Upon its initial publication, critics and scholars across the country were united as they championed the historical significance and haunting beauty of The Journal of Hélène Berr. The work of a stunningly talented writer, Hélène’s journal is both an intensely moving, intimate document, and a text of astonishing literary accomplishment.
From April 1942 to February 1944, Hélène Berr, a recent graduate of the Sorbonne, kept journal of her life in Nazi-occupied Paris, seeking refuge from the harsh realities of being a Jew under the Vichy regime. Hélène writes of literature, music, love, and the beauty of her city, striving to remain calm and rational even as tragedy closes in. in 1944, Hélène and her parents were arrested and sent to Drancy. On her twenty-third birthday they were taken by train to Auschwitz, where her parents died within six months. Hélène was forced to march to Bergen-Belsen, where she died in April 1945, just days before British troops arrived to liberate the camp.
An instant classic, The Journal of Hélène Berr is an important literary contribution to the history of the Holocaust.
Intelligent, heart-wrenchingly lucid prose…Berr herself is transformed from a privileged, promising youth into an adult who must grapple firsthand with horrifying questions about the existence of evil in the human experience. What elevates her account to the heroic are the clarity, calm, and compassion which she maintains throughout.”
Vital…this, alas, is how it truly was when good people were heartlessly abused and their lives were ruthlessly taken from them.”
[Berr’s] writing is soulful, loving and wise, making for heartbreaking reading more than 60 years later.”
Reading The Journal of Hélène Berr, a diary of denial, heartbreak, and resistance that her family’s cook passed on to surviving relatives after Hélène’s death at Bergen-Belsen, is like watching a sunset: an inevitable, achingly vivid journey into the dark.”
Fascinating…moves us deeply…we now have another important Holocaust book.”
Her vibrant voice – full of anguish, compassion, indignation and defiance – springs from these pages – as extraordinary a document of occupied France as Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française.”
A worthy addition to Holocaust literature, evoking the sweetness of one life lost and reminding us with urgent clarity how inexorably it was swept under those tragic times.”
This important new addition to the literature on the Holocaust and the French Occupation is sure to be welcomed by general readers and scholars alike.”
A soul-clutching account of a young woman facing the march of the Nazi death machine in Paris…you will not soon forget her voice or her haunting story.”
Breathtaking…A must for anyone interested in the personal forces of history and who loves a riveting read.”
