LOVE IN A WORLD OF SORROW: A TEENAGE GIRL’S HOLOCAUST MEMOIRS by Fanya Gottesfeld Heller.
The book contains an author’s preface to the 3rd edition (April 2015), an author’s preface to the 2nd edition (December 2004), a foreword, 8 chapters (spanning Fanya’s 18th birthday, September 26-29, 1942 to Fanya, age 20-21, August-December, 1945), an epilogue (2004) and information about the author, Fanya Gottesfeld Heller. Many photographs are included, also.
I referred to these access points often while reading, especially the epilogue and author information.
[I was given this book to read by Gefen Publishing in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.]

We meet Fanya in September, 1942, on the eve of her 18th birthday. It was the beginning of the aktsia - the extermination of the Jewish community of Skala. Skala was an old, market town on the shore of the Zbrucz River (in present-day Ukraine). The river served as a border between Poland and the Soviet Union after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1919. It was a small town of 5,500 inhabitants, consisting of Greek Orthodox Ukrainians, Catholic Poles and some 1500 Jews.
Fanya is a very intelligent, articulate girl growing up with a close-knit extended family. She presents us with a day-by-grueling-day of Holocaust survival. It is an account of unimaginable pain and suffering, starvation, torture, rape, despair and desperation. It is also an account of hope, courage and perseverance. The ruthlessness and persistence of German and Ukrainian militias and their sympathizers in hunting down these people - it is sickening to read about.
I really can’t grasp what these experiences must do to a person’s psyche. What has to be ‘done’, be tolerated, be suffered; the depravity and inhumanity that is witnessed. To survive must be a courageous feat - yet at what cost to one’s soul?
Fanya wants to tell her story - I am glad that she does. I would have to quote the entire 2 author prefaces and the epilogue to list her passionate reasons why.
Please read this book. I feel lucky to have done so. It will stay with you always. ( )

The book starts out very slowly. I almost gave up on it because it was so slow. There were too many characters thrown at me all at once, I could not keep them straight. Once I got through all that it got more interesting. The story of Jan (a member of the Ukranian militia) and Fanya’s romance was intriguing. Jan saved them from imminent death several times. But don’t get the idea that a romance makes this a light story. There are graphic descriptions of the cruelties of the time. There were horrid people and there were good people. There was hope, and there was despair. It was a time when it seemed the sorrows would never end. ( )

This should be a great story. A young Jewish girl hiding with her family from the Germans. She meets a Ukrainian soldier who takes her and her family under his wing, probably saving them from the same fate as other Jews in the community. This should be a great story-and yet it isn't. It wasn't the hold-your-breath-page-turner I expected. While interesting, it lacked something..... ( )