The may beetles : my first twenty years / Baba Schwartz.
Publication details: Carlton, Victoria : Black Inc. books, 2016.Description: vii, 269 pages, 13 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some colour), portraits, facsimiles ; 22 cmISBN:- 9781863958455
- Schwartz, Baba -- Childhood and youth
- Schwartz, Baba -- Childhood and youth
- Holocaust survivors -- Biography
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Concentration camps -- Poland
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives
- Holocaust victims' families -- Biography
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives, Hungarian
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Hungary
- 940.5318092 23
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item reserves | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Melbourne Athenaeum Library | Biography | 940.531 SCH | Available | 065140 |
Baba Schwartz's story began fifteen years before the Holocaust could have been imagined. It is the story of a spirited girl in a warm and loving Jewish family, living a normal life in a small town in eastern Hungary. In The May Beetles, Baba describes the innocence and excitement of her childhood, remembering her early years with verve and emotion, remarkably unaffected by what took place after the Nazis arrived. What did happen was unspeakable horror. Baba describes the shattering of her family and their community from 1944, when the Germans transported the 3000 Jews of her town to Auschwitz. She lost her father to the gas chambers, yet she and her two sisters survived this concentration camp and several others to which they were transported as slave labour. They eventually escaped the final death march and were liberated by the advancing Russian army. Baba writes about this period of horror with the same directness, freshness and honesty as she writes about her childhood.