Behind the Ice Curtain

The Holocaust Diaries #4

by Dina Gablel

Behind the Ice Curtain is the vivid and deeply moving story of a gallant young woman who survived six bleak years of exile in Siberia through courage, intrepid defiance, tenacity and steadfast devotion to her faith.

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The holocaust was like a giant boulder hurled into the pool of Jewish history, the greatest disaster occurring at the point of impact where six million innocent Jews perished under the Nazis. But the secondary ripples spread in ever-widening circles, bringing dispersion and despair to untold numbers of Jews. Many thousands fled eastward, seeking a precarious refuge in the gaping maw of Stalin's Russia; if they were jumping into the frying pan, at least they were escaping the fire. In Russia, particularly on the desolate Siberian steppes, these refugees joined many Polish Jews who had bee deported to Siberia in 1939 when the Russians had occupied eastern Poland.

Behind the Ice Curtain relates the saga of these exiles. Adrift in an inhospitable land, battling hunger and cold, conscripted into forced labor, constantly in terror of the K.G.B., these people suffered the dual trauma of their own struggle for survival and the anxiety over the fate of their loved ones who had fallen into the grasp of the Germans. But in the end, they were the fortunate ones who, for the most part, survived to participate in the rejuvenation of the Jewish people.

On a more personal level, Behind the Ice Curtain is the story of an aristocratic young woman who is deported to Siberia together with her mother following the arrest of her beloved father by the Russians. The book begins with a poignant description of her home and family prior to the war, including many warm and vivid vignettes of the Chafetz Chaim, Reb Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Reb Elchanan Wasserman and many other rabbonim (rabbis) and roshei yeshivah(heads of Jewish religious seminaries) with whom her father maintained close personal relationships. But as the war begins we are presented with vivid images of a different sort - of unwelcome strangers in a harsh land; of chilling encounters with the dreaded K.G.B.; of ten thousand women conscripted to build a railroad across the vast, frozen steppes; of the numbing isolation from the rest of the world, like islands in an endless ocean of snow; and of a gallant young woman, steadfast in her devotion to Torah and mitzvos (commandments), who would not allow her spirit to be crushed.

Genres: Holocaust, Jewish, History, Memoir, Nonfiction

507 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1992

Reviews

[Simon Petlak · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, which is a remarkable first-person account of a wealthy Polish Jewish woman who was exiled to Siberia with her mother from 1939 to 1945, gives you a view of an experience that most modern Jews have never heard about. It's incredibly detailed, which is good (though sometimes maybe a little slow-going), but overall it's a great read. You get a good sense of what it was like to be in Siberia - which made her "lucky" in that she wasn't deported to the death camps, but oh boy! what a grim six years - in forced labor, freezing cold, nearly starving at times, amid vicious anti-Semites and on and on. Her mother never gave up on her Jewish faith, though, always davening and reciting Tehillim. The book also provides many insights into the Soviet system and all its corruption and depravity.

[Oriyah N · Rating 2 out of 5]

My point of comparison for this book was a book I read many times as a young teen; The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia. Beyond the Ice Curtain was longer, meant for a more mature, and more religiously inclined audience. Since I am now older and more religiously inclined, it would make sense that I'd prefer this book at my current stage in life. But I don't.

The book wasn't horrible. If that sounds like a poor recommendation, keep reading. Dina Grabel was older than Esther Hautzig was at the time of her exile, and although their stories had a great deal of overlap in similar experiences, Grabel had a more varied experience, with more transitions, during her time in Siberia.

I found Grabel's memoir to be informative, and at times very interesting. At other times (fewer and far between than the interesting ones) it did tend to plod along. The interesting bits definitely outweighed and justified the reading of the non-interesting bits, it's just that I wish they could have been eliminated. Particularly the flash-backs which seemed out of place could have been put in chronological order for greater interest. The writing style overall wasvery typical of frummy non-fiction literature, and nothing to write home about.

Another thing that stood out for me was Grabel's name dropping. I suppose some readers will find it fascinating that she and her family socialized with some prominent rabbinic personalities, and again, some charming anecdotes were certainly worth mentioning, but I found the name dropping to be both irritating and counter to the modesty that a woman of her religious upbringing surely would have internalized.

Something that stood out to me was the way in which Grabel's family's financial situation before the war seemed to cushion her experience for her a bit, something I don't think the author particularly grasps. I have never been through such hardship, and would never belittle her experience, but logically, an acknowledgement of her possessions and the roads they paved for her would be worthy of noting, and yet such a mention is conspicuously absent. I also found her description of peoples' riches to be vying for attention from her descriptions of their piety.

I have a great deal of respect for the author and her family, both for the hardships they encountered and the choices that they made.

I just didn't find the ride along with them as enjoyable as it could have been.

[Jordan Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I neither liked nor disliked this book. I am always especially interested in reading memoirs, because I feel that they are capable of providing such interesting, realistic pictures of historical events. While a terrible detail in historical fiction may be more strikingly written, when you come across some shocking fact in a memoir, you know it's authentic, and there is something more impacting about that.

"Behind the Ice Curtain" is the story of Dina Shapiro, a Jewish girl who grows up during World War II. Her father is taken away and never seen again in the early days of the war, but her mother stays with her, and the two rely on each other.
Dina never actually experienced the true horrors of the Holocaust, though she did lose her father, her home, and her belongings. She was never near death, or in a concentration camp, but her voice is still sad throughout the book.

I always go into reading memoirs excited, but leave them disappointed. This one was no different. Often, I feel that Holocaust survivors have amazing stories to tell, but cannot quite word them well enough to make an amazing book (with the obvious exception of Elie Wiesel). This one was the opposite. Gabel is a fairly good writer, but her story was not interesting enough to carry itself through without the help of many flashback memories to keep it interesting.

There were a few vivid like pictures here - Dina faking an epileptic seizure to save herself from imprisonment, her memory of convincing her father to buy her a bicycle... There was a very sad paragraph where Dina says she collected bars of soap. They were no ordinary bars of soap, however. All stamped with a letter J, they were made of the melted down body fat of Jews who were burnt alive. Dina buys as many as she can find (26), and later buries them in a Jewish graveyard.

I never quite know how to review these memoirs, because it seems wrong somehow to pick apart and criticize the writing skills of Holocaust survivors.

[rivka · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars