Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir

by Martin Lemelman

A graphic memoir, illustrated with black-and-white drawings and photography, follows the author's mother's dramatic escape from Nazi persecution, in a visual transcription of her childhood in 1930s Poland, her victimization under the Nazi regime, and struggles to survive. 35,000 first printing.

Genres: Graphic Novels, History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, Biography, Comics, World War II

240 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2006

Reviews

[Kelsey G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Lemelman might have published this book around my freshman year at Kutztown University (where he was a prof of communication design) and I was lucky enough to hear him speak and buy a copy of his book. The story of his mother's survival is incredible, the illustrations are excellent, and the graphic novel style makes it a very quick read.

I have a random T-shirt with the book on it... because college students need a T-shirt for everything. As I folded it up to toss it back in a drawer I thought, "I need to review this one."

[Mariah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has me going back and forth on whether it was worth the read, or if it was just another Holocaust story. It is so very true that you can only read so many survivor stories before they all blend together in your mind. The story though is very unique compared to other stories I have read about the survivors because of how they managed to escape being placed in the camps by hiding in the woods. This one part in particular where they are describing how they hid really stood out to me, "We lived in the woods for two winters. Everytime we think we will be discovered, we move away and we digged another grave. We would find a spot and make a hole maybe four feet deep and maybe five, six feet long-like a big table,"(147). Seeing how they lived in holes in the ground was very new for me to discover about some of the survivors, but a graphic novel has to be more than the pictures and the story. The text is very interesting in how it was written, but I did not however fully understand some parts due to the fact that the text is written as if the narrator is Mendel's daughter. Obviously, the story itself was very tragic in the way that it was written, but the art is drawn to convey that dark, sharp, and very real feeling that just set this story apart from other graphic novels. If only I could get over the same old song and dance of survivor stories... What a pitty.

I would recommend this if you are really interested in Holocaust survivor stories to give this a look over, or if you just are curious to how some of the Jewish people escaped camps this is the one for you. Keep in mind the text can be a little jumbled at time because she no speaka deh Englesh. Again, most survivor stories have a similar theme so if you wanted to expand after this one you should give the Maus series a shot since it is a graphic novel about how one man made it through the Holocaust, Marika the story of a girl who moves to avoid the Holocaust, The Zoo Keeper's Wife which is a story about a family that hid a multitude of Jewish people in their zoo, or maybe even the Survivor which is the story of a kid and what happens to him in the Holocaust(follow it up with the movie because I just die every single time it ends... Almost like Schindler's List... That's a great story too). Just proceed with caution because these stories are very real, and can be very emotional. We don't want crying citizens roaming the world because of Holocaust stories because they can't handle the truth.

[Desiree Brunelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

this memoir is no laughing matter, this book will bring you back to the times of war, to time of scared-em, fear, mass murders, and not knowing the future. this book is dedicated the family members who lives were taken during WW2. this book is a tail of a mother and her 7 children journey and survival of Hitler's rain. you will find that it starts out happy and makes you really understand and get a feel for what it is like in Poland so long ago, and then you get the fear and troubles Jews go through to be save and try to understand what is going on. the main character besides " the mother" is the middle child who tells the story. you learn and read names written in hebrew or yiddish. you learn how joyful it was before the war, what they ate, how they acted, how people came together as a community. But once people and food and anything for surviving become scares people become greedy, hide and turn in there own kind to the Germans army, you see what people would do to survive. at the end when you learn who lives and who died, no one feels safe anymore, people are still scared " Ukrainian bandits was still killing Jews" after the war is over " how they hated us".
this book, thought there are many books about the Hitler and what the Jews troubles and how they survived, i feel this one speaks to me more and i understand more from it because it sticks to one family and how they went through the war and how they never lost sight of there family, there religion, and kindness to strangers. it makes you think how even thought " the world is upside down" you can still have hope in a terrible situation, that keeps you going no matter what. also it shows that family above all else will be the ones who truly want to help you and not to gain anything from helping you like so other family's did.

