Shards of Memory

As the last Holocaust survivors die, their testimonies make the transition from memory to history. In this compelling volume, Yehudi Lindeman, Director of the Living Testimonies Video Archive in Montreal, shares compelling stories of survival and triumph collected from years of interviews with those who lived through the most harrowing decade of the 20th century. Here are 25 tales of courage and loss, representing the experiences of women, men, and children who either survived the death camps or lived in hiding, and of their rescuers and redeemers. The testimonies included in this volume show glimpses of the big movements, the big picture of World War IIthe fast German sweep into Poland; the bureaucratic German machine that marked and identified Jews across German-occupied Europe; the efficiently organized roundups of Europe's Jews; the gradual retreat of the Wehrmacht from east to west; the sudden attacks on Holland and France. The fate of the European Jews may be a collective one, but their attempt to survive the onslaught on their liberty and life is often best understood through the portrayal of individual struggles. By focusing on individual lives, the narratives collected here capture the flow of history in all its precise, subjective, human detail.