But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust edited by Charlotte Schallie

In this poignant graphic novel memoir, three stories of four children who survived the horrors of the Holocaust are told first in graphic novel form, then in their own words.

In the first story, A Kind of  Resistance, David Schaffer's story is told through the illustrations of Miriam Libicki. David was born in 1931 in Vama, Bucovina which was part of Romania at that time. Their trouble began in 1939 when David was no longer able to attend public school. His teacher, Mr. Twardovski came to his home to tell his parents this so that he would not have to shame David in front of his classmates.

In 1940, David and his family had to leave their family home, taking only what they could carry. The Romanian government ordered Jews out of the rural areas and into the cities. They were sent to Gura Humorului and placed in a ghetto, before being sent to a train station to be "evacuated". Accompanying them was David's maternal great-grandmother who was carried on a kind of stretcher because she was unable to walk.

They were taken to Ataki located on the Dniester River, and sent to a rundown house with no doors or windows and blood on the walls. After this the Jews were taken across the Dniester River and were ordered to walk in convoys by the Romanian soldiers. It was here that David's family had to leave behind his great-grandmother to die, alone. 

 

At Kopaigord, the Jews were left by the army. David's father discovered that it was not safe for them to remain, so at nightfall David and his parents walked off into the woods. By November 1941 they had arrived in a small village, Ivashkovtsi which was occupied by Romanian soldiers. As they fled through the woods, they were joined by the Landau family consisting of Marcus and Nellie and their two daughters, Annie and Fritzi and their grandmother. 

 

Together David's family and the Landau family were helped by a Ukrainian family who allowed them to stay in their summer kitchen. They would stay in this area, sometimes hiding in the woods, sometimes hiding underground as German soldiers searched the woods, until the area was liberated by the Soviets in 1944. Then they began their journey back to their home in Romania.

In the second story, Thirteen Secrets, Nico and Rolf Kamp's story is told through the artwork of Gilad Seliktar.  Rolf begins the story by telling Gilad they lived in Amersfoort with their parents, Fritz and Inge. They were originally from Germany however they also spoke Dutch. Their father owned a factory in Holland and often went there for business. Rolf's brother Nico was three years youngers and when he was very young, he had a girlfriend named Betty. Rolf and Nico's grandparents lived only ten blocks from them.

Things began to change in 1940 with planes flying overhead. Eventually Rolf had to leave school and go to a new Jewish school and Nico to a Jewish kindergarten. Then they had to start wearing the Jewish star on their clothing.

They were taken to their first hiding place in June, 1942. Nico was five years old. Their mother removed the Jewish stars that were sewn onto all their clothing before they left. Rolf and Nico were taken to the Amersfoort train station by a "very nice gentleman". Their first hideout was with a young couple that they called aunt and uncle and they were given new names: Rolf became Rudolf and Nico became Klaas. Unfortunately, when Nico divulged their secret about being Jewish amongst strangers, the underground was contacted and the two boys were moved to a farm in Leusden.  After this it was to a farm in Stoutenberg, then to hide in a chicken coop. In the spring of 1944, Nico and Rolf were taken in by the Traa family in Achterveld, where seventeen people ended up being hidden by the end of the war. Nico's memories were somewhat different from his brother's but in the end they were reunited with their mother who had survived Auschwitz and Libau.

 

In the third story, But I Live, illustrated by Barbara Yelin, tells the experiences of Emmie Arbel who now lives in  Kiryat Tiv'on, Israel.  Emmie was born in Holland and had two brothers, Menachem and Rudi. When she was four-years-old, two policemen came to their house and took the family to Westerbrook transit camp. Emmie remembers the constant fear of being deported to other camps. Her father was taken away first, then Emmie, her mother, Rudi and her older brother were taken to Ravensbruck. Emmie remembers how the women at Westerbrook were so oddly dressed with their blue and white striped clothing, the women crying at night and the constant hunger. At Ravensbruck, Emmie remembers them being ordered to take off all their clothes and having her hair cut. 

