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Holocaust Survivor True Stories WWII #1
Among the Reeds: The true story of how a family survived the Holocaust
During the dark days of the Holocaust, a Jewish family struggles to survive
When her son was born, Tammy Bottner experienced flashbacks of being hunted by the Nazis. The strange thing is, these experiences didn't happen to her. They happened to her grandmother decades earlier and thousands of miles away.
Back in Belgium, Grandma Melly made unthinkable choices in order to save her family during WWII, including sending her two-year-old son, Bottner's father, into hiding in a lonely Belgian convent. Did the trauma that Tammy Bottner's predecessors experience affect their DNA? Did she inherit the "memories" of the war-time trauma in her very genes?
In this moving family memoir, told partly from Melly's perspective, the author, a physician, recounts the saga of her family's experiences during the Holocaust. This tale, part history, part scientific reflection on epigenetics, takes the reader on a journey that may read like a novel, but is all the more fascinating for being true.
When her son was born, Tammy Bottner experienced flashbacks of being hunted by the Nazis. The strange thing is, these experiences didn't happen to her. They happened to her grandmother decades earlier and thousands of miles away.
Back in Belgium, Grandma Melly made unthinkable choices in order to save her family during WWII, including sending her two-year-old son, Bottner's father, into hiding in a lonely Belgian convent. Did the trauma that Tammy Bottner's predecessors experience affect their DNA? Did she inherit the "memories" of the war-time trauma in her very genes?
In this moving family memoir, told partly from Melly's perspective, the author, a physician, recounts the saga of her family's experiences during the Holocaust. This tale, part history, part scientific reflection on epigenetics, takes the reader on a journey that may read like a novel, but is all the more fascinating for being true.
232 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2017
1768 people are currently reading
2338 people want to read
About the author
Tammy Bottner
3 books45 followersMy "day job" is being a pediatric and adolescent/ integrative medicine physician in a small city north of Boston.
This is my first book.
As the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors I have always felt a strong connection with the experiences my father and his parents went through during WW2. In fact, I experienced flashbacks of a sort when my first child was born.
In this book I relay the extraordinary series of events that allowed my family to evade annihilation at the hands of the Nazis. I also explore epigenetics - the study how trauma and other life events changes our DNA, and how these modified genes are passed along to subsequent generations - like myself.
This is my first book.
As the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors I have always felt a strong connection with the experiences my father and his parents went through during WW2. In fact, I experienced flashbacks of a sort when my first child was born.
In this book I relay the extraordinary series of events that allowed my family to evade annihilation at the hands of the Nazis. I also explore epigenetics - the study how trauma and other life events changes our DNA, and how these modified genes are passed along to subsequent generations - like myself.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
July 16, 2017
This is an exquisitely written book which describes the unthinkable challenges faced by the author's family during the time of the Holocaust. The story is primarily set in Belgium but follows the characters to many other setting as well. One feels present as the characters struggle to survive the attempted genocide of all Jews during World War II. The loss of life and lack of humanity, as well as the damage to the Jewish culture, and near success of the Hitler regime is astonishing and shameful. Through sheer force of will, luck, perseverance, and love; however several of the author's relatives survive. Dr. Bottner graces us with an intimate portrait of her family, including sharp insights into the continued effects of trauma, which is passed on to the following generations. A beautiful and insightful true story.... strongly recommend!!!!
August 16, 2017
Among the Reeds: The True Story of How a Family Survived the Holocaust is by Tammy Bottner. Tammy tells the story of her Grandparents and her Father as they managed to survive the Holocaust. She took the stories her Grandmother had told her, her Father’s stories, stories of other relatives, and research on the places mentioned in the stories and created their story. It is a painful story to read because of the Holocaust, of course, but also because of the unhappiness of her Grandmother throughout her life. It definitely shows the culture of Jewish life before the war and how customs conspired against Melly.
Melly was born to Polish Jews who were trying to find a more peaceful place to live. They were on their way to Germany when Melly made her appearance on September 30, 1921. Since she was born in Leignitz, Germany, she became a German citizen at birth. Melly’s Father was greatly disappointed that she was a girl and this set the tone for their relationship. Melly was also born a pessimist. She was sad and unhappy for most of her life. Having a Father that took his disappointment out on her and treated her like both a son and daughter didn’t help. Melly took some of her anger out on her sister Inge through incessant teasing. When her brother Nathan was born, she was both relieved and resentful of how her Father fawned over Nathan. Eventually, her Father left the family and went to Holland intending to send for them. Her Mother had to find a way to raise the three children by herself with no income. From a privileged childhood to one of poverty was a huge move for Melly. Melly finally moved across the street from her Mother to give herself some space. However, the owner came to her room and attempted to rape her. Melly got away and went home. Soon after that, her Mother informed Melly that she was to be married. Melly was married to a peasant from Galacia and her life really changed. Genek was entranced by Melly but the marriage was not based on love. However, they stayed together through the Holocaust and the many moves they made in their life afterwards.
They eventually moved to Brussels, Belgium where they lived during the Holocaust. They lived as non-Jews in the open. To keep their beloved son safe, they placed him with the Jewish Resistance who in turn place him in a convent. Here bewildered two-year-old Bobby lived in darkness and without affection for two years. He only spoke Yiddish and German and the nuns spoke French. When her daughter, Irene, was born, she too was placed with the Resistance. She was place in an individual home and her “parents” had no idea she was Jewish.
This book is good and one that should be read. It isn’t easy to read; but it is essential. Tammy has managed to make us feel the anguish her Grandparents felt in sending their children off and the pain that resulted when they returned. The distance between Melly and Irene was never breached. Bobby had problems his entire life due to his placement in the convent. How does a child recover from the feelings of abandonment when he has no idea why he is being sent away? This book really makes you think about how you would react to a situation like this. Could you send your child off with a strange woman and not know where he will be nor how long he will be gone? Did you do the right thing?
July 5, 2017
A book everyone should read.
I'm so glad to have read this book! I will never forget the Bottner family, and the way the author went into such detail. I felt at times that I was right there with all of them, going through what they went through. How each character is brought to life, I feel as if I got to know them personally.
I'm so glad to have read this book! I will never forget the Bottner family, and the way the author went into such detail. I felt at times that I was right there with all of them, going through what they went through. How each character is brought to life, I feel as if I got to know them personally.
September 20, 2017
Unless you have a heart of stone, you could not help but be moved by the subject of this book. Tales of bravery against harrowing atrocities, you almost cannot believe it, and then you remember that this actually happened. I would encourage you to read this book if you aim to learn more about this dark period of our history and are looking for a different perspective than that of Anne Frank's. However, I would absolutely urge you to read Anne's diary at all costs. Highly recommended for anyone interested in holocaust literature.
July 3, 2017
An book that will truly touch your heart
The reader might think "yet another book about the Holocaust", however this book is most certainly worth reading. The idea of epigenetics is fascinating & the author explains this phenomenon in easy to understand language.
Following this family's unique journey to & from Israel is often heartbreaking; the mental & emotional anguish is monumental. Well written - thank you Tammy for sharing this story.
The reader might think "yet another book about the Holocaust", however this book is most certainly worth reading. The idea of epigenetics is fascinating & the author explains this phenomenon in easy to understand language.
Following this family's unique journey to & from Israel is often heartbreaking; the mental & emotional anguish is monumental. Well written - thank you Tammy for sharing this story.
August 4, 2017
A Must Read
Incredible story and extremely well written.
This book puts you in the heart of the Holocaust, reminding you of the brutality and the bravery.
I'm consumed with learning more about this time period and this book took me there in a way I haven't felt before.
