by Jafa Wallach
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Product Description
As a documentary filmmaker, I’ve collaborated on a number of Holocaust-related works, and have listened in shock and awe to nearly one hundred survivors as they recounted—often, for the first time—their individual and familial stories of tragedy and transcendence. Jafa Wallet’s Bitter Freedom, which I first read as an untitled manuscript in the late 1970’s, is one of the most compelling first-person accounts by a Holocaust survivor that I have ever encountered. She evokes scenes which have resonated inside my head for nearly thirty years, and its publication is an important event not only for those interested in the Holocaust, but for everyone seeking illumination into the complexities and mysteries of what it means to be human. Nelson E Breen, Emmy Award-winning writer and director
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Bitter Freedom, 2008-09-02
A very powerful story about the Holocaust that is well-written and gives intimate detail. It's marvelous that the mother wrote down her entire story in 1959 and then was able to live to see it published. I also enjoyed the Afterward, written by the daughter, giving her impressions and what she remembered from this utterly tragic period from which almost no Jew escaped. The fact that each town was carefully named, each incident described in detail, made the story come to life for the reader who could well imagine himself/herself there at the time. The copy-editing done on this book was excellent; I only found two tiny errors.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Definite Must Read!!!, 2007-09-25
I just finished reading Bitter Memories, and this is a definite for everyone to share with their family. What this family saw and lived through is awe inspiring and will leave you looking at your own lives. It will make you appreciate where we live and gives a new look at what the Holocaust victims went through. There are so many who will deny that the Holocaust ever took place, but Mrs Wallach and her daughter will help you see through their memories just how horrible it truly was.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Surely to be an Oprah Best seller, 2007-07-10
Bitter Freedom
Jafa Wallach
Paperback: 209 pages
Publisher: Hermitage Publishers; First edition (April 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1557791570
ISBN-13: 978-1557791573
Although I have read many first-hand account books written by holocaust survivors, I found Bitter Freedom to be the most compelling story of it's kind since The Diaries of Anne Frank. The book moved me like no other.
Bitter Freedom is written in straight-forward prose by a mother survivor (Jafa Wallach) who shortly after the WWll ended, sat down and wrote the personal history of her family's lucky and often miraculous survival of the Holocaust. In letter form to her daughter- (Rena Wallach Bernstein) too young at the time to know the adult horrors of in which they survived, Mrs. Wallach pens an incredibly honest and poignant memoir.
"The years have gone by and yet the memory of how it all began remains vivid, fearfully close, as though it all happened yesterday. We were at home, apartment #3 Jagielonska Street in the town of Sanok Poland, listening to radio bulletins of Hitler's attack. You, my daughter, were just one year old. You looked up at our anxious faces, your father's and mine, but you could not have understood how deeply frightened we were. You repeated after us, in your baby lisp, "war, war"-the ugliest word in human speech. It wasn't long after that German planes began to pay their deadly visits to our little town of Sanok."
The book transports you back in history allowing you a glimpse of what everyday families were seeing, feeling and experiencing during this horrific time of war. The Jews of conquered Europe were taken by surprise never dreaming that civilized man could do to their fellow human beings what was now being done to them. Terror and mayhem swept Europe, and so swiftly had Hitler come east and so complete was his control of the lands he occupied- there was literally no where to run-no where to hide. Those hunted were now trapped in their own villages.
Escaping the terror was made especially difficult because many people of the Nazi controlled villages were deeply and historically ingrained with hate for certain groups of their fellow countrymen. The Nazis used this hate to their advantage by turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Christian against Jew. Those of the hated lucky enough to survive, did so only with the help of others who chose to put their own lives, and those of their families at risk to save their friends and neighbors. Very few were willing to take that risk.
Fortunately for the Wallach family One Christian man- a mechanic named Jozef "Jozio" Zwonarz did choose to put his own life and family at risk to save five fellow human beings. As he concealed four adults under the very noses of the Gestapo, he desperately schemed to save the life of the fifth family member, a four year old child. (Rena Wallach)
With parents and daughter now separated, the nightmare for this family was complete. There was nothing left for them to do. Their very lives were now in the hands of God and an auto mechanic named Jozio.
Bitter Freedom is a touching memoir, a suspenseful thriller, and an accurate historical novel all in one. Although the story took place more than 60 years ago, Jafa Wallach's messages to the reader are timeless and wonderfully relevant in today's world where war is in the news every day.
I predict that Bitter Freedom will eventually be on the top of every school's reading list. There are lessons here for all of us.
A must read.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Hail The Human Spirit, 2007-05-25
This is an incredible story which while simply written,
encompasses all of the best and worst of what humans are capable of. The unbelievable love between and mother and her child is the overwhelming power that pervades the narrative. A gift to anyone who needs to understand what that period of history was all about.
Patti Sacher
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 Life in the Face of Death, 2007-02-26
A very poignant and interesting memoir. You can never imagine what these poor people went through to survive and re-establish their lives. A worthwhile read.
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