Gizelle, Save the Children!

I don't know why this powerful memoir is not considered in the same league as the Holocaust classic, "All But My Life." It is just as excellent and goes into much more detail about the sadism, inhumanity and unbelievable cruelty of the Nazis. Fabulous book.

I have a morbid facination with the Holocaust. This book was an emotional journey with four sisters who survived the concentration camps. Very well written. One of my favorites.

It's a shame this book is out of print, since it's an important addition to the already-large canon of Shoah memoirs. Gizelle Hersh's family lives in the Hungarian town of Bixad, a charming spa resort which is now a part of Romania (the nation she and her four siblings were born in). In March of 1944, she is just like any other normal 17 year old young woman; she has a happy family, together with the usual disagreements with her siblings from time to time, she lives in a nice house and has a big wardrobe full of pretty clothes, she has been educated at the gymnasium in Szatmár, and she's in a happy relationship with her former tutor Mihai (who is twice her age and not Jewish). Nowhere else in Europe were the stifling and ever-increasing restrictions, ghettoisation, and deportation of the Jewish community carried out swifter, more brutally, or with such enthusiastic support from the local populace as in Hungary and the areas of other countries (Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic) which had been annexed to Hungary in the late Thirties. As in all other Shoah memoirs taking place in Hungary, here too we see these things happening at light speed, with former friends and neighbors suddenly turning on them, and almost universal collaboration or silent support. Among the few people who show any kind of disagreement with what's going on are Yanos, the Hershes' grocer, and a man who slaps his little boy for shouting abuses at them as they're being transported to the ghetto in Szatmár. Otherwise everyone just looked, many of them shouting and throwing stones. It made me sick to read about the little boy who shouted slurs at them and wiggled his fingers in his ears as they were all being marched to the death train, as his mother smiled at him fondly. Already these small children had not only been taught but encouraged to hate. Gizelle catches the eye of "Dr." Mengele when they arrive at Auschwitz because of her polka-dot dress, and the fact that she can speak German. She is made to stand at the head of the line with him and ask everyone his or her age, translating the answer into German for him. Because of this duty, she quickly comes to realise who's being sent left and who's being sent right. At the time, she still believes, or at least wants to believe, that the parents, elderly, and small children are being sent to a different barracks, and that they've been taken to a factory where they won't be harmed. However, she is puzzled by how most of the women over 35 and young women who happen to have children are being sent to the right, since they appear young and healthy enough to her to work in the factory with the other people. Doing some quick thinking, when her own family approaches, she is able to lie that her youngest sister, who is twelve, is really fifteen, which ends up saving her life; she also ups the ages of her other two sisters. Haunted by her mother's final command to watch over her younger siblings and to save them, whatever

I've read this book about 3 1/2 times over the past 10 years and each time I just get more and more emotional about the contents. This is an increadable and heartwrenching first hand telling of the horrific treatment of jews during the holacost. I've read many many books and this one still haunts my thoughts and dreams to this day and the last time I read it was years ago!! I recommend this amazing book whole heartedly to anyone!

Without a doubt, the best book I have read on the Holocaust. A stunning book, beautifully written.