Thanks to Tammy Bottner for sharing her Family's story.
Incredible story and extremely well written.
This book puts you in the heart of the Holocaust, reminding you of the brutality and the bravery.
I'm consumed with learning more about this time period and this book took me there in a way I haven't felt before.
Thanks to Tammy Bottner for sharing her Family's story.
August 15, 2017
Enlightening
I enjoy reading about WWII. This is the first survivor's story I have read which tells about hidden children. This book is well written. A true story that will keep the reader engrossed.
I enjoy reading about WWII. This is the first survivor's story I have read which tells about hidden children. This book is well written. A true story that will keep the reader engrossed.
July 14, 2017
Knowing
It's incredible what these families had to go through. No one knew. There are no points disliked. This is a well written book.
It's incredible what these families had to go through. No one knew. There are no points disliked. This is a well written book.
April 15, 2019
The author experienced nightmares when she went through pregnancy, childbirth and having had no reasons to do so, living safe as they were in U.S., except - as she realised - the nightmares and fears had to do with the experiences of her grandparents who had gone through holocaust era in Europe, and she as a child had heard elders talk about their lives albeit not told by them. She wondered if those fears had become part of the DNA, and thus collected the memories of those who she could speak to, added to general known facts.
About Belgium, and everything she writes, it's very informative, of course, but when it comes to the decree of wearing the yellow star on sleeve, there is one bit she doesn't mention that's publicised elsewhere - namely, that the king went out wearing one, thus declaring he was against the antisemitic decree, and Jews of Belgium fared better than, for instance, those of Holland. What she does say is true though:-
"The French Belgians were among the most supportive in Europe when it came to helping the Jewish people during the war. The Flemish Belgians were much less inclined to help the Jews, and in next-door Holland the Dutch tended to support the Nazi anti-Jewish machine. The French in France, ironically, did not support the Jews for the most part; in that country the Germans easily tapped into the society’s anti-Semitic base. Of course, there were outliers in every country, but these were the general trends. It is hard to make sense of these patterns, but the realization that the local peoples’ attitudes could make such a huge difference in the outcome of the Nazis’ plans is chilling, particularly as so few countries came to the Jews’ aid.
Hitler and his henchman Eichmann were adept at assessing and manipulating the locals’ attitude toward their Jewish neighbors. In countries like Poland and the Ukraine, where anti-Semitism was rampant, and violence entrenched, the Nazis handily whipped the masses into an anti-Jewish frenzy within days of taking power. In these occupied countries, where young men felt inadequate under foreign rule, the Jews were an easy target. The Germans didn’t even have to do their own dirty work – locals were happy enough to stage pogroms, rounding up Jews for humiliation and torture. In Lvov, for example, a brutal pogrom took four thousand Jewish lives in the first week of German occupation. Later in the war, in Vichy France, a special French police division, the Milice, was formed in this unoccupied, allegedly “free” zone, specifically to hunt for and arrest Jews.
"In Belgium the Germans implemented their anti-Jewish laws more slowly, but by September 1942 they had begun rounding Jews up for deportation. While initially claiming to be transporting these people to work details, the brutality of the roundups, and the inclusion of the elderly and the infirm, children and babies, made the deportations’ sinister conclusions fairly obvious to anyone with the courage to face the truth.
"In fact, the Belgian Resistance movement had sent a young man, Victor Martin, to Germany, as a spy in February of 1943. He was traveling on an academic pretext, but his true mission was to find out the fate of the thousands of Jews being transported by cattle cars to the east. He returned with the news “people are being burned.” This first-hand information about mass extermination in German death camps confirmed the fears that those who were deported would not be coming back. His sinister report contributed to many Jews’ decision to hide their children in Belgium. Victor Martin was eventually captured by the Nazis, but managed to escape from two different concentration camps, and to lead a normal life after the war."
And this further detail of fact contradicts the supposedly effect of the dramatic show of solidarity by the king:-
"The trucks carrying Jews, and other “unsavory” people arrested by the Gestapo, took the prisoners first to an internment camp. The Germans had built a “transit camp,” a way station, for Belgian deportees in the city of Mechelen (Malines in French), located midway between Antwerp and Brussels, the two cities home to most of the Belgian Jews. From Malines, trains full of prisoners, called transports, each carrying a thousand people, left regularly for the killing camps, most to Auschwitz. A total of twenty-eight such trains, each carrying a thousand people, departed Malines with their human cargo between the summers of 1942 and 1944."
As the rounding up came closer, they tried to save the young:-
"We all knew about the Resistance. There were people, Jews and non-Jews, who were clandestinely fighting the Germans. We heard that there were ways to get help, ways to hide Jewish children.
"Can you comprehend the desperation we were in? Here was our choice: keep our child at home and know that, if we were captured by the Gestapo, as was likely, he would be killed along with us. Maybe we would have to endure seeing him killed before our eyes. Maybe they would torture him and make us watch. Or, we could give him up to strangers, knowing nothing about who would care for him, but hopefully saving his life. If we chose the latter option, it was likely he would grow up without parents, because it didn’t look likely we would make it. The best possible scenario, the one we prayed for, was that the war would end, we would survive, and be reunited with our boy.
"What made this decision even more heartbreaking was Bobby’s young age. He was too little to understand what we were going to do, or why. There was no way to prepare him for what was coming.
"With my brother Nathan, of course, it was easier. At fourteen, he was capable of taking care of himself, of understanding what was going on. He could communicate, he could make decisions. He didn’t even seem like a child, although technically he was one. We knew Nathan could take care of himself.
"But Bobby. Bobby was two. Thinking about giving him up made my entire body shake. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Desperately I vowed that I would survive. I would not allow my child to grow up an orphan. So maybe Bobby saved my life. Because I was so low, so consumed by blackness, that I would likely have given up if I hadn’t had my child to live for."
About the young woman, a school teacher, who she sent off her two year old son with:-
"As the horrific roundups of Jews escalated in the summer of 1942, Andree met members of the secret Resistance movement. Wanting to do something to help save the children, she decided to join the underground effort despite the risks to her personal safety. And the risks were great. The Nazi regime demanded absolute obedience. Anyone arrested for potential sabotage against the Nazis could expect brutal and sadistic retribution. Yet many intrepid souls risked their lives to do whatever they could to undermine the hated regime.
"One of her recruiters was a woman named Ida Sterno. Sterno was part of the CDJ, a small group within the Belgian Resistance devoted to helping Jews. Sterno realized that, with her affinity for kids and her blonde hair and blue eyes, Andree would be a perfect “escort,” a courier to accompany children to safe houses. She was given the code name, “Claude Fournier,” by which all her contacts in the CDJ, as well as the parents of hidden children, would know her.
"Her job was to transport children from their families’ homes to their hiding places. This was a dangerous job, and an emotionally wrenching one. Andree was given an address and some brief instructions. She arrived at a home and had to take a child, or two, often very young, away from their parents. Always she arrived to a scene of tearful separation. The little children would cling to their mothers. The older ones would often be the ones comforting their parents."
Two year old Bobby was heartbroken at being sent away, and was very sick, while his mother was so heartsick she didnt notice her pregnancy until pointed out by her sister Inge whose escape herself was nothing short of miracle. Irene was born and Bobby brought back, and got better, but of course the children had to be both sent into hiding.
"Irene was loved and well cared-for by the only parents she knew as a baby and toddler. Her world, unlike that of her brother’s, was a secure and happy place. Having been separated from Melly and Genek at only three months of age she had no memory of them, no knowledge of their existence. She was completely content growing up as the little Bouchat girl, the adored adopted baby of a loving Catholic family. These first two years of her life, ironically, would be the happiest of the next two decades."
