A Cat in the Ghetto

by Rachmil Bryks, S. Morris Engel (Translator)

This is the long unavailable first publication of Bryks' work in English.

Rachmil Bryks's vivid stories portray Jewish life in the Lodz ghetto and at Auschwitz. In a spare and tragicomic style, they illuminate the small and large absurdities that arise at the limits of human endurance—from the cooking of "roast meat" made of cabbage leaves to the predicament of Jews forced to cooperate in the hierarchy of their own annihilation. Deceptively simple and often humorous, these stories nevertheless mirror Bryks's nuanced view of major moral dilemmas of the period: action vs. inaction, preserving dignity vs. survival.

164 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

The son of orthodox parents, Bryks developed his interest in poetry and story writing at a very young age. His first book of poems, Young Green May , was published in 1939. Although shortly thereafter forced into the Lodz ghetto, Bryks continued to write until he was deported to Auschwitz. His caustic descriptions of the Lodz ghetto almost cost him his life, but he was rescued by his cohorts in the ghetto. Most of his family members were murdered during the Holocaust, and one of his surviving brothers was shot by Polish nationalists shortly after the war. Years of slave labor took their toll on Bryks's health, but after liberation he began to write of the Holocaust. Professor Irving Howe, in the preface to Bryks's A Cat in the Ghetto , stated of Bryks's work that "what Rachmil Bryks deals with is not 'mere' literature but the most terrible event in modern life, perhaps the most terrible event of all human history." In the preface to Bryks's Kiddush Hashem , S. Morris Engel, who has translated many of Bryks's works from their original Yiddish into English, referred to Bryks's work as "not just a bukh [book], but rather as sefer , or holy writings."

Kiddush Hashem was published in 1959 and contains the novelettes A Cat in the Ghetto as well as Kiddush Hashem. Kiddush Hashem tells of the hope and desire that fill the minds of those being transported in a crowded train to what they hope will be just a labor camp in Vienna. Instead, the trickery and deceit of the Nazis is revealed to the Jews when they arrive at Auschwitz. Husbands and wives are brutally separated, infants are snatched from their mothers, and Dr. Mengele immediately commences with his selections. Bryks's descriptions of the horrors are explicit and vivid. He does not cut corners in his graphic depictions of the torture inflicted upon the inmates. Hope, however, does not die easily among the inmates of the camp. Engel relates that "they [the Nazis] failed ultimately in the spiritual plane where they hoped to pull down their victims to their depths of depravity."

Bryks has only recently been recognized as a Holocaust writer, thanks to his daughters' immense effort in educating the public on their father's work and life. They have continued to lecture in Israel and Bryks's works are slowly being translated into many other languages, such as German, Swedish, Hebrew, and Polish. Some of his works have been adapted into radio plays and theatrical performances. A Cat in the Ghetto became a film in 1970. Bryks's work can be compared to that of Arnošt Lustig and Elie Wiesel.

Reviews

[Yu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the book that made me think how important is the choice of narration and how important of the translator. I know narrative point of view is important, but I didn't know it can affect the understanding of a book like this.

Again, holocaust memoir, as we learned that Rachmil Bryks suffered and survived Warsaw Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz. He uses a third-person narrative, and it feels like he knows what everybody thinks, and he is watching the whole thing from a panorama, and one question keeps coming, how does he know.

So the holocaust literature, if the author is a survivor, they could only write memoirs in a first-person narrative? Otherwise it is not trust worthy? I dont know. There are too many repetitions in the book, i.e. people keep shouting "This is Auschwitz!", "These days you trust no one with bread",I understand the author wanted to emphasize on what was happening and on the phrases that carved into people's hearts, but it did the opposite. Meanwhile, for the English translator, he/she didn't know the right way of saying the year in English, also, besides several mistakes, it the author really wants to repeat, then at least, the translator should keep the German there. For instance, when they shout "Raus", und "Schnell" etc.

Therefore, it is very hard for this book to reach Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Ruth Klüger's height.

[Sara'la · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ruchmil Bryks, a Yiddish writer, was a Polish Holocaust survivor who lived and re-lived his suffering, insisting it his tafkid, his job in his miraculous survival, to reveal and to remind the world of the horrors of World War II.

With dark humor, achingly painful satire, and simple, direct, minimalistic prose, a technique critical to the cadence, portrait, and depiction of spiritual resistance in the ghetto life of Lodz, and Auschwitz, Bryks created a Vonnegut-esque account of Jewish grief and their collective subliminal hope. Bryks described his humor and satire as being "more tragic, more bitter, more full of gall and wormwood, rendering the heart, bringing tears."

It is POWERFUL. POWERFUL. POWERFUL. If you are going to read Holocaust literature, "The Cat in the Ghetto" demands to be your first stop.

[Lulu]

No rating.

[Hallie Cantor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Painfully riveting stories of the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz, and a sort of eyewitness accounts. Lodz Ghetto was of particular interest to me after my own work editing a book about it. Unlike the more famous Warsaw Ghetto, Lodz Ghetto was completely sealed from the Aryan side. It was ruled by Mordechai Rumkowski, a strange, egotistic man with a thirst for power coupled with ruthless instincts. Convinced that the key to survival lay in productivity, he transformed Lodz Ghetto into one giant factory for the Germans. "His" Jews -- over whom he presided with megalomania -- toiled under dreadful rations and working conditions. In the end Rumkowski, believing himself a savior of the ghetto and leader, turned out to be little more than a puppet for the Nazis, just like all leaders of the various Judenraten. He perished at Auschwitz. However, thanks to his efforts, Lodz Ghetto had the largest number of Polish survivors, as it was the last ghetto in Poland to be liquidated.

The author, who lived there, summons vividly the misery and wretchedness of its dwellers -- dirty, smelly, sick, emaciated, obsessed with food and reduced to eating anything to stay alive. One dweller, a former restaurant owner, tries to bargain with the protagonist for a stray cat. Luckily this cat escaped the fate of probably hundreds of others.

The style is wry, the characters nearly comedic in their interactions and struggles to survive and maintain some kind of dignity. Nevertheless, their humanity shows through. In the second novella, a young mother at Auschwitz (where the author ended up) tries to feed and protect her children. Here the kingdom of death lies in its brutal glory, the presentation of human evil in its fullest form, and a tragic ending. This book should be read during the Three Weeks or Tisha B'Av, the period mourning the destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I.B. Singer: Every page of Bryks’s book is Jewish history. If there had remained as detailed a chronicle of the destruction of the Temple as Bryks succeeded in recording, Jews would read it every Tisha B'Av and shed rivers of tears. It is a sacred duty to buy and read Bryk’s book.