Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood
by Nechama Tec
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nechama TecEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1984-11-01
ISBN: 0195035003
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood
Book Review: Incredibly poignant account of passing as a Pole in WWII
Summary: 5 Stars
As is so often the case, it's the little, seemingly innocuous, niggling details that hit home the hardest, even more than the outright horrific. It's not that the accounts of the brutal murders and unthinkable cruelties are minimized-- it's that the human brain refuses to dwell on, refuses to really wrap one's brain around them, as sort of a self-preservation. But the little details hit you upside the head like a 2x12 and you get it, and your brain wraps around it firmly, and you can understand as well as anybody who has not experienced the Holocaust can understand. Two examples: when the family was going into hiding, they left their city of Lublin to travel by train to Warsaw, before going to their final destination. The parents did not speak Polish well, and because the mother definately looked Jewish, she decided to dress as a woman in mourning, wearing a hat with a veil to obscure her face. Both kids looked Polish, and spoke the language fluently. (The older sister went ahead of the others.) The father repeatedly coached his daughter beforehand, saying, "Don't look sad!" That was how the Nazis and Poles could ferret out Jews trying to pass as Poles. "The Jews have sad eyes." Voila! And why wouldn't a Jew look sad? How could they not be sad? And yet, if they wanted to live, and wanted to pass, they had to act like everything was fine whenever they were out in public. With all the horror, with all their relatives who had been murdered or deported, with all the brutality they saw in the streets, and heard about through the grapevine, with all the hardship of finding a place to stay, and working, and feeding oneself, and worrying about one's family, who was scattered, on top of that, you had to look happy, because if you didn't, a Nazi or Pole would see your sad eyes and know you were Jewish! How excruciating!!
Another thing was the author mused about how one's life could change in a fleeting moment. You could just happen to miss an "Aktion"...or just happen to arrive home when one started. Life was so capricious. A Nazi
could spot someone entering a home, or selling on the blackmarket, or you could just miss being seen. These fleeting moments were fraught with life or death consequences, and yet you had no control over them.
Were you seen or not seen, and by whom? As much as the brutality of genocide, it would seem to me that the constant stress of being on your toes every minute would be like traversing an unmarked minefield every day for years. Think of the psychological toll it took on the survivors!
I can't think of another Holocaust survivor's story which articulates those aspects as well as this author does.
You know the thing they tell writers, "Describe, don't tell." This author does. You feel you are there with her.
It is very telling, that when she first wrote the book, she ended it when the war was over, and they went back to her father's chemical factory. She describes how she's afraid to look, and closes her eyes... and there it ends. In this edition, however, she write a rather extended epilogue, explaining that to go back to that time, even after a distance of 30 plus years, was too difficult. The memories of having to sort out all her feelings, her identity and place in the world, continued anti-Semitism, an assassination attempt on her father, plus her post traumatic stress disorder (which she doesn't call by name), was far too depressing and too daunting to even try to go there in her own mind, let alone to write about it.
I just finished reading this, but I imagine it'll stay with me for a long, long time, right up there with Elie Wiesel's "Night".
This is one of the most moving, succinct first-person accounts of the Holocaust I've read.
Summary of Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood
This is the true story of Nechama Tec, whose family found refuge with Polish Christians during the Holocaust. Dry Tears is a dramatic tale of how an eleven-year-old child learned to "pass in the forbidding Christian world and a quietly moving coming-of-age story. This book is unique celebration of the best human qualities that surface under the worst conditions.Jewish Books
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