Powerful reading for students of European history.
A Latvian activist affectingly reconstructs the tragic stories of her grandparents and parents, who were persecuted by the Soviet occupiers and deported to Siberia.
The prosperous Dreifelds and the working-class Kalnietis families were among the many Latvians blindsided by the signing of a nonaggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on Aug. 24, 1939. It divided Europe into two “spheres of influence,” and Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, came under Soviet sway. Soviet military bases were established, an ominous mass repatriation of Germans followed and Latvia’s fragile 20-year-old independence was effectively eclipsed. Fourteen-year-old Ligita Dreifelde, the author’s mother, was arrested in the middle of the night on June 14, 1941, along with her mother and father. Wearing her precious dance shoes, she was transported in a cattle car crammed with 15,000 other unfortunates to the Siberian wilderness. She and her mother were separated from her father, who died shortly thereafter, though they did not officially learn his fate until 1990. They eked out a harsh living, and Ligita was granted permission to go home to Latvia in 1948. Toward the end of 1949, however, she was deported again, though not in time to reunite with her mother, who died alone on Feb. 4, 1950. In the Siberian village of Togur, Ligita met Aivars Kalnietis, exiled with his mother in March 1949 as the relatives of a “bandit.” (His father had joined the partisans resisting Soviet occupation in the countryside.) They married, and the author was born in Togur in1952. Her parents, forced to work in Soviet factories, vowed never to have another child: “We won’t give birth to any more slaves!” Although they were finally allowed to return to Latvia in 1957, the memories remained of their grim trials and the loved ones left behind in Siberian graves. Sometimes the author presents these trials in such dense detail that she loses sight of the bigger picture, but the diaries and eyewitness accounts offer a remarkable testimony of human fortitude.
Powerful reading for students of European history.Pub Date: April 14, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-56478-545-9
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
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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