There are lovely photographs at this point of the various people across generations, and it's quite heartening to see them, especially of the children who did survive.
The author's grandfather Genek Bottner hailed from Lvov in Galicia and had relocated to Belgium alone, having walked all the way with another friend - being Jewish, they would be in danger if found travelling - and now had no news of his family back in Lvov as the war progressed.
"It is ironic that Stalin’s government, virulently anti-Semitic, would inadvertently save over two hundred thousand Polish Jews’ lives. Beginning in 1940, the Soviets deported over a million Poles, including Jews, into remote areas of the Soviet Union as slave laborers. Many of these men worked under grueling physical conditions in Siberia and Eurasia. However, some of these Jews survived the war; they were some of the only Polish Jews who did. The rest, over three million Polish Jews who were not deported by the Soviets, perished in the Holocaust."
The only person from his family who survived was his youngest brother who joined the Russian army, just before Germany invaded for a second time, this time in the process of going against Russia.
"When the Germans took control of Lvov they renamed the city Lemberg. Despite its now-German name, however, the city continued to be a hotbed of opposition, and strife between ethnic groups. The streets erupted in violence between Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Germans. Even the brutal Nazis had a hard time retaining order. The Nazi regime decided to give the people a common enemy.
"The Germans circulated a rumor that the Jews had executed Ukrainian political prisoners. This rumor sparked massive pogroms by Ukrainian nationals living in Lvov, as well as support for the killing of Jews by Einsatzgruppe C.
"The Einsatzgruppen were mobile death squads composed of German Secret Police (S.S. or Gestapo). These battalion-sized squads travelled from city to city right behind the advancing German army. Their express directive was to kill all “undesirables” in the area the army had invaded. The squads were supported by vans carrying food and ammunition, just as any fighting force would be. They were very well organized. There were four main squads, A,B,C, and D, each assigned a specific area of Poland and Ukraine. As they reached a city, the S.S. rounded up the “undesirables” – mostly Jews, some Roma, some political prisoners – and marched them to predesignated killing sites in the nearby forests. The victims were forced to strip, hand over all their valuables, stand at the edge of a mass grave, and wait to be shot. Sometimes the victims were forced to dig their own graves prior to being murdered. At first the Einsatzgruppen targeted mostly Jewish men, but soon included women and children in this ghastly execution scheme. By 1943, the Einsatzgruppe squads would kill over a million people, mostly by shooting, and later in mobile gas vans."
"Within two weeks of the Nazis’ arrival in Lvov, four thousand Jews had been murdered in the streets in massive pogroms. Countless more were shot by the roving death squads. There is no record of exactly how many people were killed, or where, by Einsatzgruppe C, as the squad carried out its demonic deeds in the city.
"The following month another pogrom called the Petilura Days resulted in another two thousand Jewish murders in Lvov in just two days. Women were raped, men were beaten, synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses were destroyed and looted in an orgy of violence."
And killings weren't enough, at that.
"In August 1941 the Nazis demanded that the Jewish population of Lvov pay a ransom of a staggering twenty-million rubles. The understanding was that paying this ransom would protect the Jewish community from harm. The Nazis took many Jews as hostages to ensure that this sum would be raised. Somehow the Jewish community was able to collect enough funds to pay this enormous fine, on time, but once the Nazis had received the ransom they killed the Jewish hostages anyway. In October 1941 Dr. Parnes was also killed because he was not cooperative enough with the “handing over” of Jews for deportation to the Janowska concentration camp. He was quickly replaced by another prominent Jew.
In November 1941 the Germans established a ghetto in Lvov, relocating tens of thousands of Jews into a small area surrounded by barbed-wire fences, where overcrowding, disease, and malnutrition were the rule. Some five thousand sick and elderly Jews were killed during this relocation, by Nazi soldiers and by Ukrainian hooligans who hated the Jews as much as the Nazis did. Many more Jews subsequently died in the ghetto due to the abysmal living conditions. The ghetto was periodically raided by the Nazis, who seized Jews for deportation, or killed them right there in the ghetto. Following the raids, the Jews still living outside the ghetto were then forced to move in. There were periodic attempts by the Lvov Jews over the next years to resist and fight, but, with few exceptions, these efforts were quickly and ruthlessly quashed.
"Next came the mass deportation of Jews to labor camps and to concentration camps. The Belzec camp received over fifty thousand Jews, and Janowska camp was a close second-place recipient.
"The Lvov ghetto lasted about two years. In 1943 the Nazis “liquidated” it, sending any remaining survivors to Auschwitz or other killing camps, or marching them into the forest to be shot.
"Of the original hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants, as well as an additional hundred thousand Jewish refugees who had moved to Lvov prior to the Nazi occupation, only a handful were still alive when the Lvov ghetto was destroyed in late 1943. Even fewer were alive when the Soviet Army liberated the city in 1944.
"Among those who perished were Yehudah and Beila Bottner, and two of their four sons, Joseph and Ephraim, as well as grandparents, scores of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and hundreds of friends.Old people, young ones, children, babies, all were gone. Religious, secular, Hassidic, Zionist, agnostic, atheist – it made no difference. If they were Jewish they were doomed. There are no known records of precisely where and when the Bottner family died. Probably they were either killed in a pogrom, shot in the killing fields around Lvov by the Nazis, or deported to Belzec concentration camp and killed there.
"Yehudah and his two sons did survive long enough to relocate to the Lvov ghetto. Work cards with their names on can be found in the archives in the Holocaust Museum. But Beila (Berta) disappeared – perhaps she died of natural causes, perhaps she was killed in a pogrom or in the relocation process. The very last communication from her was in April 1940 in a telegram. Genek had sent his parents notification of little Bobby’s birth and Berta replied via telegram, sending congratulations. Genek’s one solace was that his parents did know they had a grandson. They would never meet him, but Genek would later say that he hoped it had brought them a little joy."
Genek was caught, but was sent to work as slave labour in a factory, instead of a death camp.
"The Germans used forced labor (slave labor) in every country they occupied. Most of these laborers were transported from their own countries into Germany to work in factories, agriculture, or construction projects. Two hundred thousand people were conscripted from the tiny country of Belgium alone. From larger countries, many more people were seized and sent to work as slaves. Slave labor was a mainstay in the Nazi economy; millions of people were used as slaves by the Nazi regime during the war. Jews and other subhuman undesirables were worked literally to death, but other prisoners served as free labor as well."
One shocking revelation is about a now well known brand:-
"It is not known which factory he was sent to, or the exact date, but he would later tell Bobby of the three months he had spent working as a forced laborer for the Nazis. He was a skilled furrier; most likely the Germans took advantage of this skill and had him working in a garment factory, probably helping to sew uniforms for German soldiers. It is possible he worked at Hugo Boss, a clothing company that made Nazi war uniforms, that would later become a fashion giant. The only reason he was not killed or sent to Malines and then to Auschwitz was that somehow he avoided being recognized as a Jew. He probably passed as a Christian Pole."
Melly was frantic with worry but stuck to the careful precautions they had worked out beforehand, just in case.
"Genek, meanwhile, spent three months as a virtual slave. The workers were given little food and very little rest. Their hours were long, from before dawn until well after dark, seven days a week. They lived in abysmal conditions in cold, damp, rodent-infested cramped rooms. Their Nazi slave masters forced them to stand at attention for hours for roll-call, beat them with riding crops if they didn’t move quickly enough when ordered to do something, and demanded unquestioning obedience. They were given work quotas and were threatened with beatings, or worse, if they didn’t meet them."
