Day After Night

I absolutely loved this book. I have not been able to get these fictional characters out of my mind, I could not stop reading it after I started it, and now that I have finished it, I cannot quit thinking about it. I had read so many mixed reviews, that I was a little late coming to it. I had read that if you loved the Red Tent also by this author, not to read this, you will be disappointed. WRONG! It is nothing like the red tent, but a wonderfully written, engaging book, that tells such an important interesting story. I think Ms. Diamant is a wonderful writer, she is a great story teller, no matter her subject and can convey to the reader so much with just a few words or short sentences. ( I always admired Joyce Carol Oates and Barbara Kingsolver for that as well...what a gift these writers have). Anyway, I really don't know what else to say, except this is a wonderful story, an important story that needs to be told about the beginnings of Israel, and I recommend it highly.

At first I must admit I was a bit disappointed with this book. I was just not connecting to the 4 women. Then I realized that was the whole point of telling how it was at Atlit a camp for illegal immigrants trying to get to Palestine. These women are so wounded from the war and the terrors they went through they have to keep it locked inside to survive. Taking that into consideration I got swept into the story. I had never read of this camp or circumstance. There is always something new to learn about the Holocaust. Life in this camp is also shocking at times. The things the women had to do to get what they needed...well I'll say not good. They often had sexually transmitted disease if that tells you anything. Some of the characters that are good down deep had to do bad things to make other good things happen. Sad but true. These four women are quite brave, they have been through hell, 4 different ways and now here they are again behind barbed wire. It is not as bad a a concentration camp as they have food and are treated better but it is still very much a camp. The Brittish at this time had quota's of how many Jews could go into Palestine and detained any they tried to go without permission. Most of the book revolves around a big plan to escape the camp, a real event in history! When the hope takes hold that they may get out then you start to hear a bit more about what happened to them during the war. The secret fears each one has that haunts her day and night. Since this is a real event I'm not giving it away to say that after the rescue when they get to Palestine and are safe, much more of their personal accounts of the war experience are shared. I highly recommend this as yet another part of the big picture of WWII. Anita Diamant is an excellent author as you will see. Press thru the first part when you feel like you are not making the connection to the people, it is written to show a point. By the end you will know them personally.

You will love this book just as much as me. I can't get enough of this part of history. These women seem to be so real, I couldn't tell you which one was my favorite, they all had so much depth to them. The picture on the front, I just thought went perfectly as well. The picture is one of the first things that gets me, and this one hit the spot! As with any book, at first I have trouble telling who is talking, with all the going back and forth, but then it just flowed like a conversation. What a remarkable subject, very touching, poignant, thoughtful, done tastefully in this reviewers opinion. Brilliant work, I didn't want it to end, wanting to know what they all thought a few years down the road.

I have spent much of 2009 reading excellent novels that relate different perspectives of the horror that was WW II and the effects of the Holocaust on people from different countries. In Sarah's Key, I read what happened at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in France, in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle), I discovered what happened during the war on an island I'd never heard of, in Skeletons at the Feast: A Novel, I accompanied a family fleeing westward ahead of the advancing Russians, in Those Who Save Us, I read what desperate men and women did in occupied Germany. This novel is another wonderful testament to the strength of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable guilt -- the guilt of being a survivor of the ravages of the Nazis and the Final Solution. This story takes place in Atlit -- the internment camp south of Hafia, Israel, after the war is over when thousands of Jews escaped Europe for their promised land, only to be imprisoned and held by the British military instead of being allowed to join the kibbutzes established there. Four remarkable young women from different backgrounds meet there and attempt to adjust to life and to deal with the consequences of what they did to survive the fates that claimed the lives of their friends and families. I loved the women -- Shayndel, a Polish Zionist with a heroine's reputation; Zorah, the concentration camp survivor who hides the tattoo on her arm; Tedi, a Dutch girl who escaped most of the ravages of war by being hidden; and Leonie, from France, who avoided the roundup due to her looks and her wartime occupation. The experiences that the girls had during the war are revealed in vignettes as we get to know each one and her secrets very slowly as they suffer a day to day existence in the camp. The jobs they do, the contacts they have, and the relationships that manage to thrive despite the collective horror are heartwarming and inspiring. Both realistic and desperately hopeful, the girls do whatever they can to find some explanation or reason why they did not perish. Anita Diamant is a superb writer whose prose rings true in every sense. This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it.

The year is 1945. European Jews are evacuating their former homelands and heading for the British Mandate of Palestine by foot, by leaky boats, by any way they can find. The British stand at the borders, ready to turn them back. Not to be denied, the "illegal" immigrants find ways around the blockaded roads or have to be rescued from floundering boats. For those caught or rescued, the Atlit detention camp becomes their new home. Anita Diamant examines these double survivors in her new book, Day After Night. She focuses on four women, each from a different country, a different situation, but all intensely avoiding the memories of the past years. The life of the camp and the interactions of the immigrants make a compelling story interwoven with the pasts and the futures of these people determined to make a new life in a land that welcomes them. The tale is straightforward, never melodramatic, and finally satisfying as the survivors struggle to find their way to safety. This is a story set in the distant past but universal in its humanity and a story that can not be told too often.