Like the other prisoners, Emmie was made to stand for hours, even while her own mother fainted. To help her mother would mean death. Gradually the memories of life in Holland faded away. A few days after liberation, Emmie and Rudi watched their mother die. Emmie knew her mother had to eat but that she had given her food so that Emmie could live.

After the war, Emmie and Rudi traveled to Sweden where she spent some time in the hospital recovering from tuberculosis. In the foster home, she set fire to the curtains, wanting to burn down the house. In 1946, Emmie and Rudi returned to Holland and were they were adopted by a Jewish family along with their brother Menachem. Eventually they moved to Israel.

Discussion 

But I Live is a memoir of four Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. There are three parts to this book: the first part is their story told in illustrated form, the second part is comprised of essays placing the child survivor's experiences within the context of the war, and the third is their story in their own words. There is also a section written by the graphic artists about this project.

In the first part, described above, each survivor tells a graphic artist about their experiences and these are portrayed in the accompanying artwork. David's story focuses on his family working together to survive in hiding in the woods. Nico and Rolf's story highlights how the underground managed to save children by hiding them in various safe houses throughout the war. Emmie's story is about a very young child experiencing the horrors of the concentration camp system and the many things that still trigger flashbacks and unpleasant memories.

 

In the second part each essay attempts to explain some aspect of the survivors' experiences within the larger context of the events of World War II. For example, in the essay The Holocaust in Transnistria by Alexander Korb, David's experiences are explained within the larger context of the history of this region. Korb explains how David's family was able to beat the odds and survive because the Holocaust in Romania as "neither controlled nor guarded by the Germans....The less systematic manner of persecution, horrific as it was, provided the Romanian Jews with higher chances of survival, because there were ways to fight back and to disobey the rules. The survival of David's family makes that perfectly clear." 

These essays also attempt to explain how recent history may have impacted the experiences the child survivors had. For example, Transnistria belonged to the Soviet Union after World War I and anti-Semitism was not tolerated so there was no association between the Jews and Soviet occupation like there was in other parts of Eastern Europe. And one possible reason that David's family was helped by the local Ukrainian population, is that having survived the Holodomor, the man-made famine caused by Stalin, Ukrainians knew what it meant to starve so they helped the hiding Jews.

In Surviving In Hiding From the Nazis by Dienke Hondius, Rolf and Nico Kamp's story is clarified as they were very young when war engulfed them. Neither remember much about where they lived or their early life. Hondius speculates on who exactly helped hid the Kamp children and explores what it was like to be in hiding, coping with sudden extreme dangers and having to act very quickly. This piece also mentions how the trauma continued during the post-war period as survivors returned home to find all their possessions gone, either destroyed or stolen. Although they remained silent for many decades, the child survivors have, in the last few years, found their voice to tell their stories.

 

In Andrea Low's essay, Surviving Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen As A Child, the horrific experience of being a very young child in the concentration camp system is explored. Low describes the extent of the German camp system, which was continually being added to throughout the war and the catastrophic conditions that little Emmie would have had to endure, including being surrounded constantly by people dying and the prospect of death.

The third part of this collaborative effort has David Schaeffer, Nico and Rolf Kamp and Emmie Arbel also relate, in their own words, their experiences as child survivors of the Holocaust and fills in some of the details not explored in the illustrated versions of their stories.

But I Live is an intimate look at the experiences of four child survivors of the Holocaust, allowing readers to experience their stories visually through the graphic novel medium, to learn about a specific aspect of each story from a historical perspective, and then to read about these experiences from the survivors themselves. Perhaps the most moving of all the stories is that of Emmie, whose experiences at Ravensbruck continue to haunt her, even in her old age. The other three survivors, David, Nico and Rolf did not experience the concentration camps. Emmie's experiences were so traumatizing that simple acts like her daughter cutting her hair short or eating a yoghurt brought back triggering memories of the camp. She doesn't like crowds and needs to have her back to a wall in a restaurant.