I would recommend this to anyone who would like a serious read, who wants to know what it feels like to have everything take but still be able to live, also to really think what it is like to live and go through what the Jew's went through. no matter how hard we try we will never know the true meaning of it unless we went through it like they did.

in the end only 4 children out of 7 survive the war, who will it be? you'll just have to read and find out.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, first things first: the title is somewhat misleading. This is a story about a woman whose Jewish-Polish father's name is Mendel. He's not the genetic scientist. And he's not the Nazi doctor of death whose name I am now ashamed to read is Mengele, not Mendel (I was reading one thing and thinking another). The Mendel in this book is likely someone you've never heard of. It doesn't mean his story is any less valuable than anyone else's.

This book is about Gusta Mendel and her family who were living in Poland at the outbreak of World War II. Gusta's son, Martin, is the author and artist of this book. He recorded his mother's incredible story on videotape before she passed away and pretty much transcribed her words into this book, broken English and all. Parts of it were supplemented by his uncles. Anyway, Gusta's story could be an anyman's story: she and her family were living and working in Poland, running a grocery store out of their home. She describes a near-idyllic existence before the Nazis arrived. The story of how she and her siblings survived the war without being caught is equal parts impressive and fascinating. I won't spoil her story, but it is an amazing one.

As mentioned earlier the book is written in broken English, with some Yiddish words and Hebrew thrown in for good measure. Some readers find this off-putting, I think it's charming. I felt like I could really 'hear' her voice coming out of the pages. Most of the artwork is done by the author, but there are a few photographs of real family members interspersed here and there. This book is only a couple hundred pages and I was able to read it in a day. It's a good story; an important one to remember. We should never forget what happened during the Holocaust. Every man's story bears witness to the atrocities committed by the Nazis and others who simply looked the other way.

[Ben Truong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir is a biographical graphic novel written and penciled by Martin Lemelman and based on the experiences of Gusta Lemelman, his mother, of being a Jew during the Second World War in Europe.

With the characteristic phrasing of one who comes to English later in life, Gusta's is a gritty eyewitness report on the great upheaval of Eastern Europe in the 1930s and '40s, based on Lemelman's recording of his mother in 1989. At the harshest moments, the reader can take a small bit of comfort that Gusta survived to live a long life in the United States.

Her tale begins with her childhood in the town of Germakivka, Poland (in the current-day Ukraine), and kicks into high gear when the Nazis bring war into her village, destroying an entire way of living. Her voice rolls on inexorably, a stark account of human weakness and fear, tragic missteps with fatal consequences, and unimaginable hardships as she survives for two years with two brothers in a hole in the ground.

Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir is constructed rather well. Lemelman's subdued art gives the story its heart and with a combination of charcoal drawings and photographs, he creates a sense both of an almost mythical time gone by and the very real lives that were snuffed out.

All in all, Mendel's Daughter: A Memoir is wonderful, albeit harrowing account of a life of a Jewish Woman in Poland during the Second World War.

[Jo Oehrlein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I have an association of Mendel with genetics, this is not about THAT Mendel.

This is written in a unique voice -- that of an elderly woman who has learned English late with a somewhat broken syntax. She tells the story of growing up in a small village in what was then Poland and is now Ukraine. She talks about the Germans coming and her family being forced to move. She tells how she and her brothers escape and live in the forest for part of the war, while her parents and sister and sister's family are all killed.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read many Holocaust memoirs. This was one of the best! The artwork is truly beautiful. The artist is telling the story of his mother and her family in Poland. He grew up not knowing much about her story, but when she broke her foot (a frozen chicken fell on it) he used the opportunity of her staying with his family to video her telling the family's story. Years later he used this video and interview as the basis of this book.
Actual photos of the family are sprinkled thru the graphic artwork. Even the story of how his mother managed to get these photos is pretty amazing.

[David Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply touching graphic novel. It's almost hard to call it a survival story as so many of the protagonist's family perished. The story is riveting, the art is incredible, and the specific way that the survivors in the story kept hidden for several years is astounding and quite different than other survivor stories I've read.

