbors, and relations, Jewish and Gentile, wealthy
and impoverished, pro- and anti-Nazi.
There is drama in this memoir of a Jewish childhood in Nazi
Berlin. The tightening grip of anti-Semitism, the transformation of
local ne'er-do-wells into imperious Brownshirts, the
marginalization and degradation of shopkeepers and merchants who
resisted Nazi blandishments, and the visceral disgust of many
Germans for Hitler -- all are woven into a story whose very
intimacy captures the largeness of its historical moment. It is
especially the young Elaine's clarity of vision -- her keen
understanding of what was happening around her and what was
required to safeguard herself and "her adults" -- that pulls the
reader along in this gripping account of Jewish survival in the eye
of the Nazi storm. About the Author
Now in retirement in Wayland, MA after a long and distinguished
career as both a psychoanalyst and registered dance therapist,
Elaine V. Siegel is widely published in both German and English and
has lectured extensively in the United States and Europe.
General
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