But I Live is the fruit of a "collaborative research project that brought together Holocaust survivors, graphic artists, Holocaust and Human Rights educations professionals, historians, student teachers, high school teachers, librarians, and archivists over the course of three years. The three graphic novelists were invited to meet with four Holocaust child survivors...asking them to jointly explore storylines, settings, and themes." From their Afterword, the graphic artists write, "As each survivor holds unique knowledge not only of the mass atrocity itself but also of the process of sharing and shaping their life memories, it became imperative for the artists to anchor their visual narratives in the voices of the four child survivors. Thus, when we read But I Live, we hear the voices of the survivors as they are visually reimagined..." The artists indicate that working with the survivors using an "art-based approach"  helped them recall new memories and facilitated the relationship between the artist and the child survivor. 

But I Live is informative, deeply moving and an important addition to Holocaust literature and is highly recommended for high school students. It demonstrates the varied experience of the Holocaust and retains these experiences and lessons for future generations. The goal is preventative:  that something like the Holocaust never happen again. As Emmie Arbel offers, "My words are especially meant for you, the younger generation: Accept people who are different. And spread good in the world, not bad." Amen.

Book Details:

But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust by Charlotte Schallie
Toronto: New Jewish Press    2022
189 pp.

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

I Must Betray You is a chilling portrayal of life in communist Romania under the brutal regime of Nicolae Ceausescu just as the Soviet and Eastern Bloc are collapsing.

One gray October day in 1989, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu is called to the school office by Comrade Director of MF3 High School. Terrified, Cristian finds himself being blackmailed by an agent of the Securitate, Romania's feared secret police, into becoming a spy. The Secu tells Cristian he knows about his "impressive vintage stamp collection" and that he has sold a vintage Romanian stamp, accepted foreign currency from a foreigner and is therefore guilty of illegal trafficking. Cristian suspects that his best friend, Luca is the one who has informed on him.

Cristian's mother, Mioara, works as a maid to a U.S. diplomat, Nicholas Van Dorn. While waiting for his mother to finish work, Cristian met and became friendly with the diplomat's sixteen-year-old son, Dan: they talked and traded stamps which is illegal in Romania. The Secu, whom he calls "Paddle Hands", threatens Cristian with this knowledge and coerces him into spying for the Secu. Cristian is ordered to "continue to meet with the son of the American diplomat" and "will report details of the diplomat's home and family." He will become an informer, code named "OSCAR". In return, Cristian's grandfather, Bunu will receive medicine to treat his leukemia.

On his way home after meeting with the Secu agent, Cristian encounters Liliana Pavel, the girl he's been trying for days to "co-incidentally" meet after school. She lives in the same building as Cristian's best friend, Luca who has a reputation for being sweet. Liliana is smart, quiet and often goes off to read. As they walk home together, they meet "Starfish" a boy a few years older than Cristian who is involved in the black market. Starfish lost an eye and the thick stitches on his closed eye socket resembled a crooked star. Starfish invites them to his video night on Saturday. To Cristian's surprise, Liliana wants him to come with her.

Cristian, his twenty-year-old sister Cicilia (Cici) who works at a textile factory, his parents, Mioara and Gabriel and his grandfather, Bunu live in a cramped, fourth floor apartment in Bucharest, Romania. Cristian sleeps in the closet by the front door. He keeps a journal hidden under the blankets on the floor. Cristian got the idea for a journal after seeing the notebook that Dan Van Dorn keeps for his college admissions essay. Because people believe that listening devices are hidden everywhere, at home everyone speaks in whispers except for his grandfather, Bunu. They hide Kents - Western cigarettes which are used for bribery, trade or the black market.  On the balconies of the apartments, the "Reporters", women who spy on their neighbours, are ever watchful.

