After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring

"I have a thought about why this particular memoir, of all memoirs, deserves to be read, indeed, must be read. World-wide, Anne Frank is considered to be the authentic voice from within the Holocaust. Her diary is indeed precious and incredibly touching. And yet it ends with her deportation to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where she dies a gruesome death. That is not part of her diary. The reader is left in a void. From that same hideous place that claims her life emerges a little boy to continue the story. Joseph's voice originates from within Bergen-Belsen, and perhaps poses the questions and challenges to G-d that Anne might have posed, had she survived. His story and her story merge. These two youngsters from Holland, Anne forever a teenager, Joseph approaching the status of elder, provide a perspective of unusual insight from within the Holocaust, and from within survival. Surely Joseph's sensitive portrayal of this brief period of his life illustrates dramatically that for Jewish children, liberation was not particularly liberating. By reading this memoir and savoring its wisdom and lessons, perhaps we can assume a degree of [Joseph’s] burden and confer meaning upon it by sharing its insights with our children and grandchildren.”  —Robert Krell, MD, professor emeritus, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia

“Joseph Polak’s memoir is a unique document, riveting and unnerving. All Holocaust memoirs describe not only what happened but also the survivor’s terrible search for bearings. But as one who survived the Holocaust at age two, Polak has nothing to grasp hold of. He is as skeptical of his own survival as we are. Polak’s great contribution is exploring the Holocaust not by way of what he remembers but rather by way of what he has been told, read, and discovered. He then pieces together his remarkable story devoid of sentimentality—a distinguishing trait of the best memoirs. But Polak’s is again unique in chronicling what he has been told of arrest, deportation, and camps together with the austere post-reunions and the more recent returns to the European sites. The story of his and his mother’s postwar experiences actually traces the brutal legacy of the Holocaust itself. Finally, he interrogates his experience in unflinching terms, letting neither God nor man off the hook. Readers are generally interested in survival stories. In this case, they will want to see how it was possible for a toddler to survive what most adults could not. How did it happen? And how did he come to know about it? It has all the elements of a detective story and fantasy tale together. The story is so fantastic that, as Polak himself says, it goes against what we know of the Holocaust and the concentration camps. Every page teaches the reader something new, in language that is fresh and original.”  —Alan Rosen, PhD, author, The Wonder of their Voices