He was smart enough and lucky enough to escape. The couple met, went safely to one of their flats, and a while later, desperate to see their son, went to meet him. Heartbreaking description.
This author makes this work an account enough to give a good basic idea of the times. When allies finally arrived in Brussels,
"Desperate Nazis, realizing their time was up, spent their final hours of occupation destroying people and evidence. They executed prisoners even as the British troops made their way into the city. Retreating Nazi soldiers set fire to the Palace of Justice in the center of Brussels, hoping to destroy documents that could be used against them by the Allies. But as the stately building burned, hundreds of Belgians organized themselves into a human chain, rescuing documents by passing them from one person to the next."
Genek went to fetch Bobby, walking seventy miles. On the way back they got a lift on a truck in a U.S. soldiers' convoy.
"They spoke some language he had never heard before; he couldn’t understand what they said. And one of them had a chocolate-colored face. He had never seen a man that color before. Maybe he had eaten too much chocolate? But they were nice."
Irene brought back home at two was traumatised, and never got reconciled to her mother. Melly returned and married someone, Nathan was involved with Jewish homeland, but Inge was first, going to meet someone from Palestine.
"Jewish entry into Palestine was severely restricted at this time. Even after the destruction of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population in the Holocaust, Britain, bowing to Arab pressure, was turning away or imprisoning Jews attempting to enter Palestine. When Inge’s ship arrived in Haifa, Inge and the other Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe were brought to a detention camp in Atlit, just south of the port of Haifa, by the British authorities. Luckily she was only detained there briefly."
They migrated to Palestine, and Bottner family to Canada.
About Belgium, and everything she writes, it's very informative, of course, but when it comes to the decree of wearing the yellow star on sleeve, there is one bit she doesn't mention that's publicised elsewhere - namely, that the king went out wearing one, thus declaring he was against the antisemitic decree, and Jews of Belgium fared better than, for instance, those of Holland. What she does say is true though:-
"The French Belgians were among the most supportive in Europe when it came to helping the Jewish people during the war. The Flemish Belgians were much less inclined to help the Jews, and in next-door Holland the Dutch tended to support the Nazi anti-Jewish machine. The French in France, ironically, did not support the Jews for the most part; in that country the Germans easily tapped into the society’s anti-Semitic base. Of course, there were outliers in every country, but these were the general trends. It is hard to make sense of these patterns, but the realization that the local peoples’ attitudes could make such a huge difference in the outcome of the Nazis’ plans is chilling, particularly as so few countries came to the Jews’ aid.
Hitler and his henchman Eichmann were adept at assessing and manipulating the locals’ attitude toward their Jewish neighbors. In countries like Poland and the Ukraine, where anti-Semitism was rampant, and violence entrenched, the Nazis handily whipped the masses into an anti-Jewish frenzy within days of taking power. In these occupied countries, where young men felt inadequate under foreign rule, the Jews were an easy target. The Germans didn’t even have to do their own dirty work – locals were happy enough to stage pogroms, rounding up Jews for humiliation and torture. In Lvov, for example, a brutal pogrom took four thousand Jewish lives in the first week of German occupation. Later in the war, in Vichy France, a special French police division, the Milice, was formed in this unoccupied, allegedly “free” zone, specifically to hunt for and arrest Jews.
"In Belgium the Germans implemented their anti-Jewish laws more slowly, but by September 1942 they had begun rounding Jews up for deportation. While initially claiming to be transporting these people to work details, the brutality of the roundups, and the inclusion of the elderly and the infirm, children and babies, made the deportations’ sinister conclusions fairly obvious to anyone with the courage to face the truth.
"In fact, the Belgian Resistance movement had sent a young man, Victor Martin, to Germany, as a spy in February of 1943. He was traveling on an academic pretext, but his true mission was to find out the fate of the thousands of Jews being transported by cattle cars to the east. He returned with the news “people are being burned.” This first-hand information about mass extermination in German death camps confirmed the fears that those who were deported would not be coming back. His sinister report contributed to many Jews’ decision to hide their children in Belgium. Victor Martin was eventually captured by the Nazis, but managed to escape from two different concentration camps, and to lead a normal life after the war."
And this further detail of fact contradicts the supposedly effect of the dramatic show of solidarity by the king:-
"The trucks carrying Jews, and other “unsavory” people arrested by the Gestapo, took the prisoners first to an internment camp. The Germans had built a “transit camp,” a way station, for Belgian deportees in the city of Mechelen (Malines in French), located midway between Antwerp and Brussels, the two cities home to most of the Belgian Jews. From Malines, trains full of prisoners, called transports, each carrying a thousand people, left regularly for the killing camps, most to Auschwitz. A total of twenty-eight such trains, each carrying a thousand people, departed Malines with their human cargo between the summers of 1942 and 1944."
As the rounding up came closer, they tried to save the young:-
"We all knew about the Resistance. There were people, Jews and non-Jews, who were clandestinely fighting the Germans. We heard that there were ways to get help, ways to hide Jewish children.
"Can you comprehend the desperation we were in? Here was our choice: keep our child at home and know that, if we were captured by the Gestapo, as was likely, he would be killed along with us. Maybe we would have to endure seeing him killed before our eyes. Maybe they would torture him and make us watch. Or, we could give him up to strangers, knowing nothing about who would care for him, but hopefully saving his life. If we chose the latter option, it was likely he would grow up without parents, because it didn’t look likely we would make it. The best possible scenario, the one we prayed for, was that the war would end, we would survive, and be reunited with our boy.
"What made this decision even more heartbreaking was Bobby’s young age. He was too little to understand what we were going to do, or why. There was no way to prepare him for what was coming.
"With my brother Nathan, of course, it was easier. At fourteen, he was capable of taking care of himself, of understanding what was going on. He could communicate, he could make decisions. He didn’t even seem like a child, although technically he was one. We knew Nathan could take care of himself.
"But Bobby. Bobby was two. Thinking about giving him up made my entire body shake. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Desperately I vowed that I would survive. I would not allow my child to grow up an orphan. So maybe Bobby saved my life. Because I was so low, so consumed by blackness, that I would likely have given up if I hadn’t had my child to live for."
About the young woman, a school teacher, who she sent off her two year old son with:-
"As the horrific roundups of Jews escalated in the summer of 1942, Andree met members of the secret Resistance movement. Wanting to do something to help save the children, she decided to join the underground effort despite the risks to her personal safety. And the risks were great. The Nazi regime demanded absolute obedience. Anyone arrested for potential sabotage against the Nazis could expect brutal and sadistic retribution. Yet many intrepid souls risked their lives to do whatever they could to undermine the hated regime.
"One of her recruiters was a woman named Ida Sterno. Sterno was part of the CDJ, a small group within the Belgian Resistance devoted to helping Jews. Sterno realized that, with her affinity for kids and her blonde hair and blue eyes, Andree would be a perfect “escort,” a courier to accompany children to safe houses. She was given the code name, “Claude Fournier,” by which all her contacts in the CDJ, as well as the parents of hidden children, would know her.
"Her job was to transport children from their families’ homes to their hiding places. This was a dangerous job, and an emotionally wrenching one. Andree was given an address and some brief instructions. She arrived at a home and had to take a child, or two, often very young, away from their parents. Always she arrived to a scene of tearful separation. The little children would cling to their mothers. The older ones would often be the ones comforting their parents."
Two year old Bobby was heartbroken at being sent away, and was very sick, while his mother was so heartsick she didnt notice her pregnancy until pointed out by her sister Inge whose escape herself was nothing short of miracle. Irene was born and Bobby brought back, and got better, but of course the children had to be both sent into hiding.