Cristian begins spying on the U.S. Diplomat's son, Dan Van Dorn. Cristian believes he can outwit the agent at his own game so he starts by noting things he believes the Secu agent might be interested in, such as the location of rooms and furniture, information that he believes is harmless. Cristian meets up with Dan Van Dorn again and makes mental notes about the apartment while Dan looks for stamps to trade with Cristian. Dan brings out a sheet block of four U.S. stamps of dinosaurs where one has been mislabelled. Dan tells Cristian that even the U.S. Postal service makes mistakes and points to the light fixture indicating that he knows it is bugged. At this point, Cristian realizes that Dan knows he is under surveillance. He also meets Dan's parents.

At a second meeting with the agent, Cristian tells him about the Van Dorn's apartment and is tasked with noting what's on the father's desk and also to accompany Dan to the American Library.  The next day Cristian and his family, like every other family in Bucharest, must stand in line for anything they want at the Alimentara, the grocery store. It is bitterly cold, and Cristian reflects on how each member of his family takes their turn in the lines.

But when Cristian visits Dan in his home again, he cannot help but notice the stark contrast to his own living conditions. It is warm like summer, there is a large colour TV, and a video player with head phones. The contrast is even more extreme when Cristian watches a home made video of Dan's friends and is stunned to see the inside of a large refrigerator stuffed with food from top to bottom. "All kinds of food. In bottles, cans, cartons, dividers, and drawers. So many colors and quantities. Of food...Fresh. Ripe. Just waiting to be eaten." Cristian realizes that the movie he's watched is of "...real people, in a real house in the West, with real food." When Cristian confronts his mother about what he's seen at the Van Dorn's, she becomes defensive and angry, telling him it's no use dreaming about things they can never have.

At school, after a classmate confesses to being an informer, Cristian realizes that everyone is informing on everyone. "The teacher must be an informer. He informed on the students. The school director was an informer. He informed on the teachers. The secretary was an informer. She informed on the school director. The school director was an informer. He informed on the teachers. The secretary was an informer. She informed on the school director. Luca was an informer. He informed on me. I was an informer. I informed on Americans." This realization makes Cristian wonder if Liliana is an informer. He believes that Liliana leaving school the day they first met up, might be a sign she was also meeting with a Secu. 

Meanwhile at home, Bunu works to repair their broken radio. As he and Cristian discuss communism and the Secu, Bunu reveals that he was paid a visit by someone and given "medicine" to help him and that this was because someone in their home is an informer. He also doesn't know what he was given, if it will help him or kill him. At this point, Cristian believes his grandfather knows he's an informer.

When Liliana and Cristian meet up in the darkened stairwell of his apartment building they discuss what happened in Cristian's class. They hear someone on the stairs and it turns out to be Cristian's mother. When they return to the stairwell, Liliana she wonders if the world knows what is going on in Romania and if they would help them.  Thinking about how they can listen to broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, Cristian considers sneaking his secret notebook to Mr. Van Dorn with a request to send it to Washington. He believes that Ceausescu has fooled the Americans into believing Romania is a successful country. 

At his next meeting with Dan, Mr. Van Dorn writes the word TIME on paper and tells Cristian to look for the most recent edition at the American Library. This leads Cristian to believe that he can share the truth about Romania with him. When Cristian reads TIME Magazine at the American Library, he is stunned to learn that their neighbour, Hungary is free and no longer communist. He knows he has to tell Bunu. As it turns out, Bunu already knows because he's repaired their radio. Listening to Radio Free Europe, Bunu believes East Germany will be next. 

The brutal murder of Bunu leads Cristian to secretly leave Van Dorn his notebook so he can let the world know what is happening in Romania. Cristian's mother tells him that Bunu's murder is a warning to the young people of Romania not to follow in the steps of the other communist countries. Soon freedom spreads throughout the Eastern Bloc, with the fall of communist regimes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.  When protests begin in Romania, at Maria Square in Timisoara, Western Romania, Cristian knows he has to act. He, along with Liliana, Luca and thousands of university students and residents of Budapest, begin protesting. Cristian is quickly drawn into the bloody uprising in Romania. But freedom will come with painful revelations and the loss of a beloved sister.

