Here you can read online Rena Kornreich Gelissen - Renas Promise full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1996, publisher: Beacon Press, genre: Science fiction. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
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Sent to Auschwitz on the first Jewish transport, Rena Kornreich survived the Nazi death camps for over three years. While there she was reunited with her sister Danka. Each day became a struggle to fulfill the promise Rena made to her mother when the family was forced to split apart--a promise to take care of her sister. One of the few Holocaust memoirs about the lives of women in the camps, Renas Promise is a compelling story of the fleeting human connections that fostered determination and made survival a possibility. From the bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters, to the links between prisoners, and even prisoners and guards, Renas Promise reminds us of the humanity and hope that survives inordinate inhumanity.
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Beacon Press 25 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
1995 by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
"The Story (for Rena)" appears by permission of its author, Annette Allen.
04 03 02 01 00 9 8 7 6 5
Text design by Boskydell Studio Composition by Wilsted & Taylor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gelissen, Rena Kornreich, 1920 Rena's promise : a story of sisters in Auschwitz / Rena Kornreich Gelissen with Heather Dune Macadam. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8070-7070-X (cloth) ISBN 0-8070-7071-8 (paper) 1. Auschwitz (Poland: Concentration camp) 2. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)Personal narratives. 3. Gelissen, Rena Kornreich, 1920- . I. Macadam, Heather Dune. II. Title. D805.P7G45 1995 940.53'18'094386dc20 95-10359 CIP
Page v
Dear Mama and Papa: This book is for you. For fifty years I've been telling you this story in my mind. Now it's finally written down and I won't have to tell it anymore. Love, Rena
And for Danka: Without you there would be no story.
Page vii
It goes on burning in the bones, in the brain, years after, smoke still rising behind the walls, even on May second, a birthday to liberate all others. In Poland, though the stone well-water near Tylicz never ceases, it never soothes the smoldering, nor the fearful dreams fueling sleep.
For months a redwood tree can flame the fire that consumes it, burning a black scar to its core. Within the burnt sepulchre, as if a miracle, seeds bearing a young tree begin to green. Let us sift the ashes for new life, for the story forged in suffering; where the birth into language is as terrifying as fire or love. ANNETTE ALLEN The Story (for Rena)
Page ix
Contents
Prologue
xi
Tylicz
1
Slovakia
19
Auschwitz
55
Birkenau (Auschwitz II)
97
Stabsgebade (Staff Quarters)
197
Nestadt Glewe
255
Epilogue
267
Acknowledgments
273
Bibliography
275
Page xi
Prologue
I touch the scar on my left forearm, just below the elbow. I had the tattoo surgically removed. There were so many people who didn't know and so many questions: "What do those numbers mean?" "Is that your address?" "Is that your phone number?"
What was I supposed to say"That was my name for three years and forty-one days"?
One day a kind doctor offered to remove it for me. "This is not charity," he assured me. "It is the least I can do as an American Jew. You were there, I was not."
So I chose to have the questions excised from my arm, but not my mindthat can never be erased. The piece of skin the doctor surgically removed rests in a jar of formaldehyde which has turned the flesh to an eerie green. The tattoo has probably faded by now, I haven't checked. I need no reminders. I know who I am. I know what I was.
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