"Irene was loved and well cared-for by the only parents she knew as a baby and toddler. Her world, unlike that of her brother’s, was a secure and happy place. Having been separated from Melly and Genek at only three months of age she had no memory of them, no knowledge of their existence. She was completely content growing up as the little Bouchat girl, the adored adopted baby of a loving Catholic family. These first two years of her life, ironically, would be the happiest of the next two decades."
There are lovely photographs at this point of the various people across generations, and it's quite heartening to see them, especially of the children who did survive.
The author's grandfather Genek Bottner hailed from Lvov in Galicia and had relocated to Belgium alone, having walked all the way with another friend - being Jewish, they would be in danger if found travelling - and now had no news of his family back in Lvov as the war progressed.
"It is ironic that Stalin’s government, virulently anti-Semitic, would inadvertently save over two hundred thousand Polish Jews’ lives. Beginning in 1940, the Soviets deported over a million Poles, including Jews, into remote areas of the Soviet Union as slave laborers. Many of these men worked under grueling physical conditions in Siberia and Eurasia. However, some of these Jews survived the war; they were some of the only Polish Jews who did. The rest, over three million Polish Jews who were not deported by the Soviets, perished in the Holocaust."
The only person from his family who survived was his youngest brother who joined the Russian army, just before Germany invaded for a second time, this time in the process of going against Russia.
"When the Germans took control of Lvov they renamed the city Lemberg. Despite its now-German name, however, the city continued to be a hotbed of opposition, and strife between ethnic groups. The streets erupted in violence between Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and Germans. Even the brutal Nazis had a hard time retaining order. The Nazi regime decided to give the people a common enemy.
"The Germans circulated a rumor that the Jews had executed Ukrainian political prisoners. This rumor sparked massive pogroms by Ukrainian nationals living in Lvov, as well as support for the killing of Jews by Einsatzgruppe C.
"The Einsatzgruppen were mobile death squads composed of German Secret Police (S.S. or Gestapo). These battalion-sized squads travelled from city to city right behind the advancing German army. Their express directive was to kill all “undesirables” in the area the army had invaded. The squads were supported by vans carrying food and ammunition, just as any fighting force would be. They were very well organized. There were four main squads, A,B,C, and D, each assigned a specific area of Poland and Ukraine. As they reached a city, the S.S. rounded up the “undesirables” – mostly Jews, some Roma, some political prisoners – and marched them to predesignated killing sites in the nearby forests. The victims were forced to strip, hand over all their valuables, stand at the edge of a mass grave, and wait to be shot. Sometimes the victims were forced to dig their own graves prior to being murdered. At first the Einsatzgruppen targeted mostly Jewish men, but soon included women and children in this ghastly execution scheme. By 1943, the Einsatzgruppe squads would kill over a million people, mostly by shooting, and later in mobile gas vans."
"Within two weeks of the Nazis’ arrival in Lvov, four thousand Jews had been murdered in the streets in massive pogroms. Countless more were shot by the roving death squads. There is no record of exactly how many people were killed, or where, by Einsatzgruppe C, as the squad carried out its demonic deeds in the city.
"The following month another pogrom called the Petilura Days resulted in another two thousand Jewish murders in Lvov in just two days. Women were raped, men were beaten, synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses were destroyed and looted in an orgy of violence."
And killings weren't enough, at that.
"In August 1941 the Nazis demanded that the Jewish population of Lvov pay a ransom of a staggering twenty-million rubles. The understanding was that paying this ransom would protect the Jewish community from harm. The Nazis took many Jews as hostages to ensure that this sum would be raised. Somehow the Jewish community was able to collect enough funds to pay this enormous fine, on time, but once the Nazis had received the ransom they killed the Jewish hostages anyway. In October 1941 Dr. Parnes was also killed because he was not cooperative enough with the “handing over” of Jews for deportation to the Janowska concentration camp. He was quickly replaced by another prominent Jew.
In November 1941 the Germans established a ghetto in Lvov, relocating tens of thousands of Jews into a small area surrounded by barbed-wire fences, where overcrowding, disease, and malnutrition were the rule. Some five thousand sick and elderly Jews were killed during this relocation, by Nazi soldiers and by Ukrainian hooligans who hated the Jews as much as the Nazis did. Many more Jews subsequently died in the ghetto due to the abysmal living conditions. The ghetto was periodically raided by the Nazis, who seized Jews for deportation, or killed them right there in the ghetto. Following the raids, the Jews still living outside the ghetto were then forced to move in. There were periodic attempts by the Lvov Jews over the next years to resist and fight, but, with few exceptions, these efforts were quickly and ruthlessly quashed.
"Next came the mass deportation of Jews to labor camps and to concentration camps. The Belzec camp received over fifty thousand Jews, and Janowska camp was a close second-place recipient.
"The Lvov ghetto lasted about two years. In 1943 the Nazis “liquidated” it, sending any remaining survivors to Auschwitz or other killing camps, or marching them into the forest to be shot.
"Of the original hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants, as well as an additional hundred thousand Jewish refugees who had moved to Lvov prior to the Nazi occupation, only a handful were still alive when the Lvov ghetto was destroyed in late 1943. Even fewer were alive when the Soviet Army liberated the city in 1944.
"Among those who perished were Yehudah and Beila Bottner, and two of their four sons, Joseph and Ephraim, as well as grandparents, scores of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and hundreds of friends.Old people, young ones, children, babies, all were gone. Religious, secular, Hassidic, Zionist, agnostic, atheist – it made no difference. If they were Jewish they were doomed. There are no known records of precisely where and when the Bottner family died. Probably they were either killed in a pogrom, shot in the killing fields around Lvov by the Nazis, or deported to Belzec concentration camp and killed there.
"Yehudah and his two sons did survive long enough to relocate to the Lvov ghetto. Work cards with their names on can be found in the archives in the Holocaust Museum. But Beila (Berta) disappeared – perhaps she died of natural causes, perhaps she was killed in a pogrom or in the relocation process. The very last communication from her was in April 1940 in a telegram. Genek had sent his parents notification of little Bobby’s birth and Berta replied via telegram, sending congratulations. Genek’s one solace was that his parents did know they had a grandson. They would never meet him, but Genek would later say that he hoped it had brought them a little joy."
Genek was caught, but was sent to work as slave labour in a factory, instead of a death camp.
"The Germans used forced labor (slave labor) in every country they occupied. Most of these laborers were transported from their own countries into Germany to work in factories, agriculture, or construction projects. Two hundred thousand people were conscripted from the tiny country of Belgium alone. From larger countries, many more people were seized and sent to work as slaves. Slave labor was a mainstay in the Nazi economy; millions of people were used as slaves by the Nazi regime during the war. Jews and other subhuman undesirables were worked literally to death, but other prisoners served as free labor as well."
One shocking revelation is about a now well known brand:-
"It is not known which factory he was sent to, or the exact date, but he would later tell Bobby of the three months he had spent working as a forced laborer for the Nazis. He was a skilled furrier; most likely the Germans took advantage of this skill and had him working in a garment factory, probably helping to sew uniforms for German soldiers. It is possible he worked at Hugo Boss, a clothing company that made Nazi war uniforms, that would later become a fashion giant. The only reason he was not killed or sent to Malines and then to Auschwitz was that somehow he avoided being recognized as a Jew. He probably passed as a Christian Pole."
Melly was frantic with worry but stuck to the careful precautions they had worked out beforehand, just in case.
