Cordelia Edvardson (1929–2012)
Auteur van Burned Child Seeks the Fire
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geboortedatum
- 1929-01-01
- Overlijdensdatum
- 2012-10-29
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- Germany (born)
Sweden
Israel - Geboorteplaats
- Munich, Germany
- Plaats van overlijden
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Woonplaatsen
- Berlin, Germany
Stockholm, Sweden
Jerusalem, Israel - Beroepen
- journalist
autobiographer
Holocaust survivor
foreign correspondent - Relaties
- Langgasser, Elisabeth (mother)
Heller, Hermann (father) - Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- The Royal Swedish Academy prize
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2009) - Korte biografie
- Cordelia Edvardson, née Heller, was born in Munich, Germany to Elisabeth Langgässer, a writer. She was born out of wedlock in the course of her mother's romance with Heinrich Heller, a married legal scholar and philosopher. Her father was Jewish and her mother, though a Roman Catholic, was the daughter of a Jewish father who had converted. Although Cordelia was raised in Berlin as a Catholic, she and her mother were labeled Jewish by the Nazis and in 1944, at age 14, she was deported first to Theresienstadt (Terezín) and then to the death camp at Auschwitz. She survived the camps, and was brought to Sweden in 1945 by the Swedish Red Cross. There she began a career as an award-winning journalist. In 1948, she married sports journalist and author Ragner Edvardson, with whom she had a son, and after they divorced, she had three more children. From 1977 to 2006, she was the Middle East correspondent for the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. She also wrote poetry, novels, and essays. In 1984, she published an autobiographical novel documenting her life as a Holocaust survivor, Bränt barn söker sig till elden (Burned Child Seeks the Fire), which won the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis literary prize. She was the subject of the 2004 documentary Flickan från Auschwitz, based on her books, by filmmaker Stefan Jarl.
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A quali fantasie, a quali elaborati esorcismi può ricorrere una bambina che lotta inerme contro le potenze dello sterminio e della sopraffazione? Unica colpa di Cordelia è l'esser figlia illegittima di un ebreo; a nulla valgono gli sforzi della madre, scrittrice tedesca, non ebrea, per salvare la propria creatura dalla deportazione. Consapevole fin dai primi anni di vita del destino di esclusione e sofferenza che le sarà riservato, Cordelia lo accetta con l'orgoglio straziante del debole nei confronti del persecutore, della vittima… (meer)
This Holocaust memoir is written differently from any other I've read. It's not in chronological order and a lot of times what's going on isn't really clear. It's a series of images, some of them foggy, some of them mixed up, from the author's childhood and adolescence. It's much more literary than a lot of Holocaust memoirs. Edvardson's mother was a novelist and according to the dust jacket, she herself has written other books.
Cordelia Edvardson was the illegitimate daughter of a married Jewish man and a half-Jewish mother. She never knew her father, but she had an Aryan stepfather and was raised Catholic. To protect her from the Nazis her mother had her adopted by some Spanish people so she could get a Spanish passport and be exempt from deportation, but eventually the ruse was discovered and, at fourteen or so, Cordelia was sent first to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. There she worked as a kind of secretary for Josef Mengele. After the war she moved to Sweden and married, then converted to Judaism and moved to Israel, where she lives today.
I would recommend this book to people who have read a lot about the Holocaust, but not to neophytes on the subject. People who don't already know what Cordelia's talking about will probably be confused and irritated by her vagueness. But I found it intriguing.… (meer)
Cordelia Edvardson was the illegitimate daughter of a married Jewish man and a half-Jewish mother. She never knew her father, but she had an Aryan stepfather and was raised Catholic. To protect her from the Nazis her mother had her adopted by some Spanish people so she could get a Spanish passport and be exempt from deportation, but eventually the ruse was discovered and, at fourteen or so, Cordelia was sent first to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. There she worked as a kind of secretary for Josef Mengele. After the war she moved to Sweden and married, then converted to Judaism and moved to Israel, where she lives today.
I would recommend this book to people who have read a lot about the Holocaust, but not to neophytes on the subject. People who don't already know what Cordelia's talking about will probably be confused and irritated by her vagueness. But I found it intriguing.… (meer)
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- Werken
- 10
- Leden
- 121
- Populariteit
- #164,307
- Waardering
- 4.1
- Besprekingen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 25
- Talen
- 6
In 1943 Cordelia was taken in a roundup and sent to Theresienstadt. She was fourteen-years-old. When she arrived, she was sent straight to prison for unknowingly having contraband and later released to the general camp. Less than a year later she was deported to Auschwitz where she was forced to labor in various factories. After liberation, she ended up in Sweden, where she became a citizen. Later she spent many years in Jerusalem as a Middle East correspondent for a Swedish newspaper.
Although quite short, this Holocaust memoir covers some themes and events that struck me as not typical. First, although Cordelia is young when most of the memoir takes place, this is not a coming of age story. It′s an adult′s clear-eyed perspective written in the concise language of a journalist. Second, there is no celebration of life after the war ends.
To put it behind her, to forget, to be healthy—the girl felt despair, rage, and hatred turning into a burning ball of fire in her throat. She still lacked words, but if she had had them, she would have screamed: ″But I don′t want it behind me, I don′t want to get healthy, I don′t want to forget! All you ever want to do is ′wipe the slate clean,′ as you all so complacently put it. You want to take my anguish from me, deny it and wipe it away and protect yourselves against my rage, but then you are wiping me our as well, ′eradicating′ me, as the Germans put it, then you deny me too, because I am all that...″
Cordelia struggles in her relationships and as a mother. Even Sweden galls her,
She, who still had a burnt smell in her hair and in her clothes, began to turn every stone and rummage through every heap of refuse, but all she found were some wood lice or the bones of birds. No skeletons marked by torture, no skulls showing evidence of gold teeth having been broken out of the jaw bones, no emaciated corpses of children.
In the midst of so much innocence she found it hard to breathe, and she realized she had to move on.
Cordelia ends up in Israel and, while reporting on the Yom Kippur War, finds acceptance and an odd sense of peace.
The threat of destruction and the people of the land looked each other in the eye with the familiarity of recognition. The survivors returned to the only form of life, the only task and challenge they had learned to master—the struggle for survival. But she felt, here human beings and the forces of destruction were meeting as combatants, the outcome was not predetermined, not this time. This was fair play.
I liked the tone of the memoir. Nothing is wrapped up with a pretty bow, the world is not let off the hook.
Her anger did not permit her to accept the pity and solicitude of others. They would have to try harder than that! She would not allow them to cry over her the way they had sobbed over Anne Frank′s diary…
With the touching letters to ″Kitty″ the world had received its catharsis at much too cheap a price—and pretty young actresses were being given a rewarding part to play on the stage and in the movies. The thought filled her with feelings of hatred.
Yet, Cordelia does find a place and a position that affords her self-respect and self-determination. She marries, has children. The memoir ends with a resounding, ″I am!″… (meer)