Discussion

Ruta Sepetys has crafted a brilliant historical fiction novel that effectively portrays the repressive regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu through the eyes of a teen character, seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu. Interspersed in his narrative are the Informer Reports, detailing the activities of Cristian and those around him.

In 1945, the Communists came to power in Romania due to the occupation and intervention of the Soviet Union. Prior to this, there had been a struggle as to whether Romania would adopt Western style democracy or Soviet communism.Fro m 1945 until 1965, Soviet-style communism with its antagonistic approach to the West controlled Romania. In 1965, with the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Rej, Nicolae Ceausescu came to power as leader of Romania's Communist Party. He worked to move Romania away from the Soviet sphere of influence, ending its participation in the Warsaw Pact military alliance and condemning the Soviet Union's invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979. Unlike the Soviet Union and its Bloc countries, Ceausescu was not interested in shutting Romania off from the West: he was friendly towards the United States and signed trade agreements with the European Economic Community.

However this openness did not last. In 1974, Ceausescu became president of Romania but he also became increasingly authoritarian.  Romania had a much-feared secret police, called the Securitate and they began to develop a large network of informers. This caused much fear and division, as people never knew who to trust. It also made any form of resistance almost impossible. The Securitate was responsible for the torture and death of thousands of Romanians. 

Prior to the 1980's, Bucharest had been known as "the Little Paris of the East" for its cobbled streets, tree-lined boulevards, cafes, historic churches and monasteries, and many grand buildings. After the 1977 earthquake, Ceausescu was determined to remake the center of Bucharest into something more modern like what he had seen in North Korea. He demolished many parts of the city center including the Uranus district and levelled the Vacaresti Hill, the location of an ancient monastery. In place of these beautiful and historic buildings, Ceausescu built rows of concrete apartment blocks. He also built a huge, opulent palace while his own people did without the many necessities of life.

In the 1980's life in Romania became almost impossible. In debt to foreign banks, Ceausescu began exporting the country's agricultural and industrial products. As a result, people experienced shortages of food, fuel, medicine, clothing and other necessities. As glasnost and perestroika spread throughout the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the Communist regimes began to fall throughout the Eastern Bloc. A demonstration in Timisoara, in which the Romania army fired on its own people, became the flashpoint for the revolution and fall of the Communist Romanian government and the trial and execution of the Ceausescus.

In I Must Betray You, Ruta Sepetys uses her characters to describe life under Romania's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. Cristian and Liliana Pavel discuss how their beautiful city of Bucharest has been destroyed as they walk home together. Liliana remarks, "My father said that Bucharest used to be called 'Little Paris'. There were trees everywhere, lots of birds, and even Belle Epoque architecture." Cristian recalls that his Bunu once told him that "...Bucharest was once a luxury stop on the Orient Express."

Cristian then describes the reality of what life has become under the repressive regime: "Families, like our family of five, were herded into one-bedroom, ashtray-sized flats. I looked at the cement apartment blocks we passed. Some weren't even finished. They had no doors, no elevators, no stair railings. Similar concrete hulks loomed around the city, gray staircases to nowhere. Concrete walls gave birth to concrete faces."

Even worse than the destruction of beauty is the fear and paranoia of life in Romania during the Ceausescu dictatorship. Like everyone else, Cristian tries to pass unnoticed.  "I pretended to follow the rules. I kept things to myself, like my interest in poetry and philosophy. I pretended other things too...I pretended that studying English was a commitment to my country... Many things were illegal in Romania - including my thoughts and my notebook." However, he soon discovers that no one goes "unnoticed" by the Secu.