"Genek, meanwhile, spent three months as a virtual slave. The workers were given little food and very little rest. Their hours were long, from before dawn until well after dark, seven days a week. They lived in abysmal conditions in cold, damp, rodent-infested cramped rooms. Their Nazi slave masters forced them to stand at attention for hours for roll-call, beat them with riding crops if they didn’t move quickly enough when ordered to do something, and demanded unquestioning obedience. They were given work quotas and were threatened with beatings, or worse, if they didn’t meet them."
He was smart enough and lucky enough to escape. The couple met, went safely to one of their flats, and a while later, desperate to see their son, went to meet him. Heartbreaking description.
This author makes this work an account enough to give a good basic idea of the times. When allies finally arrived in Brussels,
"Desperate Nazis, realizing their time was up, spent their final hours of occupation destroying people and evidence. They executed prisoners even as the British troops made their way into the city. Retreating Nazi soldiers set fire to the Palace of Justice in the center of Brussels, hoping to destroy documents that could be used against them by the Allies. But as the stately building burned, hundreds of Belgians organized themselves into a human chain, rescuing documents by passing them from one person to the next."
Genek went to fetch Bobby, walking seventy miles. On the way back they got a lift on a truck in a U.S. soldiers' convoy.
"They spoke some language he had never heard before; he couldn’t understand what they said. And one of them had a chocolate-colored face. He had never seen a man that color before. Maybe he had eaten too much chocolate? But they were nice."
Irene brought back home at two was traumatised, and never got reconciled to her mother. Melly returned and married someone, Nathan was involved with Jewish homeland, but Inge was first, going to meet someone from Palestine.
"Jewish entry into Palestine was severely restricted at this time. Even after the destruction of two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population in the Holocaust, Britain, bowing to Arab pressure, was turning away or imprisoning Jews attempting to enter Palestine. When Inge’s ship arrived in Haifa, Inge and the other Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe were brought to a detention camp in Atlit, just south of the port of Haifa, by the British authorities. Luckily she was only detained there briefly."
They migrated to Palestine, and Bottner family to Canada.
June 23, 2017
In this heart wrenching, true story, Bottner successfully transports the reader to war torn Europe as we follow the plight of a remarkable family in a remarkable time. Alternating between first person narrative of her grandmother, Melly, and third person narrative for all other characters, historical background, and her own reflections, Bottner is able to make this story intimate and compelling, at the same informing the reader of the enormity of the atrocities committed against Jews in early and mid 20th century Europe. This is an important literary work - a story which needed to be told and remembered.
October 16, 2017
Tender, poignant, and horrifying rendition of the author’s father and family experience through the evil events of the German occupation of Brussels. The intriguing concept of epigenetics is fascinating. Could not put this down! Thank you Dr Bottner! What an intimate history lesson!
September 17, 2017
Excellent holocaust memoir
Fast moving true account of the horror of the holocaust. Stories of fear and desperation came vividly to life with every page turn.
Fast moving true account of the horror of the holocaust. Stories of fear and desperation came vividly to life with every page turn.
September 18, 2017
Riveting
We must never forget. Ms. Bottner's story brings the human part if the story to reality. Putting ourselves in the situation, overwhelms us.
We must never forget. Ms. Bottner's story brings the human part if the story to reality. Putting ourselves in the situation, overwhelms us.
October 11, 2017
Very poignant story of a family and how they got through WWII.
August 4, 2021
3.5 stars
Fair Warning spoilers ahead.
But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. - Exodus 2:3
This is the first-ever story I have read that the family actually made it through without going to a camp.
It's a different view for me. Most stories I read the family is in Poland or Germany. I don't think I have read or really did deep research into what it was like for the Jewish people in Belgium. Big eye-opener.
There was much written in this book that I didn't know about before that answered a few questions I didn't even know I had. We always ask ourselves "how did they comply so easily?", "how was it possible this happened so fast?"
The Nazis robbed not just the Jews of their humanity; they robbed everyone else of their fundamental decency, in fact of their humanity, as well. Everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was thrust into the impossible choice of either cooperating, or at least passively accepting, the barbarism of the Nazis, or risking their own and their family’s annihilation.
Not only did Nazis use fear but they used hatred that already existed. In Poland and Ukraine anti-Semitism was high and rampant. Jews were killed in pogroms way before the Nazis took over. All it took was a little push and the Nazis had the local non-Jews helping out. But this wasn't the case everywhere.
In Belgium the Germans implemented their anti-Jewish laws more slowly, but by September 1942 they had begun rounding Jews up for deportation. While initially claiming to be transporting these people to work details, the brutality of the roundups, and the inclusion of the elderly and the infirm, children and babies, made the deportations’ sinister conclusions fairly obvious to anyone with the courage to face the truth.
Not only did Jews have to watch out for Nazis but they had to watch out for other Jews. If you are not familiar with the Holocaust, you may have read that statement again. What it means is that some Jews switched sides and helped the Nazis round up their neighbors, family, and friends. But there were non-Jews who did not cooperate with the Nazis and helped save many Jewish lives.
Collaborators were everywhere. You didn’t know whom you could trust. It didn’t matter how well you knew someone, or even if they were Jewish. People were so desperate to stay alive that they helped the Nazis by turning in friends and neighbors. So we lived in fear.
Unfortunately, I cannot add all the quotes I want to or all the information I learned but if you are like me and are a WWII junkie, this book is a great read. It shows a side of the war that isn't very popular. A side where the family only faced the horrors of being caught and killed in the camps.
Fair Warning spoilers ahead.
But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. - Exodus 2:3
This is the first-ever story I have read that the family actually made it through without going to a camp.
It's a different view for me. Most stories I read the family is in Poland or Germany. I don't think I have read or really did deep research into what it was like for the Jewish people in Belgium. Big eye-opener.
There was much written in this book that I didn't know about before that answered a few questions I didn't even know I had. We always ask ourselves "how did they comply so easily?", "how was it possible this happened so fast?"
The Nazis robbed not just the Jews of their humanity; they robbed everyone else of their fundamental decency, in fact of their humanity, as well. Everyone, Jews and non-Jews, was thrust into the impossible choice of either cooperating, or at least passively accepting, the barbarism of the Nazis, or risking their own and their family’s annihilation.
Not only did Nazis use fear but they used hatred that already existed. In Poland and Ukraine anti-Semitism was high and rampant. Jews were killed in pogroms way before the Nazis took over. All it took was a little push and the Nazis had the local non-Jews helping out. But this wasn't the case everywhere.
In Belgium the Germans implemented their anti-Jewish laws more slowly, but by September 1942 they had begun rounding Jews up for deportation. While initially claiming to be transporting these people to work details, the brutality of the roundups, and the inclusion of the elderly and the infirm, children and babies, made the deportations’ sinister conclusions fairly obvious to anyone with the courage to face the truth.
Not only did Jews have to watch out for Nazis but they had to watch out for other Jews. If you are not familiar with the Holocaust, you may have read that statement again. What it means is that some Jews switched sides and helped the Nazis round up their neighbors, family, and friends. But there were non-Jews who did not cooperate with the Nazis and helped save many Jewish lives.
Collaborators were everywhere. You didn’t know whom you could trust. It didn’t matter how well you knew someone, or even if they were Jewish. People were so desperate to stay alive that they helped the Nazis by turning in friends and neighbors. So we lived in fear.
Unfortunately, I cannot add all the quotes I want to or all the information I learned but if you are like me and are a WWII junkie, this book is a great read. It shows a side of the war that isn't very popular. A side where the family only faced the horrors of being caught and killed in the camps.
