The Soul of Things: Memoir of a Youth Interrupted

by va Fahidi, Judith Szapor (Editor)

Overview

An exceptional document of an extraordinary life, The Soul of Things is the memoir of Holocaust survivor Éva Fahidi. Since the memoir was first published in Hungarian in 2004 under the title Anima Rerum, Fahidi has become a household name in Hungary and in Germany. Featured in countless interviews and several prize-winning documentary films, at the age of ninety-five she is a frequent speaker at Holocaust commemorations in Hungary, Germany, and elsewhere.

The Soul of Things combines a rare depiction of upper-middle-class Jewish life in pre-war Hungary with the chronicle of a woman’s deportation and survival in the camps. Fahidi is a gifted writer with a unique voice, full of wisdom, humanity, and flashes of dark humour. With an unsentimental, philosophical perspective, she recounts her journey from the Great Hungarian Plain to the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the forced labour camp of Münchmühle, and back.

The English edition includes a new introduction by historians Éva Kovács and Judith Szapor, the original prefaces to the Hungarian and German editions, an essay on the Münchmüle Camp by Fritz Brinkman-Frisch, and extensive notes providing historical and cultural context for Fahidi’s narrative.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487525125
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	10/16/2020
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Éva Fahidi is an activist and author who has captivated audiences with her life story as an Auschwitz survivor.
Judith Szapor is an associate professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction
The Storyteller of the Shoah: Éva Fahidi and Anima Rerum
Éva Kovács and Judith Szapor

Preface to the Hungarian Edition:... because we cannot go on otherwise
György Gábor

Preface to the German Edition
Götz Aly

Anima Rerum: The Soul of Things

The Münchmüle Camp
Fritz Brinkmann-Frisch

List of the 1,000 Women taken from Auschwitz to Allendorf, August 13, 1944

What People are Saying About This

Randolph L. Braham

"One of the best books in the genre of survivor accounts."

Ilana Rosen

"Éva Fahidi's Soul of Things Memoir of a Youth Interrupted is a gripping, circular story that starts and ends with the Holocaust as experienced by the author in her young age and then as re-visited by her and her past campmates. This story cannot but encompass also the entire life and demise of many other Hungarian and European families and communities.

Born in 1925, Éva Fahidi recounts in her Soul of Things - Memoir of a Youth Interrupted the story of the twentieth century including disastrous mega-destruction events and ever-optimistic attempts to reconstruct and rehabilitate humanity, compassion, and humor, despite all.

Holocaust survivor Éva Fahidi's memoir encompasses her entire life, lived through almost the entire twentieth century and well into the twenty-first. In her last years, Fahidi is engaged in promoting discussion of the Holocaust by both its perpetrators and ultimate victims. Thus, she calls for reconciliation and human bonding against the dark evidence of history."

Editorial Reviews

"One of the best books in the genre of survivor accounts."

—Randolph L. Braham, author of The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary

"Éva Fahidi's Soul of Things Memoir of a Youth Interrupted is a gripping, circular story that starts and ends with the Holocaust as experienced by the author in her young age and then as re-visited by her and her past campmates. This story cannot but encompass also the entire life and demise of many other Hungarian and European families and communities.

Born in 1925, Éva Fahidi recounts in her Soul of Things - Memoir of a Youth Interrupted the story of the twentieth century including disastrous mega-destruction events and ever-optimistic attempts to reconstruct and rehabilitate humanity, compassion, and humor, despite all.

Holocaust survivor Éva Fahidi's memoir encompasses her entire life, lived through almost the entire twentieth century and well into the twenty-first. In her last years, Fahidi is engaged in promoting discussion of the Holocaust by both its perpetrators and ultimate victims. Thus, she calls for reconciliation and human bonding against the dark evidence of history."

—Ilana Rosen, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

From the Publisher