Amidst the Shadows of Trees: A Holocaust Child's Survival in the Partisans

by Miriam M. Brysk

Overview

As if to rescue the integrity of the history of the Holocaust, a wave of survivor memoirs, many literate and engaging, have appeared over the last ten years. They announce that the logical and important places to begin to examine that history are eye witnesses. Miriam Brysk’s chronicle is among the more exceptional of these works. It reflects her own life: highly accomplished, intelligent, detailed and thoughtful. At age seven, Miriam, her mother Bronka and father, Chaim Miasnik, a renowned surgeon, escaped the Lida ghetto and joined Jewish partisans in the Lipiczany Forest. Before the end of the war, Miriam estimates that her father had saved hundreds of lives and helped build and supervise a partisan hospital in the swamps of the forest. Constantly hunted by German soldiers, she experienced childhood terror that has remained with her. She lost her innocence, her childhood, her youth as she clung to her mother and her prized possession, a pistol. Her head was shaved so she would look like a boy. Her memory of the details of that time—both in the Lida ghetto and in the forest—remains remarkably sharp and distinguishes this memoir from many others. — Sidney Bolkosky, William E. Stirton Professor in the Social Sciences, Professor of History, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Product Details

BN ID:	2940045276658
Publisher:	Gihon River Press
Publication date:	09/03/2013
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	451,760
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Miriam M. Brysk is a Holocaust child survivor from Warsaw, Poland. She was interned in the Lida ghetto in Belarus, then escaped with her parents and joined the nearby partisans in the Lipiczany forest. She came to America in 1947 with no previous formal education, yet went on to obtain her Ph.D. from Columbia University, and had a career as a scientist and medical school professor. After retiring, she became an artist and writer depicting the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust. She has created three major art exhibits: In a Confined Silence in 2005 (partially funded by a grant the WK Kellogg Foundation), Children of the Holocaust in 2008 and Scroll of Remembrance in 2013. She has had some 25 solo exhibits. Three of her works are part of the permanent art collection at Yad Vashem, and one is included in a book published by the museum in 2010— Virtues of Memory: Six Decades of Survivors