Ledes from the Land of Enchantment

Authors of the Jewish Book Festival draw hope from history

for the journal

Eight authors will give virtual lectures on their books at the Jewish Book Festival in Fall 2021, hosted by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque.

The first presentation on Sunday, October 17th at 10 am shows Joshua M. Greene’s book “Unstoppable”. The biography tells of Siggi B. Wilzig’s incredible daring to survive Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, two death marches and starvation. Wilzig turns his life as a near-destitute immigrant with elementary school education to the United States and becomes a wealthy man with oil and banking.

“Nobody in history did what they did,” Greene, a Holocaust scholar and filmmaker, said in a telephone interview. “I think it’s important to know that your path to wealth wasn’t about money. … Money was a way of building a platform for people to listen to when he wanted to talk about the Holocaust. It was his way of rebuilding what the Jewish people had lost, to draw attention to the State of Israel, to remember the past. ”

In the book, said Greene, you get to know the Holocaust from Wilzig’s perspective, and if it touches your heart you also understand that it’s about human existence, not just about Jews.

In word and deed, Wilzig also conveyed the message that one does not have to indulge in despair and tragedy.

The author said that based on Wilzig’s own account and the reports of about 100 people who interviewed Greene, they painted a portrait of Wilzig as a man who coped, not overcome, his nightmares.

Indeed, said Greene, Wilzig did not know whether he could live without the nightmares: “They give him an ultra-realistic assessment of the wonder of the living, especially as a Jew.” Greene’s other books include Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor and My Survival: A Girl on Schindler’s List.

These are the other Book Fest events:

⋄ On Wednesday, October 20th, at 10.30 am, the Israeli author David Grossman will speak about his novel “More Than I Love My Life”. It is the story of the power of love as portrayed in strong women of three generations in a family.

⋄ On October 21st at 7 p.m. Annabelle Gurwitch will speak about her current book “You go when? Adventure in Downward Mobility. ”A Library Journal review describes it this way:“ A hilarious and honest collection of essays, Gurwitch’s perspective on both the essentials and the mundane will be understandable to anyone who understands how the American Dream works turned a fever dream. ”

⋄ On October 24th at 3 pm Jean Hanff Korelitz will speak about her book “The Plot: A Novel”. It’s about Jacob Finch Bonner, a promising novelist who teaches a third-rate Master of Fine Arts. His arrogant student Evan Parker explains that he doesn’t need Bonner’s help because the plot of his manuscript is a sure winner. The former student dies without publishing his novel. Soon Bonner becomes a famous writer. Then he receives a letter accusing him of being a thief. But who is the real thief?

⋄ On October 28th at 7pm, Rachael Cerrotti will present her book “We Share the Same Sky: A Memoir of Memory & Migration”. It switches seamlessly between the past and the present. The past revolves around Hana, Cerrotti’s maternal grandmother, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. The young Hana, who was born in Czechoslovakia, flees to Denmark with a Zionist youth group and is supported by the friendliness of strangers. First by a Danish family and then by a Swedish family after they were eventually forced to flee on a refugee boat loaded with herrings.

Hana’s own friendships with the same families are presented in the present, interwoven with Cerrotti’s own life story, her attachment to them, and her greater concern for today’s refugees. “I inherited that and was my way in … so it was important in my own life,” she said in an interview.

We Share the Same Sky is also a seven episode storytelling podcast that debuted two years ago. Cerrotti produced it in collaboration with the USC Shoah Foundation. She is the foundation’s first storyteller in residence.

⋄ On October 31st at 10 am, Meriel Schindler will speak about her book “The lost Café Schindler: One family, two wars and the search for the truth”. The focus of the story is Café Schindler, the social center of the Austrian city of Innsbruck between the two world wars. The book reconstructs the atmosphere of pre-war Innsbruck amid the growing threat of Nazi invasion and occupation. The author also tries to fathom her father and his wild claims: Was there a relative of a Jewish doctor who treated Hitler’s mother when she died of cancer? Are the Schindlers related to the family of the author Franz Kafka?

⋄ On November 7th at 2 pm, the award-winning Israeli writer Yaniv Iczkovits will discuss “The Slaughterman’s Daughter: A Novel”. It is described as an epic historical adventure, written in “fabulistic style” about a Jewish family drama set in a provincial town in Tsarist Russia in the late 19th century.

⋄ On November 14th at 6 pm Judy Batalion will speak about “The Light of Days: The Untold Story of the Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos”. This unforgettable book reveals the heroism of young Jewish women in Nazi-occupied Poland who smuggled bread, medical supplies and weapons to prisoners in ghettos. These warriors maintained an underground network that planned escape routes to Palestine, created safe houses for children, bribed Gestapo guards with alcohol, sabotaged German supply lines and killed Nazis.

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