In the 1930s, as waves of war and persecution were crashing over
Europe, two young Jewish women began separate journeys of survival.
One, a Polish-born woman from Bialystok, where virtually the entire
Jewish community would soon be sent to the ghetto and from there to
Hitler's concentration camps, was determined not only to live but
to live with pride and defiance. The other, a Russian-born
intellectual and introvert, would eventually become a high-level
censor under Stalin's regime. At war's end, both women found
themselves in Moscow, where informers lurked on every corner and
anti-Semitism reigned. It was there that Ester and Ruzya would
first cross paths, there that they became the closest of friends
and learned to trust each other with their lives.
In this deeply moving family memoir, journalist Masha Gessen tells
the story of her two beloved grandmothers: Ester, the quicksilver
rebel who continually battled the forces of tyranny; Ruzya, a
single mother who joined the Communist Party under duress and made
the compromises the regime exacted of all its citizens. Both lost
their first loves in the war. Both suffered unhappy unions. Both
were gifted linguists who made their living as translators. And
both had children--Ester a boy, and Ruzya a girl--who would grow
up, fall in love, and have two children of their own: Masha and her
younger brother.
With grace, candor, and meticulous research, Gessen peels back the
layers of secrecy surrounding her grandmothers' lives. As she
follows them through this remarkable period in history--from the
Stalin purges to the Holocaust, from the rise of Zionism to the
fall of communism--she describes how each of her grandmothers, and
before them her great-grandfather, tried to navigate a dangerous
line between conscience and compromise.
Ester and Ruzya is a spellbinding work of storytelling, filled with
political intrigue and passionate emotion, acts of courage and acts
of betrayal. At once an intimate family chronicle and a fascinating
historical tale, it interweaves the stories of two women with a
brilliant vision of Russian history. The result is a memoir that
reads like a novel--and an extraordinary testament to the bonds of
family and the power of hope, love, and endurance.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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