Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood During the Holocaust

The dozens of vignettes in Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood During the Holocaust provide personal perspective on one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. Editors Anita Brostoff and Sheila Chamovitz solicited written testimony from Holocaust survivors, which were developed and sharpened during writing workshops at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. Each story is about a single event, situation, or person--hence the title's "flares" of memory. The stories come from most of the European countries occupied by the Nazis and are grouped thematically. Section headings include "The Lottery of Death and Life," exploring the randomness of survival; and "Disguise as a Way of Hiding," in which several writers reflect on the experience of pretending to be Christian in order to survive. The end of the book collects the testimony of several former American G.I.'s who helped liberate the concentration camps. In her preface to the book, documentary filmmaker Sheila Chamovitz notes that contributors to this volume wrote for reasons that we have heard before, but which remain powerful no matter how often they are repeated. "They wrote so that the Holocaust would be remembered, so their loved ones would be remembered, and so that no one could say it didn't happen." --Michael Joseph Gross