Summary of Wendy Holden's Born Survivors

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Priska’s parents, Emanuel and Paula Rona, ran a kosher cafés in Zlaté Moravce, a town in the Slovak Republic. Her mother was a goodwife and cook, and her father was a strict disciplinarian who spoke German or Yiddish with her mother whenever he didn’t want his children to understand.
#2 Priska, the daughter, was the fourth in line. She was named Piroska at birth, but was called Priska by her family and friends. She was the first Rona child to attend the local high school, the Gymnázium Janka Král’a.
#3 Priska’s family was very successful, and she enjoyed a comfortable life. She was a teacher, and she and her family were rarely affected by anti-Semitism. However, the economic depression that began in Germany after the First World War began to change the mood across the border in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor.
#4 Hitler’s speeches denounced capitalism and those who’d allied themselves with Bolsheviks, Communists, and Marxists. He promised to eliminate Jews and other undesirables from Germany in a thorough solution.

Sujets

• Jewish
• Jews
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822535930
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Wendy Holden's Born Survivors
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Priska’s parents, Emanuel and Paula Rona, ran a kosher cafés in Zlaté Moravce, a town in the Slovak Republic. Her mother was a goodwife and cook, and her father was a strict disciplinarian who spoke German or Yiddish with her mother whenever he didn’t want his children to understand.

#2

Priska, the daughter, was the fourth in line. She was named Piroska at birth, but was called Priska by her family and friends. She was the first Rona child to attend the local high school, the Gymnázium Janka Král’a.

#3

Priska’s family was very successful, and she enjoyed a comfortable life. She was a teacher, and she and her family were rarely affected by anti-Semitism. However, the economic depression that began in Germany after the First World War began to change the mood across the border in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor.

#4

Hitler’s speeches denounced capitalism and those who’d allied themselves with Bolsheviks, Communists, and Marxists. He promised to eliminate Jews and other undesirables from Germany in a thorough solution.

#5

The Nazis began to strip Jews of their citizenship and arrest those considered asocial or harmful, which included Communists, political activists, alcoholics, prostitutes, beggars, and the homeless.

#6

The Rona family was forced to comply with the new Nazi regime, and they were outcasts overnight. The little things that had always been a part of their lives were taken away, and they had to accept it if they wanted to live.

#7

Priska’s family was banned from running the coffee shop they had built up over sixteen years. They moved to Bratislava, the new capital of the Slovak State, and found an apartment on Špitálska Street.

#8

Priska was introduced to Tibor Löwenbein, a Jewish journalist, by her friend Mimi. He was a little tipsy when they met, and he promised never to touch alcohol again. He was true to his word.

#9

Tibor and Priska were in love, but they were unable to be together because of the Nuremberg Laws. They wrote to each other every day, and Priska kept every one of Tibor’s letters.

#10

The couple were married in 1941, and they lived happily in Bratislava. But the further reverberations of war overshadowed their happiness. On the day after their wedding, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union as part of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa to seize Russian territories.

#11

The Nazi codes were applied more rigorously as the war went on, and the Jewish community in Slovakia began to suffer. Priska and her husband were forced to catalogue all their silver, art, jewelry, and other property, which they then had to deliver to local banks to be confiscated.

#12

The Slovak government agreed to supply 1,000 healthy single women to the Germans, and Priska’s sister was among them. The Rona family was not so lucky, and were arrested on 17 July 1942.

#13

By 1942, the transports East had been halted by the Slovak authorities. The political and religious elite and the Jewish underground had formed an organization called the Bratislava Working Group, which placed enormous pressure on Tiso’s government once they suspected that the majority of the 58,000 Jews it had deported had been sent to their death.

#14

The Slovak National Uprising, an armed insurrection against the fascist regime, began in the Low Tatras on 29 August 1944. It quickly spread, and German Wehrmacht forces were sent to brutally crush it two months later. Thousands died.

#15

On 26 September 1944, the Löwenbeins were dragged from their home and forced into the back of a large black van. They were taken to the large Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Heydukova Strasse, where they were waiting hours with 2,000 other Jews. They were then transferred to the small railway station at Lamač and sent sixty kilometres east to the Sered’ labour and transit camp.

#16

After the Slovak Jews were transported to Sered’, the Nazis began transporting Bratislavan Jews to Auschwitz. The first transportations started almost immediately after Priska and Tibor arrived by bus.

#17

The train journey lasted more than 24 hours as those on board continued to wonder where they were going and if they would be reunited with the loved ones they had been separated from two years earlier. Tibor and Priska decided to name their child Hanka, after her grandmother’s sister, and Miško, after Tibor’s father.

#18

The prisoners were transferred to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Tibor told his wife, Piroška, to stay positive and think only of beautiful things.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Rachel’s family was very religious, and she was raised to believe that she was a Jew, not a Christian. They rarely went to the synagogue, and her father was a self-taught intellectual who loved to read.

#2

The Abramczyks were a happy family, but they were constantly felt to be under threat as Jews in Poland experienced widespread prejudice. The younger generation was talking about leaving to start a new life somewhere without the constant threat of harassment.

#3

Rachel’s father, a wealthy Jew, had been a member of the Jewish National Fund to raise money for land in Palestine. She had been a member of the JNF since she was sixteen years old. She had decided to marry a wealthy man as soon as she could.

#4

Monik and Rachel’s marriage was based on traditional Jewish beliefs, and they had a very wealthy lifestyle in Łódź. They didn’t start a family right away, as they wanted to enjoy each other’s company and help develop the business.

#5

When Poland was invaded by Germany in September 1939, the two families realized that their beautiful life was over. Poland was carved up between the Germans and the Soviets, and many of the Polish Germans who had enthusiastically welcomed Hitler’s army suddenly became German again.

#6

The invasion of Poland led to the creation of the first Jewish ghetto in Europe, in Łódź. The authorities claimed that it was to protect Jews from Aryan attacks, but they actually meant to keep them separate because of the risk of spreading diseases.

#7

The Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 for the city’s Jewish population. The ghetto was the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe. People fled to the border to investigate the possibilities of escaping to a safer country.

#8

By November 1940, all the Jews in Warsaw had been rounded up and forced into the ghetto. Any escapees were shot. The Friedmans’ large apartment was already within the ghetto walls, so they had to leave it. They moved into a smaller apartment with Rachel organizing food for the poor.