Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

I am a pretty fast reader, albeit I do not do speed reading. Nevertheless I like to plough through books for different reasons. In the case of (good) fiction I am curious about the plot and character development to turn the pages fast. When I am reading non-fiction I want to learn as much as I can as fast as I can, along with trying to figure out the main point(s) of the book.

Reading, however Toby Knobel Fluek’s “Memories of my life in a Polish village, 1930-1949” I had to slow down. In order to get the most out of this book I had to savor each page as long as it took to sink in me. There are several reasons for my recommendation for you to do the same. Each page has a reprint of one of the author’s paintings or drawings. You have to take your time to explore the images in order to fully “get” them. Not to mention that the pictures in the first half of the book are fun to look at and explore. Part of the fun was the nostalgic atmosphere they emanated of the old world. By “old world” I refer to both Poland, part of Europe, and also “old” in the sense that these depict pre-Shoah scenes. The text accompanying each picture gives us the memories that inspired the artist to create them. They are written in a simple style using short sentences and not too many, carefully selected adjectives. This style amplifies the longing feeling one gets reading these passages for a simpler times.

In the first four chapters Fluek shows her family, Sabbath preparations, how they celebrated holidays and her family’s neighbors. The second half of the book details the Russian and consequent German occupation and the eventual liberation. In the years covered here Fluek suffered from hunger, cold, loneliness, fear and by the end of the war she lost most of her family. The style of writing and painting did not change form the first half, thus the dissimilarity of the subject matter is providing sharp contrast. If you are ready to encounter the author’s personal recollection of the Shoah do not skip the second half of the book. But, if you only want to submerge to Jewish life in a small Polish village life I recommend reading and looking through the first half. For example here is the painting from page five titled Our Kitchen along with the description.

In this room my mother cooked the meals and baked the bread, and the washwoman did the laundry here. Mother baked the bread for a whole week at a time. The kneading of the dough took a lot of elbow grease; it was done in a large wooden tub. There were two wood-burning stoves for cooking and an oven for baking. Every farmhouse had similar stoves. The poor lived in only one large room like this one, with a bed in the corner.