Shattered Crystals

The Holocaust Diaries #11

by Mia A. Kanner, Eve Rosenzweig Kugler

Eva Rosensweig Kugler, was born in the German city of HalleanderSaale, where her father owned a prosperous retail business and was a member of small Orthodox community. Raised in a loving Jewish home, she was unaware of the growing threat of Nazism that began in 1933. In November 1938, when she was seven years old, stormtroopers invaded the family home, arrested her father and destroyed his business. The terrifying events of Kristallnacht brought about an amnesia of the Holocaust years that persisted and plagued her for decades, until she asked her mother, Mia Amalia Kanner, to fill in all that happened to the family during the missing years. Shattered Crystals is Mia Amilia Kanner's remarkable story of her Jewish childhood in Leipzig, Germany, her marriage and move to Halle, the birth of her three daughters and how her idyllic life was shattered by the ever increasing anti-Semitic acts and laws after Hitler came to power in 1933. She recounts her husband's visit to Palestine in 1935 and the obstacles that thwarted the family's attempts to emigrate. With her husband's imprisonment in Buchenwald, it fell to Mia to get not only her husband Sal, out of the concentration camp, but to also get her entire family out of Germany. They were miraculously able to escape to Paris, only to be faced with a renewed nightmare of Jewish survival in France following the outbreak of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France. Coping with the rearrest of her husband, Mia faces the agonizing decision of giving up her daughters and begins her live-saving association, the OSE, and their tireless efforts on behalf of Jewish children during the war. Shattered Crystals, the eleventh volume in the C.I.S. Publishers' Holocaust Diaries Collection, is the story of a courageous woman who, with steadfast faith in Heaven, refused to despair but took unbelievable risks while fighting for her own life and that of her family and friends.

Genres: Memoir, Holocaust, Ebooks

Hardcover

First published February 1, 1997

Reviews

[Rene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very impressive account by a Jewish survivor of the Second World War. The Jewish family is originally living in Germany and in that part the book describes all the false hopes that were given before and during the war to Jewish inhabitants. Of course they have to leave Germany later (and they can), but even in France it is difficult to survive. The family even has to split up in order to make a survival more likely.
The writer is not a professional writer, which makes her account very personal and even more impressive. It describes the real situation of Jewish families before during and after the war.
One can think what one wants about this book and its limited literary style, but it is the real thing about how they felt and survived in those dark days. Highly recommended.

[Talya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book written skillfully without a shred of judgmental outlook and with much compassion. The feelings of the main character are described so eloquently that I felt as if I am walking hand in hand with her. This book also gives you a sense of appreciation to things we take for granted, but they are so very precious. For everything we have we should be thankful to our father in heaven that in his love and mercy had bestow upon us so many gifts.

[Eli Mandel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Among the better Holocaust memoirs.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing!!!!!