Life in Ceausescu's Romania is one where anyone might be an informer. People are blackmailed into becoming an informer on family and friends, hence the title of the novel. When Cristian is sent to meet the Securitate agent he nicknames "Paddle Hands", he is terrified and doesn't know what he might have done to be in this situation. "What had I done? The truth was, most Romanians broke the rules some way or another. There were so many to break. And so many to report that you had broken them."  He learns that somehow the agent knows about his vintage stamp trade with Dan Van Dorn and the dollar he has come to possess. This situation creates a sense of betrayal and paranoia in Cristian, who wonders, "The agent had a file. Who informed on me? I threw a quick glance over my shoulder into the shadows. Was I being followed?"

Cristian being forced into becoming an informer, leaves him deeply conflicted, filled with disgust at not being able to refuse. He doesn't want to be an informer, but does it in the hopes of getting medicine for his beloved Bunu. He must betray Dan, his new American friend. He tries to assuage his conscience by hoping that he can beat the Secu at his own game, but soon learns this is not the case. 

However, the Secu's forcing of Cristian into meeting with Dan has an unintended consequence: it offers him a window into what life is like in a free country like America. Watching a home-made video, Cristian is stunned by the amount of food in a family's refrigerator in America, how people interact freely with one another. He even notices how Mr. and Mrs. Van Dorn show natural affection for one another by their touches and looks, something he's never seen his parents do. He realizes that everything he's been told about America is a lie. 

Sepetys uses the character, Bunu, Cristian's grandfather, to explain how the Ceausescu regime has been able to control the Romanian people. Bunu tells his grandson, "...Ceausescu may be near illiterate, but even I can admit that he's a statesman and a mastermind...And think about it, Cristi, he starts with toddlers. The little ones are just four years old when they're indoctrinated....Four years old. it's cunning."

Bunu is the voice of  truth and courage, telling Cristian, "They steal our power by making us believe we don't have any...But words and creative phrases - they have power, Cristian. Explore that power in your mind." But he also reminds Cristian that the Securitate cannot control what he thinks. Bunu explains to Cristian how he can survive in such a repressive environment. "...You see, communism is a state of mind...The State controls the amount of food we eat, our electricity, our transportation, the information we receive. But with philosophy, we control our minds. What if the internal landscape was ours to build and paint?" 

Later on Bunu tells his son Gabriel, Cristian's father, "Mistrust is a form of terror. The regime pits us against one another. We can't join together in solidarity because we never know whom we can trust or who might be an informer....You see, even out here in the street, you're paranoid to be speaking with your own father! You've become a man without a voice. Mistrust. It's insidious. It causes multiple personality syndrome and rots relationships." 

The reader learns in the Epilogue that Bunu was informed on by his daughter-in-law, Cristian's mother, who hoped to save her two children. His voice of dissent had to be silenced and so he was poisoned by radioactive coffee and then beaten to death as the threat to the regime deepened. Bunu's brutal murder demonstrates how the Ceausescu regime tolerated no resistance, even that of an elderly, dying man. He was murdered because he was able to recognize and counter the lies of the state. 

I Must Betray You is a stunning novel, and a timely one. Romania's experience with Communism mirrored that of most other Eastern Bloc countries and the Soviet Union: food and fuel shortages, rampant poverty, state police who tortured and murdered their own citizens, constant surveillance with almost no personal freedom. It is a reminder of the brutality and inhumanity of Communism at a time when some see it as an plausible alternative to the struggles Western democracies are currently experiencing. As Cristian writes in his notebook that is eventually published, "If communism is such a Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping?" Historical fiction can remind us of the lessons of the past, ones that must not be repeated.

The novel includes many historical, black and white photographs at the back, along with a detailed Author's Note and a Research and Sources section that explains the incredibly detailed research Sepetys undertook to write I Must Betray You. A map of Europe in 1989 opens the novel along with a dedication photograph of Romanian students in 1989. Sepetys's extensive research is evident in the believable characters she has crafted and her realistic portrayal of life in Romania in 1989. I Must Betray You is an absolute must-read!! As author Ruta Sepetys ends her Author's Note: "Together we can give history a voice." 

Book Details:

I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
New York: Philomel Books        2022
319 pp.