Soundless Roar: Stories, Poems, and Drawings

by Ava Kadishson Schieber, Phyllis Lassner

Overview

Soundless Roar introduces a distinctive new voice to Holocaust literature. Ava Kadishson Schieber, author, poet, and artist, spent her teenage years hiding from the Nazis on a Serbian farm. Her cultured speech and city-bred body language could have betrayed her, so she was forced into near isolation. Schieber began drawing while in hiding, and she continues to express herself today with the same urgency. The drawings and writings in Soundless Roar are the culmination of many years of artistry. In her work, she shares her memories of loved ones killed in the Holocaust: they are "friendly ghosts" that will always be a part of her.

Schieber's drawings, paintings, poetry, and prose are all intimate reflections of one another. Her experience forged the unusual sense of time that shapes Schieber's stories. In her preface, Phyllis Lassner writes: "The timetable of Ava's stories often consists of circles within circles, of patterns of an intertwined past, the past present of hiding, and the present looking back at those distinctly separate but inseparable pasts."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810119147
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2002
Series:	Holocaust Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	145
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Ava Kadishson Schieber was born in a town near Belgrade. Her mother had converted to Judaism although her father had changed his name in order to receive a commission in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War. Schieber grew up in Novi Sad and then the family moved to Belgrade in 1940 where they prospered until the Nazis invaded Belgrade in 1941. Schieber went into hiding with relatives of her sister's fiance, who was Serbian. She lived with them on an isolated farmland for four years, after which she was reunited with her mother. Her father and sister did not survive the war, but Schieber later moved with her mother to Israel. She has been living in Chicago for the past twenty years.

Read an Excerpt

Soundless Roar: Stories, Poems, and Drawings

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By Ava Kadishson Schieber

Northwestern University Press

Copyright © 2002 Ava Kadishson Schieber
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0810119145

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DIARY

What stopped me from writing a diary once I knew how to write was that someone could find out how I felt and that would have been embarrassing in the Europe of that time. I was taught shame at an early age. Then, growing up, I learned to enjoy my secrets. If I revealed my innermost thoughts, I would lose some of the power I had gained in my thinking and in controlling my desires and decisions. Of course, those were years of childhood struggles toward adolescence. Later, during the war years in hiding, any written proof that I existed could have been deadly for me and the people who gave me shelter. In hiding, nameless, I was a nonentity.

When the Nazi invasion ended, a new political power took over. It soon became clear to me that there was not too much difference between the totalitarian political rulers and the rules governing totalitarian politics. My war experience had taught me the law of survival. Making myself visible or saying what I believed in would have exposed me to the ever present predators.

My protective shield was silence. I know now how much of our spontaneous reaction to events is lost if not recorded immediately. When I think about my childhood now, I have to trust my memory. How much ofreality has remained? What did my brain edit or discard? What is altered to suit my emotional needs at the present time? Regardless, I have to take those chances.

Some years ago, in the northern forest creeks, I witnessed the intensive upstream striving of salmon. For me, that experience meant more than just observing wondrous nature. I, as well as the aquatic life-forms, have the basic dynamic energy to reach for the first memories of life. I, as well as the salmon, have swum the vast oceans of life and overcome a multitude of perils. The salmon migrate to the place where they hatched, urgently rushing there to spawn and die, to close their life cycle--that sight triggered emotions and thoughts about my own symbols of being and dying.

I too have the need to remember people, places, events, and, maybe the most difficult task of all, to recollect past emotions--all this in order to create the close of my own life cycle.

If my childhood was filled with disappointments, I did not believe they were important. I wasn't sad for long. My earliest recollection of perpetual joy was sitting under the square table in the dining room. It was not merely a large table covered with a silky velour cloth, with its rich autumn colors and fringes that reached the carpet. This was my private world that nobody could invade. As I crawled through the fringes, sights and sounds diminished--I entered my enclave. The table had heavy legs carved of dark wood. They were reinforced on the lower part by planks that met in the center and were topped with a smooth wooden ball. I loved to sit on the planks, hugging that wooden center piece with both hands. It was the steering wheel into a world where it was up to me to decide where to turn; or to drift where my fancy would take me. My feet comfortably on the floor, I enjoyed the journeys. I remember the smell of turpentine and the linseed oil varnish with which the table was regularly polished. Might this have been the smell that made me decide to became a painter at the end of the war, that time when I had to decide upon my studies?

In early childhood, my fantasies must have been part of the fairy tales Mother read regularly to my sister Susanna and me. A frequent daydream of mine was about the river Danube, especially in the way it regularly flooded the countryside. In my fancy, the water would reach the grounds we lived on, and I would swim in our dining room. Later my imagination became more extravagant. I would be on an expedition, riding on an elephant in a dense jungle, with lots of adventures, just as I had seen in the movies. There were also fears in my jungle game. At that time, though, horror was fascinating, because it was only a game; I could go in any direction of my terror-filled fantasies and return safely into my secure surroundings. I believed that angry-looking people could, magically, turn into animals with shrill voices and attack me. I sensed evil abounding in the real world. As a small child, I had a simple image about the look and sound of menacing people. Years later, I learned what really dangerous faces looked like. People in splendid attire, elegant, with shining boots and spotless kid gloves, people who spoke with gentle, educated voices, who listened to beautiful music and could even smile--these were the villains who were out to kill me.

