Miriam Winter (2)

This is a kind of different Holocaust memoir. Many Jewish people who were rescued by Gentiles during World War II depict their rescuers as wonderful, saintly people. And in most cases they're correct; I mean, the rescuers were risking more than just their lives to save people that in some cases they didn't even know. It takes a special kind of moral courage to do something like that, and until you're in that situation yourself you never know whether or not you have it. I hope I would have had what it took to rescue a Jew during the Holocaust, but I'll never know for sure.

Miriam Winter was an eight-year-old child in Poland when her parents managed to smuggle her out of the ghetto. A Jewish woman named Cesia, who was twenty and could pass for a Gentile, agreed to take her when she herself left the ghetto. But Cesia really didn't know what to do with Miriam afterwards; she wasn't in a position to keep her, and Miriam looked very Jewish. Fortunately they sort of randomly met a woman named Maryla on the train, and after hearing Cesia's made-up story about how Miriam was her sister's child whom she'd gotten stuck with, Maryla said she'd take care of her.

Maryla, who was from Lwow and made a living smuggling black-market items, took Miriam knowing she was Jewish. She risked her life by doing so, and she inconvenienced herself a great deal. She left Miriam in the care of others for months of a time, but ultimately her Jewishness would always be discovered and Maryla would have to find a new place for her. Miriam wasn't well-treated by the people she stayed with, and Maryla never showed her any affection.

After Lwow was liberated, Maryla wouldn't let Miriam attend school and made he work instead, at first selling black-market goods. After Maryla got married, she and her husband operated a store and Miriam had to work there. She was beaten and called a "filthy Jew" if she did anything wrong, and Maryla showed more affection to her dog. Some people tasked with finding Jewish war orphans visited the house, and Maryla told Miriam, "After everything I did for you, you will betray me like the Christ-killers betrayed Christ. Don't go with them." So Miriam stayed, until Maryla's husband's sister came to help at the store and they didn't need her work anymore. Then she left. She was fifteen.

Much later, though, Miriam thought kindly of her guardian: "Harsh, even austere toward me, Maryla didn't spare herself either...once she took me she courageously cared for me; she risked her life for me, and she didn't give me up." Miriam was the only survivor of her family. She eventually told Yad Vashem about her rescuer and in 1994, Maryla was honored as Righteous Among the Nations.

Anyway...this isn't so much a review as a plot summary I guess. This book is a different perspective on things, showing another side to the rescuers. And the ambivalent relationship the rescuer and the rescued can have with one another.… (lisätietoja)