I've read a couple of novels now by Alice Hoffman, the first being The Dovekeepers. It features six women who are part of the seige of Masada, the "last stand" fortress atop a butte in the Judean wilderness where several hundred first century Jews held out against the Romans until virtually all of them died by suicide rather than be captured.
I just finished another more satisfying novel by Hoffman, The World That We Knew. It is set during WWII and again focuses on the lives of several courageous Jewish women who are committed to survival despite the efforts of the Nazis to exterminate them. There are significant men in the story as well, but it is the resourceful girls and women who are key to the narrative thread, including one who is a golem, fashioned of clay and animated by teens as an aid to escape.
The Nazi death camps loom in the background of the story and Hoffman uses the term "shoah" or calamity or catastrophe, rather than "holocaust", which means burnt offering. Without giving too much away, the work of the French Resistance to guide Jews to neutral Switzerland is important. And Hoffman includes sanctuary villages of those who aren't Jews, as well as priests and other Christians as positive aspects of the story.
I finished the novel, by coincidence, at the beginning of Holocaust Education Week, which ends on Sunday. I'm somberly grateful for this reminder of the calamity which resulted in the deaths of six million Jews. The generation of those who survived this terrible loss of human life and culture is almost gone and only a handful can recount the terror of fleeing for their lives and the misery of the camps. It's essential that we do remember, knowing that Shoah/Holocaust deniers are persistent and anti-Semitism continues to result in the deaths of innocent people.
Thoughts?
https://www.holocaustcentre.com/HEW
No comments:
Post a Comment