Kirjailijakuva

Agata Tuszyńska

Teoksen Vera Gran-The Accused tekijä

16 teosta 120 jäsentä 4 arvostelua 1 Favorited

Tietoja tekijästä

Includes the name: Agata Tuszyńska

Tekijän teokset

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Kanoninen nimi
Tuszyńska, Agata
Sukupuoli
female
Kansalaisuus
Poland
Maa (karttaa varten)
Poland

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Terrible vie que celle où les épreuves se succèdent et où, le plus souvent, le cœur des hommes reste froid. Un livre magnifiquement incomplet.
½
 
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Nikoz | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jul 27, 2016 |
I wasn't paying attention, I was in such a hurry, I stumbled. I wasn't looking where I was going, my black flat shoes bumped into something. Something or someone, who was lying there. I caught my feet in a bundle of rags, my heels sank into it. I didn't fall. I just stumbled. A body, perhaps still alive. I was hurrying to arrive in time for the performance. To get to work. For a sztikele brojt, guih far a sztikele brutjt. 'A little piece of bread, give me a little piece of bread..." he begged in Yiddish.
They were waiting for me, my public.
I knew that if I sang, I was not one of these. One of the weak, the needy, hanging on to the hems of the wealthy in the ghetto. But then again, who were they? I was also begging in front of them. I was begging for money, for alms, charity."


Vera Gran was a Polish singer, a beautiful alto, who had a large enough following that she could continue to sing in clubs that sprang up in the Warsaw ghetto. She never had to entertain another profession to make a living during the war, she made so much just in her salary at the clubs alone. Her public, those with hardly any money, would save up what they had to pay the cover fee, and consumed nothing but water while listening to her sing songs from before the war. They adored her and revered her. Her name alone could keep a club afloat.
After the war things changed for Vera. There were accusations, whispers, that she had collaborated with the Germans. Because Germans sometimes came into the clubs where she was singing to listen to her. Because she was asked to come and sing at private dinner parties. Because she never 'suffered' during the war, she must have been in league with the occupiers. She was put on trial but never found guilty. But she found life much more difficult after that. She could not get jobs, people threatened to boycott, people sent her hateful letters.
Did she collaborate? It's really up to your own interpretation of collaboration. There's no proof, it's all subjective. Vera says she gave money to keep children fed in an orphanage. There's no proof of that either.
Vera died paranoid and very much alone. Although it was years after the war ended, she was very much a casualty of those events.

I am using the lexicon of a world not at war. I am adapting it to a reality in which words had often lost their meaning. The period of the Holocaust had shattered the old models of behavior, loosened the rigors of moral norms. In the face of constant threat, people pushed back the limits of ethics. It's not up to us to judge.
But in the end it is also they, those who survive, who try to adjust to this past. Is it just them in particular?
What would you have done to save your skin? And to save your mother? To which of those condemned would you have opened the door to your home knowing what dangers awaited you? Who would you have helped while endangering the life of your daughter or your grandson? Do you know? You only think that you know. And in those cabarets in the ghetto, you would have looked down on those who were eating blinis with caviar while people were dying in the streets; that seems morally reprehensible to you, the subject of condemnation. Like Vera, who sang in the ghetto her songs from before the war. Like Vera, who used her songs to regain equilibrium, to recall the years before persecution. Because the persecution weighed on the world, for a longer or a shorter time, on those who were conscious of it and on those who did everything to ignore the danger.
Life is expensive. Survival is expensive."
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
VictoriaPL | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Apr 18, 2016 |
Une plongée dans une époque désespérante, dans un parcours de vie dont on cherche le sens avec le personnage. Un point de vue depuis la Pologne où l'après guerre n'est pas marquée pas l'american way of life loin s'en faut et encore une fois les changements de perspective permettent d'illustrer comment ce que l'on sait de l'histoire dépend de qui nous l'a appris !
Mais je me suis ennuyée et j'espérais la fin du livre.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Domdupuis | Feb 26, 2016 |
This was a confusing book about a woman who survived the Warsaw ghetto as a popular singer. After World War II, Gran was repeatedly accused but never convicted of being a Nazi collaborator.
The author meets Gran in her twilight years. She is suffering from delusions which are reported by the author. She continually strove to have her reputation vindicated.
The book is difficult to read as it skips about Gran's memories, her delusions and hallucinations and true documentation.
½
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Amusedbythis | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jun 19, 2013 |

Palkinnot

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#165,356
Arvio (tähdet)
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ISBN:t
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