Afbeelding auteur

Gizelle Hersh (1922–2011)

Auteur van Gizelle, Save the Children!

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Werken van Gizelle Hersh

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Algemene kennis

Pseudoniemen en naamsvarianten
Hartenbaum, Gloria
Geboortedatum
1922-05-22
Overlijdensdatum
2011-09-13
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
Romania (birth)
USA
Geboorteplaats
Satu Mare, Romania
Plaats van overlijden
Weston, Connecticut, USA
Woonplaatsen
Bixad, Romania
Auschwitz, Poland
Weston, Connecticut, USA
New York, New York, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Beroepen
memoirist
Holocaust survivor
public speaker
Korte biografie
Gizelle Hersh was the pen name of Gloria Hartenbaum, née Herskovits. She was born to a prosperous Jewish family in Satu Mare, Romania, the oldest of five children of Emanuel and Mariska Herskovits. Her siblings were Alexander, Vicky, Magda, and Katya. Emanuel Herskovits owned a bus company and restaurant, and the family lived in a large house with servants in the town of Bixad, a summer spa resort. With the rise of anti-Semitism in the late 1930s, Mr. Herskovits lost his businesses. Satu Mare was annexed by Hungary in 1940, and in March 1944, Nazi Germany invaded the region. The Herskovits family along with many others were transported to the Satu Mare ghetto. A month later, the Jews of the ghetto were deported to the death camp of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Upon arrival, Gizelle's parents were sent to the gas chambers while her siblings were sent to the barracks. As her family was being separated, her mother shouted to her, "Gizelle, save the children!" Gizelle soon learned that Alexander had been taken to the men's barracks, so she stayed close to her three younger sisters. In August 1944, they were all chosen as part of a group sent to Geislingen an der Steige concentration camp near Stuttgart to work in a factory. At the end of March 1945, the girls were sent on a train to Dachau. A few days later, they were again loaded on cattle cars. The train moved back and forth on the tracks for eight days before finally ending up exactly where it started, and the camp was liberated by U.S. forces. Gizelle and her sisters eventually went to the Feldafing displaced persons camp near Munich. There they learned that Alexander had been killed at Mauthausen. Gizelle contacted cousins in the USA who invited the sisters to live with them. With the help of the United Jewish Appeal, the girls arrived in the USA in December 1945. Gizelle (now called Gloria) married Bela Hartenbaum, a U.S. army veteran, with whom she had three children. Under the name Gizelle Hersh, she wrote a memoir entitled Gizelle, Save the Children! published in 1980. She was also a frequent lecturer on the Holocaust to students and groups around the nation.

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This powerful Holocaust memoir, whose title is taken from the last words spoken to the author by her mother, before they were separated forever by the gas chambers of Auschwitz, follows the story of a young Hungarian Jewish girl who somehow managed to survive three concentration camps, and to help her three younger sisters survive as well.

Fluent in German, Gizelle had the unwelcome distinction of interpreting for the infamous Dr. Mengele, as he decided the fate of his victims, and was able to inflate the ages of her siblings, thereby saving their lives. Through their time at Auschwitz, and then later at Geislingen and Dachau, Gizelle continued to uphold her promise to her mother, watching over the younger girls and their Lagerschwester (camp sister), who together made up a row of five. Upon liberation, the girls eventually found themselves in a refugee camp in Bavaria, where they met General Eisenhower.

I read Gizelle, Save the Children! shortly after Isabella Leitner's Fragments of Isabella, and was struck by the similarities between the two. Both relate the story of a Hungarian Jewish family caught up in the terrible events of the Shoah, in which a group of sisters survive together. Although I went through a period in my adolescence in which I read over thirty Holocaust memoirs (what can I say, I have an obsessive streak?), these two titles stand out in my memory, and I can't help thinking it is because I myself am one of three sisters. Perhaps the suffering of others is most vivid to us, when we can somehow identify personally with the victims?
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AbigailAdams26 | Jun 20, 2013 |

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Statistieken

Werken
2
Leden
32
Populariteit
#430,838
Waardering
4.1
Besprekingen
1
ISBNs
2
Talen
1