I don't think that childhood fantasy of protecting myself, of hiding under the table, was a premonition of the years ahead. No horror-ridden conjecture could have suggested the reality that was to follow. There was childhood, and then instant maturity.

My childhood routine, finding comfort under the dining room table, must have started after Grandfather died. He was the person who always had time for me. He used to sit in his armchair all day long; maybe there was no place else for him to go after he had lost all his assets. That, of course, was a story I must have heard later on. My earliest memories are connected with Grandfather Leib. He knew how to make me laugh, telling stories with funny words I did not understand; he used to laugh when everyone else seemed annoyed most of the time. The more serious Grandmother would become, the more comical the whole story appeared. He always smiled when he talked to me, and his face would go askew--his mustache would turn up on one side while the other half would droop. I always had to laugh when his face twisted around in that way. He also used to sing to me. The words of his songs must have had nasty meanings, because Grandmother would voice her indignation and Mother's face would get red, and we would laugh.

Grandfather gave me a special name, and that was really important. He was the only who used it--Shahorith Pincales. It sounded grandiose and I was proud. He used to sing songs with my name and make me learn the words. Encouraging me even more, Grandfather taught me to make accompanying sounds by using pot lids as percussion; we were noisy in our fun. For another of our entertainments, when someone walked past his armchair he would extend his long legs. My mother, always in a hurry, would stumble regularly over his outstretched feet. She was the frequent victim of his joke, yet she accepted it without showing any annoyance as we laughed. Maybe she needed some amusement as well, even when it was at her own expense.

I remember Grandfather's death. Even today, I have a vivid image of the apartment our family occupied at that time. The small cozy rooms, with sunlight penetrating only in the morning because we were on the ground floor. After Grandfather's death we moved to a larger place.

He died when I was around two or three. I remember the sunshine through the lace curtain, making a partial pattern on the bed where Grandfather was leaning on many pillows. The room was filled with people. Someone must have put me on the bed, and Grandfather smiled at me as he always did. Then Mother lifted me and took me out of the room. She said Grandfather was dying.

I didn't know what that meant until much later, when I realized that dead meant gone, never to return. The memory of that event, just before he died, remained clear whenever I thought about Grandfather. I understood years later, when I was confronted and surrounded by death, that he had left the most valuable legacy he could ever have given me. His smile erased terror from my own thoughts of dying. It helped me to accept life.

In the house where I grew up, the furniture belonged to my grandparents. It was carefully chosen when they got married, with good taste and a lot of money. They both belonged to the emerging world of Eastern European Jewish merchant affluence. Because they were related, the family fortune was not divided when they married.

There was a lot of silver and fine glass in the house, and beautifully embroidered linens. That was all that remained of their pre-World War I world. With the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the family business was completely destroyed. As loyal citizens, my grandparents had put all their wealth into government bonds, which became a pack of useless paper when the government fell.

Later on, that fact was mentioned more in connection with war in general. If it was the intention to teach us children a lesson in history and finance, it served its purpose well.

It was in their prime that my grandparents lost all their means and dreams. That was at the beginning of the century. Then, three decades later, Grandmother saw herself that she and even her grandchildren were chosen to be victims once again.

A new generation descended from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire came back to the place of former defeat. Only this time, the new conquerors came back not only to loot but to kill us as well. In my early childhood there were people all over who had tried to live in spite of the painful wounds life had inflicted on them. Their injuries and fears were disguised, yet evident. Years later I understood that real terror never heals. It compounds.

The name Grandfather gave me is still with me. It took decades until I could understand the message it expressed, and what the name he gave me meant to him. Shahorith is the morning prayer and Pincale is a tiny bundle.

I was Grandfather's bundle of morning joy.



Continues...

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Excerpted from Soundless Roar: Stories, Poems, and Drawings by Ava Kadishson Schieber Copyright © 2002 by Ava Kadishson Schieber. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Preface	xi
	Acknowledgments	xvii
	Diary	5
	Love	13
	Children's Story	23
	Rabbit	29
	The Party	41
	Trapped	53
	Spirits	61
	Mathilda's Story	73
	Ride into the City	85
	Tzigane	97
	Sultana	105
	The Friend	121
	Dialogue	131
	Farewell	137

Editorial Reviews

"Not since Primo Levi has so much light been cast on the darkest recesses of the human heart. This astonishing book is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit."
—Barbara Rogan, author of Rowing in Eden

From the Publisher

In Soundless Roar: Stories, Poems, and Drawings, Ava Kadishson Schieber, who spent her adolescence on a Serbian farm hiding from the Nazis, gathers poignant recollections and spare, expressive pictures that give voice to her many losses. The writing, though not beautiful, is powerful and detailed: in one moment, the young Ava finds comfort in carrying a dog through a sniper-filled Belgrade street, because, "if someone took aim at me, it would be less lonely to die this way." In the minimalist line drawings, a figure shares space with another, less distinct figure; these are the "friendly ghosts" of her sister, her father and all the others who perished with them. (Aug.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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