PPL Evening Book Discussion Group

Tuesday, April 21st - 7 pm

"European culture may have failed the human race during the crucial Holocaust years, but it is vindicated in this memoir in the person of the young Judith Magyar."--Freema Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

"We must be grateful to [Isaacson] for her courage to relive the anguish in order to write this remarkable book."--Bernard Lown, M.D., corecipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize

"What informs the story in this book is an indomitable optimism despite great odds."--Yaacov Luria, Jewish Post and Opinion

"This frank, first-person account of the author as a nineteen-year-old Hungarian Jewish girls sent to Auschwitz has an immediacy that will reach teens and a message of courage and hope amid horror that will touch them."--Candace Smith, ALA Booklist

"Its lucidity and mixture of detachment and personal presence make it unique among memoirs of Holocaust survivors. This is more than an account of our century's most fearful event. It is reportage from the soul and, as such, is quite extraordinary."--Rod MacLeish, former book critic and commentator for National Public Radio's "Morning Edition"

Kaposvár: a speck on some maps, a void on most. "Virágzó Kaposvár — Blooming Kaposvár" perches in the hills beyond the Danube, the dozing capital of Somogy county in southwest Hungary. Kaposvár was my home, my universe.

Mother, father, and I lived on Kontrassy Street, on the second floor of a two-story house, in four bright, spacious rooms. Our rented apartment spread above the Somogy Journal and the daily rumble of the printing press would be the only thing to shake the tranquility of our lives.

On school days, the bathroom was always mine from seven to a quarter past. Mother would wake me five minutes earlier, because I liked to spend the time lying under my a puffy down quilt. On winter mornings, I needed those extra minutes just to gather courage to get up.

Judith Magyar Isaacson is a retired dean of students at Bates College. She is a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Hessisch-Lichtenau.

Call the library at 743-6994 or email paris.public.library@MSLN.net for more information.

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