July 26, 2020
~ r e v i e w ~
•
My second Holocaust book this month and I'm still in awe of the stories of bravery they both carried. When I found Among The Reeds on Kindle Unlimited, I didn't have to think twice before downloading it because books that revolve around the Second World War have always fascinated me. Although I am aware of the horrors that the Jews had to go through for no fault of theirs, every book has been teaching me something new; both the sinister acts of the Nazis as well as stories of survival. Among The Reeds is one such inspiring story about the Offner-Bottner family, of their sufferings and the trauma that the next generations carried from having to serve under the Nazi rule.
•
Tammy has collated stories of her grandparents, primarily her grandmother's who played a pivotal role in piecing together the story. Melly Offner was born to Polish Jews in Germany and instantly became a German citizen. Although she considered herself to be a disappointment to her father who wanted a son, Melly recalls being burdened by the responsibilities that is usually associated with boys. When Inge, her sister was born couple of years later, she felt only resentment towards her. It was only when Nathan was born that Melly realised how pressurized she truly was. But their luxurious life ended soon when Hitler came into power and the Offner family escaped to Amsterdam. Here on, the family was forced to live in fear as the German troops walked on the streets, rounding up Jews to either send them to labour camps or to just execute them. Melly was forced to marry Genek, another Jew who moved to Amsterdam to make a living. It is abundantly clear that Melly disliked her husband and lived a loveless life for years to come.
•
The family continued living in Belgium for the next few years as they witnessed Hitler rising to power. To protect the children from being sent to concentration camps, many families sent away their children to convents/schools/adoptions with little or no hope of finding them again. The Offner family too sent away their children for few years until the war subsided. The Jews were forced to live on a meagre amount of food turning them into living skeletons. While the Germans were hunting down Jews, of both foreign as well as native origins, Tammy's grandmother mentioned how suspicious everyone were. Many Jews turned against each other in order to please the Germans and this, she said, was more dangerous than the Nazis themselves. Among The Reeds tells in detail about how the War began, its ascent and finally, its descent. What went on in between those years, wreaked havoc on the lives of many innocents. One of the most horrifying events was the death of thousands of mentally and physically disabled Jews, including the nurses who cared for them. Such unspeakable and unfathomable hatred makes me nauseous every time I read about it. This book was an eye opener in more ways than one. The gentiles who stepped down to protect the Jews were truly such heroes. Perhaps, this was the only comforting thought that eased my heart.
•
Melly talks about her life without an ounce of lie, putting across details of her life unabashedly. Her life comprised mostly of deprivation, never falling in love with her husband and suffering from depression for years. Many Jewish families struggled to settle down in one place, often feeling restless, struggling with PTSD. It took them years to understand the concept of home and when they finally did, half of their lives were lost. I highly recommend Among The Reeds, a book that's gut-wrenching but equally inspiring.
•
Rating : 4.7/5.
•
My second Holocaust book this month and I'm still in awe of the stories of bravery they both carried. When I found Among The Reeds on Kindle Unlimited, I didn't have to think twice before downloading it because books that revolve around the Second World War have always fascinated me. Although I am aware of the horrors that the Jews had to go through for no fault of theirs, every book has been teaching me something new; both the sinister acts of the Nazis as well as stories of survival. Among The Reeds is one such inspiring story about the Offner-Bottner family, of their sufferings and the trauma that the next generations carried from having to serve under the Nazi rule.
•
Tammy has collated stories of her grandparents, primarily her grandmother's who played a pivotal role in piecing together the story. Melly Offner was born to Polish Jews in Germany and instantly became a German citizen. Although she considered herself to be a disappointment to her father who wanted a son, Melly recalls being burdened by the responsibilities that is usually associated with boys. When Inge, her sister was born couple of years later, she felt only resentment towards her. It was only when Nathan was born that Melly realised how pressurized she truly was. But their luxurious life ended soon when Hitler came into power and the Offner family escaped to Amsterdam. Here on, the family was forced to live in fear as the German troops walked on the streets, rounding up Jews to either send them to labour camps or to just execute them. Melly was forced to marry Genek, another Jew who moved to Amsterdam to make a living. It is abundantly clear that Melly disliked her husband and lived a loveless life for years to come.
•
The family continued living in Belgium for the next few years as they witnessed Hitler rising to power. To protect the children from being sent to concentration camps, many families sent away their children to convents/schools/adoptions with little or no hope of finding them again. The Offner family too sent away their children for few years until the war subsided. The Jews were forced to live on a meagre amount of food turning them into living skeletons. While the Germans were hunting down Jews, of both foreign as well as native origins, Tammy's grandmother mentioned how suspicious everyone were. Many Jews turned against each other in order to please the Germans and this, she said, was more dangerous than the Nazis themselves. Among The Reeds tells in detail about how the War began, its ascent and finally, its descent. What went on in between those years, wreaked havoc on the lives of many innocents. One of the most horrifying events was the death of thousands of mentally and physically disabled Jews, including the nurses who cared for them. Such unspeakable and unfathomable hatred makes me nauseous every time I read about it. This book was an eye opener in more ways than one. The gentiles who stepped down to protect the Jews were truly such heroes. Perhaps, this was the only comforting thought that eased my heart.
•
Melly talks about her life without an ounce of lie, putting across details of her life unabashedly. Her life comprised mostly of deprivation, never falling in love with her husband and suffering from depression for years. Many Jewish families struggled to settle down in one place, often feeling restless, struggling with PTSD. It took them years to understand the concept of home and when they finally did, half of their lives were lost. I highly recommend Among The Reeds, a book that's gut-wrenching but equally inspiring.
•
Rating : 4.7/5.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
March 3, 2020Heartpulling
This is a book that pulls at your heart strings as a family tries to survive during this horrible time in history. They try to keep alive themselves and save their children.it has such devastating effects on their lives in the future. Well worth reading.
This is a book that pulls at your heart strings as a family tries to survive during this horrible time in history. They try to keep alive themselves and save their children.it has such devastating effects on their lives in the future. Well worth reading.
February 20, 2020
Interesting
Interesting point of view. Enjoyed the story from so many family members lives. The main character was difficult to like though.
Interesting point of view. Enjoyed the story from so many family members lives. The main character was difficult to like though.
February 15, 2020
Amazing
This memoir is well written. I have always had an interest in the Holocaust, but there was so much I had never heard, hasn't considered. This memoir is a real eye-opener. I cannot begin to imagine the atrocities this woman's family faced.
This memoir is well written. I have always had an interest in the Holocaust, but there was so much I had never heard, hasn't considered. This memoir is a real eye-opener. I cannot begin to imagine the atrocities this woman's family faced.
February 14, 2020
A very good book..as with any..about loss during a horrendous time
August 1, 2018
Heartbreaking decisions forced upon ppl faced with imprisonment and death during WWII
What would you do when your home is being overrun by the Nazi regime? What would you do to protect your children against almost certain death? What desperate acts would you do to ensure your babies had food? How far would you go to avoid capture?
Tammy Bottner goes back through her family's stories, the historical archives, and pieces together the horror of life in Europe during the invasion of Nazi Germany. She explains to heart aches of losing your family, giving up your home life, your professional, your belongings, and all you hold dear as her extended family members were driven out of their home lands. Hitler didn't just want their rights and proceeded removed, he wanted to erase their existence. Those that couldn't believe the dangers found themselves driven across countries to Poland's labor and death camps.
A small percentage of Jewish people fought for their survival in various ways. Ms. Bottner's family were not deceived by false promises and had strong survival instincts. This book shares the stories of how they made it through the war, the occupations, the dangers of discovery, and the camps.
The book concludes with a discussion of genetics and the impact on DNA when individuals are stressed with every conceivable and many incredible stressors on the human specimen.
