Jody - # 8 Kramer

Title:

Kramer, Clara. With Stephen Glantz. Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival (New York: HarperCollins, 2009)

Question:

No real question to this memoir other than: what were gentile rescuers like, and  how did life play out for a young Polish-Jewish girl in occupied Poland.

Method:

Not a published diary, but a novel that mixes a personal diary with historical events.

Summary:

A true account of a Jewish family (one family [of sixty individuals to survive] of the estimated five thousand Jewish families from the South Eastern Galician town Zolkiew, Poland) hidden in Poland during World War II. Sadly, no Jews live in Zolkiew today. The Holocaust started for 15-year-old Clara Schwartz (now Kramer), her family, and the other Jews in Zolkiew, in eastern Poland with Barbarossa. This memoir, which draws largely from a diary kept by Clara, describes how she and her family and a few other Jews are taken in by the Becks - the family’s former housekeeper and her husband Valentin. Told through Clara's eyes, the Holocaust of Zolkiew is both familiar and freshly horrifying. One of the most poignant and rewarding gifts is its absence of analysis. Relentlessly emotional and gripping this story spotlights the most unlikely of heroes: Valentin Beck, the manipulative, reckless, ethnically German Pole locally famous for his drunkenness, philandering, and virulent A/S, who repeatedly risks his life to succor the family concealed in a makeshift bunker beneath his house. Simultaneously, he puts his hidden group in danger by carrying on an affair with one of those hiding and through his socializing almost nightly with the most dangerous of Nazis [He alone is reason enough to read this book]. Throughout their time in the bunker Clara and her family ponder: How could God let this happen? Why did gentile Poles who lived peacefully with their Jewish neighbors cheerfully betray them? How could so many Germans kill and then later go to the opera? It does not attempt to UNDERSTAND the Holocaust - it just lays out daily life...thank goodness.

Comment:

Most comments in the summary above. This should be required reading! Is this an attempt to be a better Anne Frank story? While this book is more about the Becks than Clara, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book! It is a riveting poignant work that will definitely be used by Professor Manning as a pedagogical tool for undergraduates. THIS work should replace ANY and ALL Wiesel books!!!!

Argument (Chapter Outlines):

1. My Grandfather
2. A Place to Hide
3. The Housekeeper
4. A Gift from Mr. Beck
5. I Go to the Ghetto
6. The Final Solution
7. The Arrival
8. 18 April
9. The Love Affair
10. Days of Awe and Atonement
11. A Year Underground
12. Valentine's Day
13. The SS Move In
14.  We Are Just Starting to Suffer
15. I'm Losing Hope
16. The Exodus
17. Zolkiew without Mania
18. The Diary

Epilogue: Life Goes On

Notes:

• Family did NOT leave town with Soviet occupation (8)
• Grandfather, Dzadzio, was captured by Soviets and sent to Gulag in war (11)
• Russian hatred due to communism, Nazi hatred due to religion (32)
• Grandfather could have been saved if her mother didn't try to get him released (39)
• Rumors of Belzec (49) [Was it a death camp at this point? Doubtful]
• Knowledge of Auschwitz [Oswiecim] (51)
• Beck's (housekeeper's family) as rescuers - Valetin was A/S drunk (65) Had a reputation of being A/S but was nothing but charming and kind to Clara (85)
• 11 People hiding
• Frau Melman had an obsession with H2O pitcher (later leak shows obsession with small things in hiding) (76)
• Rules for living in hiding (78-9)
• Mother returns (111)
• Beck sent soup to the ghetto everyday (112)
• Nazi visit (114)
• Beck and Klara have an affair (123)
• Children Zygush & Zosia arrive (137)
• Sister Mania flees from the fire (157) Later she is denounced and murdered (164)
• A/S Christmas carolers (215)
• 2 Nazis to live with them (217)
• Suicide (220)
• SS move in for 6 days since their car broke down (38)
• Jewish revenge killing (239)
• Snoring as a major problem for hiding (240)
• Trainman (who live with Becks) sees one of the hiding (244-5)
• Nazi SS men knew of the Jews hiding the entire time (296)
• Catholic priest says last rights over Mother [?!>!>!] (308) Very comical!
• Only 50 of 50,000 Jews survived from Zolkiew (324)
• No Zolkiew Jews today (335)