A valuable, unique addition to the canon of survivor stories.
In Kovala's moving biographical debut novel, a daughter tells the story of her Finnish father's survival in a Nazi concentration camp.
Like many who were impacted by World War II, Aarne Kovala rarely spoke of his experiences. After almost 70 years, he shared his story with his daughter Liisa. The resulting biography based on his life is a visceral expose of life in Stutthof, a concentration camp near what is now Gdansk, Poland. The book opens with Aarne's boyhood innocence prematurely shattered by the Russian bombing of his hometown. He witnessed the horror of a Russian airman bailing out only for his parachute to fail. The Russo-Finnish War ended, but World War II was gathering momentum and Nazi soldiers occupied his town. After losing his brother Veikko, Aarne felt the draw of manhood and headed for Helsinki, where he lied and said he was 16 to get a job on a merchant ship, the Wappu. While it was docked in Danzig, Nazi soldiers stormed the vessel, seizing the sailors' passports and taking them prisoner. They were first detained in an empty warehouse, then transported by train in cattle cars to Stutthof. There, he began an unfathomable existence among the dead and the dying, witnessing the extremes of human brutality at the hands of the Nazis. Nevertheless, this is a story of hope, resilience, and camaraderie. One touching scene describes a starving fellow prisoner giving Aarne a stolen baked potato: "The flavour filled his mouth like an explosion. The heat travelled through his body and into his stomach, where it quickly filled the tiny space for the first time in weeks. It was the best thing he had ever tasted." Kovala's writing is laconic yet evocative. She offers readers a sensorial exploration of the camp, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be. The suffering is palpable, yet readers will rejoice in each of the minor victories. In this personal labor of love, the care Kovala takes in recounting her father's experience is evident on every page.
A valuable, unique addition to the canon of survivor stories.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Latitude 46
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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