It makes you think about the Nazi regime and the removal of rights and freedoms of members of their society. It leaves you wondering how did these rules or laws get so out of control and what should have been the stopping point? Horrifically sad.
What would you do when your home is being overrun by the Nazi regime? What would you do to protect your children against almost certain death? What desperate acts would you do to ensure your babies had food? How far would you go to avoid capture?
Tammy Bottner goes back through her family's stories, the historical archives, and pieces together the horror of life in Europe during the invasion of Nazi Germany. She explains to heart aches of losing your family, giving up your home life, your professional, your belongings, and all you hold dear as her extended family members were driven out of their home lands. Hitler didn't just want their rights and proceeded removed, he wanted to erase their existence. Those that couldn't believe the dangers found themselves driven across countries to Poland's labor and death camps.
A small percentage of Jewish people fought for their survival in various ways. Ms. Bottner's family were not deceived by false promises and had strong survival instincts. This book shares the stories of how they made it through the war, the occupations, the dangers of discovery, and the camps.
The book concludes with a discussion of genetics and the impact on DNA when individuals are stressed with every conceivable and many incredible stressors on the human specimen.
It makes you think about the Nazi regime and the removal of rights and freedoms of members of their society. It leaves you wondering how did these rules or laws get so out of control and what should have been the stopping point? Horrifically sad.
February 13, 2020
Very engaging book.
April 27, 2018
A very interesting concept paired with a moving story of survival
I enjoyed the story of this family's survival and found the strength, courage, and determination of the young parents truly moving. Though I must admit to finding much of Melly's behavior baffling and, at times, almost irritating, I couldn't help but admire her in a lot of ways. What her and her husband must have gone through during their separation from their children is unimaginable. Yet they cared only that their children would be safe, that they would survive. I was also impressed with the fact that no attempt at hiding the shortcomings of these parents was made. The author never tried to cover up the fact that, though they loved their children beyond words, they were not perfect.
I also must commend the author on the way she explained the fascinating theory of a sort of genetic transference. Normally, I don't even attempt to read through scientific explanations of any sort as they are just too long winded and dull. Her explanation, however, was both concise and interesting. A very intriguing concept!
I enjoyed the story of this family's survival and found the strength, courage, and determination of the young parents truly moving. Though I must admit to finding much of Melly's behavior baffling and, at times, almost irritating, I couldn't help but admire her in a lot of ways. What her and her husband must have gone through during their separation from their children is unimaginable. Yet they cared only that their children would be safe, that they would survive. I was also impressed with the fact that no attempt at hiding the shortcomings of these parents was made. The author never tried to cover up the fact that, though they loved their children beyond words, they were not perfect.
I also must commend the author on the way she explained the fascinating theory of a sort of genetic transference. Normally, I don't even attempt to read through scientific explanations of any sort as they are just too long winded and dull. Her explanation, however, was both concise and interesting. A very intriguing concept!
February 7, 2020
Survivor's narrative ended abruptly .
Con
This first hand retold narrative was honest and engaging but ended without closure. That was very disappointing.
Con
The author listed helpful links for further research. Also the addition of survivor's family photos were a bonus.
Con
This first hand retold narrative was honest and engaging but ended without closure. That was very disappointing.
Con
The author listed helpful links for further research. Also the addition of survivor's family photos were a bonus.
November 13, 2017
The Holocaust Revisited
I have always been interested in stories of what happened to the Jewish people during WWII. Although they weren't the only ones to suffer, they were the only people that Hitler wanted to destroy completely. It was something that I could never understand. How people could actually want to kill a complete population of people. As often as I read stories of the Holocaust, this is one of the most complete because it completes the telling with what happened afterwards. It includes the continued suffering of the Jewish people as they looked for a place they could call home; a place that would always be theirs. This story was well-written and explained in detail, what happened during the most incredible and horrific times ever! Especially now, when people are trying to say it never happened. We need to always remember. That can only happen if the stories continue to be told.
I have always been interested in stories of what happened to the Jewish people during WWII. Although they weren't the only ones to suffer, they were the only people that Hitler wanted to destroy completely. It was something that I could never understand. How people could actually want to kill a complete population of people. As often as I read stories of the Holocaust, this is one of the most complete because it completes the telling with what happened afterwards. It includes the continued suffering of the Jewish people as they looked for a place they could call home; a place that would always be theirs. This story was well-written and explained in detail, what happened during the most incredible and horrific times ever! Especially now, when people are trying to say it never happened. We need to always remember. That can only happen if the stories continue to be told.
February 13, 2019
Tammy Bottner knows how to keep her reader in suspense and shattered. She is very good at making us live events from the perspective and with the feelings of their protagonists. "Among the Reeds" is a compound of well-informed historic elements, an incredible family story, as well as humanity, sincerity, and openness of its author that enables a tight proximity with her reader. One does not need to share her views on Zionism and epigenetics --both a little too insistingly defended to my taste-- to like her very well-written book. The family trees and photograph collections are most welcome to visualize family members and their relations. A very useful testimony and highly recommended reading!
March 11, 2018
So important
This book is important film many reasons. One, it is important for us to hear the stories of survivors so that we can never again let this happen. Their stories also remind us of human grit. Additionally, Bottner models for us how we can gain perspective by learning more about our family's story. My father is a vet with PTSD so I connected with her reflection of how her father's trauma may have influenced her. Finally, she shows the relevance if epigenetics researched.
This book is important film many reasons. One, it is important for us to hear the stories of survivors so that we can never again let this happen. Their stories also remind us of human grit. Additionally, Bottner models for us how we can gain perspective by learning more about our family's story. My father is a vet with PTSD so I connected with her reflection of how her father's trauma may have influenced her. Finally, she shows the relevance if epigenetics researched.
May 23, 2018
The legacy of a Jewish family
I am always intrigued by holocaust stories. It is rare that so many in a family survives this terrible time. The author is thorough in her research, articulate in relaying each story, and faithful to the emotions and actions of those presented. This is one of the best WW2 stories and historical accounts I have read. If you like learning about what actually happened during this war and the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people by the Nazis, then this book is one you should read. You won't be disappointed.
I am always intrigued by holocaust stories. It is rare that so many in a family survives this terrible time. The author is thorough in her research, articulate in relaying each story, and faithful to the emotions and actions of those presented. This is one of the best WW2 stories and historical accounts I have read. If you like learning about what actually happened during this war and the atrocities inflicted on the Jewish people by the Nazis, then this book is one you should read. You won't be disappointed.
May 3, 2019
This book should be required reading for all people who deny the existance of the Holacaust! While reading this book, I kept dealing with the question of how any human being can initiate or participate in the genocide of any other human being. There are no answers and it really makes a person wonder about the existance of God. The Reeds existed and overcame a segment of their lives that is almost unbelievable. The book is well written and pretty descriptive. It is a small story of what millions of people were subjected to. Read it.
June 28, 2019
Powerful, enlightening and a real page turner
While most people are familiar with the history of WW II, much of that history is focused on Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Reading this memoir about life in Belgium was an angle I had never read about.
This book pulls no punches, and the authors grandmother is brutally honest, even when the truth doesn’t paint her in the best light. These stories need to be told and read, and this one is worth a read, not just because of the subject matter, but also because it is thoughtfully written and comes from a unique perspective.
While most people are familiar with the history of WW II, much of that history is focused on Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. Reading this memoir about life in Belgium was an angle I had never read about.
This book pulls no punches, and the authors grandmother is brutally honest, even when the truth doesn’t paint her in the best light. These stories need to be told and read, and this one is worth a read, not just because of the subject matter, but also because it is thoughtfully written and comes from a unique perspective.
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