On today's Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is particularly important to look back and give the few survivors a chance to speak.
"The Barefoot Girl" is one such story.
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Today, January 27th.
2023 is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many will post the hashtag #niewieder again on social media.
However, what is particularly important on such days is reflection and listening.
It makes sense to listen to the few survivors who are still alive, but also to those who are experiencing the current situation in Germany.
Edith Bruck "The barefoot girl": About the book
The novel "The Barefoot Girl" by Edith Bruck not only tells the story of the Nazi era and the time in the concentration camp.
Also how difficult it was for survivors of the Shoa (Jewish term for the Holocaust) after 1945.
Partially shaped by 'survival' guilt and homeless.
They had lost their families in the extermination camps and had to face completely new challenges.
As a young girl, she walks carefree through the dusty streets of the small Hungarian village where she lives with her family.
Until one day she was deported to Auschwitz.
Edith Bruck, one of the last survivors of the Shoah, looks back on her own story.
She tells how she finds her way back to life after experiencing absolute cruelty and inhumanity, how she feels a stranger in Israel, joins a dance troupe and finally settles in Italy, where she learns a new language in which she still writes to this day.
Her words testify to great strength and clarity: She vividly describes her quarrel with God, her clinging to forgiveness and her vehement struggle against forgetting.
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Edith Bruck "The barefoot girl": My conclusion
I have already read a number of novels by survivors of the Shoa.
“The Barefoot Girl” is also a very impressive and emotional work.
How 13-year-old Ditke first has to deal with the atrocities and then find her place in the world.
An impressive work that should be read.
Edith Bruck "The Barefoot Girl":
2023, Aufbau Verlag, ISBN 13-978-3-351-03994-3
Price: hardback €20, e-book €14.99, number of pages: 159 (deviating from the format)
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Edith Bruck
Edith Bruck, born in Hungary in 1931, was deported to Auschwitz in 1944.
After the liberation in Bergen-Belsen, she first emigrated to Israel.
She has lived in Rome since 1954, where she works as a writer, journalist, screenwriter and translator.
She has received numerous awards for her diverse work, and in 2021 she received the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
"The Barefoot Girl" was nominated for the renowned Premio Strega 2021.