[ThatBookGal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved that this was a different style of writing about the atrocities that happened in Europe throughout the war. It was however quite disjointed and hard to follow at times. The broken English was quite charming in some respects, but it also made it really hard to read. I loved the little photos throughout, it added faces to the names.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author writes about his mother's experience in the Holocaust; the book is from her point of view.
She and a few siblings managed to survive. The dialogue is written in his mother's Yiddish accent which really makes it feel like she is talking to you- that you're not just reading words on a page.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great graphic novel that tells the inspiring story of a Polish Holocaust survivor. The author is her son, and her story is different from others I have read. This book would be a good way to get reluctant readers to investigate the horrors and survivor tales about the Holocaust.

[Dai Branada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué manera de impregnarme de las sensaciones y temperaturas. Qué manera de abrumarme las injusticias narradas. Qué manera de hartarme la capacidad humana para el mal. Y qué manera de impactarme la sobrenatural habilidad del ser humano para sobrevivir. Asombroso relato!

[April eclecticbookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author was able to get a video recording of his mother telling how she survived the Holocaust. Being an illustrator he used her words accompanied by his pencil drawings and photographs she brought with her to share this time in her life with others.

[Daz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dzielo. Bez dwoch zdan.

[Hannah Garden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man this book is just incredible. Beautiful beautiful, harrowing tender.

[Eli]

A fairly straightforward narrative that packs a strong emotional punch.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+

[Tricia Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story of the impact of the holocaust on the authors Mother. So good.

[Micebyliz]

A story told in graphic form with all the impact you would expect from a story of the Holocaust.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Martin Lemelman, Mendel's Daughter (Free Press, 2006)

I'll admit right up front that my coolness towards this book stems from a misunderstanding on my part. I see a title like Mendel's Daughter and all sorts of implications about the father of genetics and selective breeding run through my head. The story, however, has nothing to do with the more famous Mendel I was thinking of, and my disappointment at that fact never went away as I was reading this.

Mendel's Daughter is an “as-told-to” graphic memoir of the holocaust by someone who lived through it. Thus, you've probably got a pretty good idea of the tone of the book. The first section covers the twenty years between the two world wars, the subject's genesis and early childhood. Then comes 1939, and the Nazi invasion of Poland, and everything blows up. The strength of the book is that Mendel's daughter didn't end up doing the same things everyone else (or so it often seems) did during the war years, and thus we get a new perspective on the lengths some people had to go to in order to survive the Nazi persecution of, well, everyone who wasn't a Nazi. The weakness is that Lemelman, who's an illustrator, doesn't quite have the editorial prowess to revise the prose (which he tells us early on is straight from interviews) into something with pace. I grant that it could have been an attempt to mirror the story, which is, not surprisingly, long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of terror, but I can't quite bring myself to believe Lemelman that much of a stylist (and it's usually a bad move anyway). I think he really did simply transcribe, unedited, the tapes, and draw around them. A bit of editing would have sharpened this book up considerably. Not enough to get me over the disappointment at the lack of the geneticist, but enough. ** ½

[Barbara McVeigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mendel’s Daughter: A Memoir is cinematic in its scope, visuals and voice. It is the story of ghosts who speak through dreams, and angles that intervene to save a life.

The author recreates in graphic novel form, an interview he had with his mother about her experiences during World War II. She was born in a Polish-Ukrainian Jewish shtetl and in the book she tells her son about their family’s history, its personage, and what happened to them when the Russians and Germans invaded. Mendel's Daughters also includes a context for the horrors to come: village markets, sharing a water well with neighbours, dressing up in friends' Polish costumes, school, suitors, and bike riding.

The accompanying visuals convey the emotional impact of the story just as much as the old woman’s voice does. There has been some criticism about the mother’s accent being recreated in the text, but being true to the documentary feel of the graphic novel, the voice must be true and unedited.

The visuals are a combination of drawings, photographs and real documents. The son has created a scrapbook from his mother’s memories. As she tells him: Sometimes your memories are not your own.

Now the reader of Mendel’s Daughter also has a part of those memories. This book is important because it lives longer than the witness of horrifying times. Already the impact and implications of the Holocaust are already being forgotten.

