File:2001 Bruck en.jpg

1st Italian ed. (1959)

{it} Edith Bruck. Who Loves You Like This, tr Thomas Kelso. Philadelphia, Pa.: Paul Dry Books, 2001.

Abstract

"Edith Bruck recreates the hardships of her existence as a Jewish child in Hungary before the Holocaust, the horrors of her time in the camps and the protracted pain and disorientation of her lonely return to normal life after the war ... Passover, 1944. Edith Bruck's family sits in a darkened kitchen isolated from the other villagers by the black cloth on the window, their poverty, and their Judaism. Her mother explains that the Germans have reached their Hungarian village—that they will soon have to endure more than the cries of "Jewstink" and the deprivations that have been their lot for months. The next morning twelve-year-old Edith is roused by shouts of "Wake up! Outside! Quickly! I give you five minutes, you animals!" ... In this memoir, Bruck tells the story of her imprisonment in Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen. She and her older sister endure almost untellable horrors, and hunger so savage that the author tells of ripping bread from another's teeth. The end of the war brings freedom but little security. With no parents and no home, she moves from country to country, from household to household, and from relationship to relationship. In search of peace she and other family members immigrate to Israel, but even there peace eludes her. Bruck avoids both sentimentality and cynicism; she sees with clarity and passion, learns what she needs to survive, and catalogs other lessons for future use. At the end of Who Loves You Like This, she leaves Israel for Rome, where she lives today. In another country and in a foreign language, she finds the words to describe her life—without homeland, family, or native language."--Publisher description.