Helpful Score: 5
This book started out as a memoir about the difficulties of the Ghetto. It was very interesting and the author was extremely young, which makes it astounding that she should remember so much from that time. Still, it was interesting to read about the Ghetto and going into hiding.
Halfway through the book, the war is over. A short bit of time is spent discussing the troubles of recuperating and living in Communist Poland, but then it turns into a memoir that quickly grows repetitive, the author reminiscing about her failed marriages and depressions.
Still, the first half is worth reading.
Halfway through the book, the war is over. A short bit of time is spent discussing the troubles of recuperating and living in Communist Poland, but then it turns into a memoir that quickly grows repetitive, the author reminiscing about her failed marriages and depressions.
Still, the first half is worth reading.
Helpful Score: 3
Memoir of a young Polish Jewish girl who survived the Krakow ghetto and spent much of her childhood in hiding. Some of the accounts of violence and cruelty were devastating. The book goes beyond the war to track how the girl who saw herself in Spielberg's Shindler's List was impacted by her early childhood experiences.
This memoir about growing up Jewish in Poland during the war years and beyond is quite depressing. I kept wishing that things would pick up and improve especially after the war ended which was halfway through the book. But the author, a cousin of film director, Roman Polanski, was depressed through most of her life, marrying multiple times, and resorting to an addiction to pills. She had several successful careers as a painter, writer, and costume and stage set designer and married interesting men. It also seemed too bad that more historical research had not been provided about the political situations that her family found themselves in. It was a bit of a car wreck. I kept reading it because I was drawn to it but I wanted to look away.
excellent - seeing the holocaust through the eyes of a three year old
Very moving
A good book about the after affects of the war. I enjoyed it.