Man’s origin is dust and his end is dust. He spends his life earning bread. He is like a clay vessel, easily broken, like withering grass, a fading flower, a fugitive cloud, a fleeting breeze, scattering dust, a vanishing dream.

Man plans, and God laughs. –Yiddish saying

Mendel’s Daughter is a loving tribute a son has created for his mother.

[Sarah Nell Lader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this book cautiously, because as real and as horrible Holocaust-survival novels are, sometimes people who write them are not gifted authors.

This is not one of those books. Written from the perspective of his mother, Lemelman captures her voice unwaveringly and convincingly. There is never a moment where it sounds like an author pretending to be someone else - there is just Gusta Lemelman sharing her history.

I had to put this book down to cry several times. It hit home very hard because I am the descendent of Jews in Ukraine/Poland, and some of my ancestors did die in camps, but I think I would have been so moved even if that weren't my history. This emotional impact speaks to how vividly Lemelman captures the terror and the sorrow that struck his mother's life for a time.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mendel's Daughter by Martin Lemelman is a memoir of his mother's experience of the Holocaust. It details her experiences with her distinctive voice and accent without being too overwhelming. The novel describes the experiences of Lemelman's mother without graphic detail that one may expect when picking up a book of this subject. I thought this book was fantastic and beautifully drawn. This was unlike a typical graphic novel because of the mixture of drawings and actual photographs within it. The part of the book that I found to be the most heartbreaking was the experience she had living in the woods and how separated she felt from the rest of the world.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a difficult book for me to review. I'm honestly not sure if I admire the broken English or am turned off by it. I think one of the values of this book is that it is written from the perspective of a survivor, and the raw retelling makes it seem even more authentic. But it was also challenging to get through at times, given the unconventional usage. The illustrations were meaningful, but I especially appreciated the photos and copies of the original documents. Some of the hand-drawn images were moving and powerful, symbolic, while others were a little amateur or even confusing.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is filled with pencil illustrations interspersed with real photographs of the author's family (his mother's immediate family) that died during the Holocaust. Before sharing Maus or after/while reading Lois Lowry's Number the Stars or Anne Frank's Diary, I would encourage teachers, parents, and librarians to share this graphic novel with their children and young adults. Natural, fragmented language/sentences as well as Yiddish words are used throughout the story, which makes this a tale of Holocaust like none other that I have read before.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very special book. I read it one sitting, which is what happens when you have a Saturday night without kids! I went through a period of not wanting to read about the war or the Holocaust at all but more recently I've taken an interest in not the broad strokes of the events but the intricate stories of particular families. This one is quite compelling. The narration is of an older roman born in Poland in 1919 and reading her words I could hear my great grandmother's voice, telling her story (albeit a different one) from her chair in her living room. Very powerful, very moving.

[Mokamonkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A graphic novel version of the author's mother's experiences during the holocaust. The way the book started was a bit disconnected, but it turned out to be an excellent book. The photos really enhanced the story. I wanted to see the actual faces of the people these experiences happened to and kept flipping back, when I read more about a particular person. I found the depiction of the mother's accent a little hard to understand at places, but I got used to it eventually.

[Kristi-Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good story, but it was not a style I enjoy reading. It was in line with a graphic novel, as there were lots of illustrations on every page, with text sprinkled in. Also, since the story was written as Mendel's daughter spoke to her son... it was sometimes hard to read with the ESL factor written right in, rather than some editing done to make the words and sentences flow. It is definitely a great story of tragedy and great triumph!

[Ashly Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a true tribute to Holocaust survivors everywhere so that their story is never forgotten. Martin Lemelman gives a detailed and beutifully illustrated account of his family's history. If you loves Maus I & II as I did, you will love Mendel's Daughter.

The Reading Public Library in Reading PA will have Mr. Lemelman join us to remember those victims, January 28, 2012 for International Holocaust Rememberance Day. We can't wait!

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a graphic novel so it took me a very short time to read. It is the story of the author's mother who grew up during the Holocaust. It is a very sad tale, but not the typical one and it talks about what happened to his mother's siblings and parents. The story is shocking, as most are about this time, and well told. I was a little confused by the broken English, but I guess that was used for authenticity.