A well-crafted work that highlights the value of the arts in remembering the past.
A group of scholars, writers, and artists remember the Holocaust in this anthology.
“Remembrance is a sacred responsibility in Judaism,” write editors Berman and Humphries in their introduction to this collection of “poetic personal reflections and artistry.” Bringing together two dozen Jewish artists, playwrights, poets, and scholars, this volume highlights the centrality of the Shoah to Jewish cultural productions. While the chapters are written by different authors, they are all centered around a common question: “Can Art Heal Trauma?” The topics range from a staged production of The Diary of Anne Frank and the use of children’s stories from the Terezín concentration camp in the musical I Never Saw Another Butterfly to explorations of LGBTQ+ themes and the experiences of Jewish sex workers during the war. The first book in an anticipated two-volume collection, this offering pays particular attention to theater, dance, concerts, and other “arts onstage”; the second volume will highlight fine arts and television/film. The idea that the Holocaust should serve as a constant reminder of our responsibility to remain vigilant against racism, extremism, and political violence is a recurring theme in the work; artistic expressions do not only prompt us to recall the past but also function as catalysts for change in response “to current political hate messages, antisemitism, and violence.” This is a well-researched work—the scholarly underpinnings and thorough research citations will appeal to academic readers (co-editors Berman and Humphries are both Dean Emerita of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre and Humphries is a Professor Emerita at American University). The book is accessible to general readers as well, and the text is supplemented by a plethora of high-resolution color photographs. It’s also a pragmatic resource for educators at all levels—many chapters include lesson plans, study guides, discussions of methodologies, and other resources.
A well-crafted work that highlights the value of the arts in remembering the past.Pub Date: June 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781956864670
Page Count: 486
Publisher: International Psychoanalytic Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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