Reviewer June Maffin:Living on an island in British Columbia, Canada, Dr. Maffin is a neophyte organic gardener, eclectic reader, ordained minister (Anglican/Episcopal priest) and creative spirituality writer/photographer with a deep zest for life. Previously, she has been grief counselor, broadcaster, teacher, journalist, television host, chaplain and spiritual director with an earned doctorate in Pastoral Care (medical ethics i.e. euthanasia focus). Presently an educator, freelance editor, blogger, and published author of three books, her most recent (Soulistry-Artistry of the Soul: Creative Ways to Nurture your Spirituality) has been published in e-book as well as paperback format and a preview can be viewed on YouTube videos. Founder of Soulistry™ she continues to lead a variety of workshops and retreats connecting spirituality with creativity and delights in a spirituality of play. You can find out more about June by clicking on her Web Site.
Author: Goran Rosenberg
Translated from the Swedish by
Sarah Death
Publisher: Other Press
ISBN: 978-1-59051-608-9
Uniquely conceived,
Brief Stop: On the Road from Auschwitz, captivates the reader by the
author’s fascinating and unusual recounting of his
Holocaust-survivor father, David Rosenberg’s journey from
Auschwitz, Poland to Sweden.
The horrors David
experienced during WW11 either became repressed memories or were such
that he chose not to remember or talk about it. To better
understand the journey from the Polish Lodz ghetto to concentration
camps and and survival, the author carefully researched David’s
story and raised important ethical issues for consideration for later
generations.
David was just one of many in the Lodz ghetto in
Poland when Jewish administrator and Nazi collaborator, Chaim
Rumkowski, made the decision to sacrifice the elderly, sick and all
children under the age of ten so that the remaining people of the
Lodz ghetto could avoid extermination. As a result, the Lodz
ghetto was not fully liquidated and David’s life was spared
prompting the “does the end justify the means?”
question.
Ultimately moved from the Lodz ghetto, to
concentration camps in Auschwitz and then various other locations,
David experienced what millions of people snared in the Nazi web of
cruelty, endured. But he survived.
And, when he
finds himself in the small town of Sodertalje, Sweden, he struggles
in his Holocaust-survival to be understood. But, David is a man
with a background, a different language and customs, and remains an
outcast. The author uses this part of his father’s journey to
highlight the unspoken tragedy of survivor-recovery, raising the
question of how society can best respond to all survivors of war,
abuse, terrorism who must begin anew physically, emotionally,
intellectually, spiritually. Focusing attention on his father’s
survival, the author raises the question of justice for all survivors
of terrorism ('then' and 'now') in his reminder that after WW11,
those charged with war crimes were often found innocent because
reconstruction of the economy was deemed to be more important than
restoration of justice and the question which emerges: which is more
moral: justice or economics?
Brilliantly and flawlessly
translated from the original Swedish by Sarah Death, A Brief Stop is
a riveting, hauntingly emotive tribute to all who not only suffered,
endured and survived Nazi concentration camps, but who tried to put
their lives back together after their liberation from those camps in
the face of menacing shadows that were always present - reminding,
interfering, depressing, haunting, never releasing them.
This
is a book that touches the mind and soul in its beautiful blend as
poetic memoir, historical narrative, and gripping journalistic
biography of David Rosenberg. Its importance cannot be
underestimated.