Author Naomi Haber highlights the lasting effects of the Holocaust on three generations, while educating others about the horrors in order to stop such violence and senselessness from occurring again.
Haber, the daughter of Holocaust survivor Israel Offman, recounts her father’s story, how he survived in Nazi prisoner camps yet, even after liberation, had to deal with persecution because he married her mother, a German woman. The lasting effects of the Holocaust would continue to haunt not only Offman, but also his children as they faced confusion about their identity and suspicion from those in a world still reeling from the effects of the Holocaust and not completely ready for diversity. Even Offman’s grandson would experience minor obstacles to his bar mitzvah because of Offman’s marriage to a German woman. Offman’s general aspects of living and the fear of loved ones dying would also be inherited by his children.
Haber at times refers to this book as a love story, and though the strong relationship between her mother and father are described, this element of the love story is not as clear as the story of her father and the themes of family, identity and discrimination. Haber’s first hand experiences of discrimination as the only Jewish student in the German catholic school are moving and capture a young girl trying to understand the feelings of hatred against her, wondering if perhaps her friend’s grandmother thinks that she is responsible for killing Jesus. Haber reveals her father’s tenacity and positive spirit which allowed him to move forward in spite of social injustices, the fear and nightmares and become a successful businessman and nightclub owner, and a strong and loving husband and father even after the horrors he faced, Haber reveals the strength of spirit, but also the paradoxes as her life continues to be haunted by phobias and anxiety which she has passed onto her children.
Haber’s story is important and the narrative includes some beautifully evocative moments, such as the rituals of the Jewish culture following her mother’s death. At one point the rabbi, sensing Haber’s fear in preparing her mother’s body for burial whispers, “You need not fear the dead”. There are however; many undeveloped threads that convey the sense that this short book is not yet finished. Loosely organized and at times fragmented, the narrative moves between the various characters and the timeline flutters from the past to the present, leading to some repetition, such as when Haber mentions several times how her father was saved from a sure death by a passing priest, or that he is the president of Straubing Synagogue.
Haber often only touches upon some important moments, without always peeling back the layers of detail to reveal the whole story. For example, Haber reveals how her uncle Moshe set off on a six-week trek from the Swiss border when a man told him that there was a man who looked like him in Straubing. Haber ends this story’s thread: “Off my uncle went and he found my father.”
Though Haber does state that reliving the memories of the holocaust has been extremely difficult for her father and could explain some of the lack of detail in some of his memories; Haber’s rendition of the effects her parents’ phobias have had on her life are also abridged at times and provide declarations and conclusions, rather than developing and allowing the stories themselves to make connections clearer and affect the reader in a more powerful way. Haber, for example, writes that her father’s fears experiences have manifested themselves as phobias and anxieties and states: “I still have some, and I feel that they are because of the Holocaust. Because I am extremely claustrophobic, I am unable to use elevators and must take the stairs …This may be traced back to the cramped and squalid conditions with little air inside the cattle cars used to transport Jews to concentration camps.”
Haber’s final chapters become increasingly disjointed in their organization and the narrative becomes somewhat dogmatic, rather than allowing the descriptive stories to work their power: “When people talk about the Holocaust today, I tell them, “You have read about it. I lived with a man who went through this.”
Though Haber’s book has undertones of still being in the process of completion, Haber tells a moving story that highlights an important event in history that is pertinent in today’s world.
Reviewed by Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader