Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace - Hardcover

Gessen, Masha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385336047 ISBN 13: 9780385336048

Publisher: Dial Pr, 2004

Synopsis

In the 1930s, as waves of war and persecution were crashing over Europe, two young Jewish women began separate journeys of survival. One, a Polish-born woman from Bialystok, where virtually the entire Jewish community would soon be sent to the ghetto and from there to Hitler’s concentration camps, was determined not only to live but to live with pride and defiance. The other, a Russian-born intellectual and introvert, would eventually become a high-level censor under Stalin’s regime. At war’s end, both women found themselves in Moscow, where informers lurked on every corner and anti-Semitism reigned. It was there that Ester and Ruzya would first cross paths, there that they became the closest of friends and learned to trust each other with their lives.

In this deeply moving family memoir, journalist Masha Gessen tells the story of her two beloved grandmothers: Ester, the quicksilver rebel who continually battled the forces of tyranny; Ruzya, a single mother who joined the Communist Party under duress and made the compromises the regime exacted of all its citizens. Both lost their first loves in the war. Both suffered unhappy unions. Both were gifted linguists who made their living as translators. And both had children—Ester a boy, and Ruzya a girl—who would grow up, fall in love, and have two children of their own: Masha and her younger brother.

With grace, candor, and meticulous research, Gessen peels back the layers of secrecy surrounding her grandmothers’ lives. As she follows them through this remarkable period in history—from the Stalin purges to the Holocaust, from the rise of Zionism to the fall of communism—she describes how each of her grandmothers, and before them her great-grandfather, tried to navigate a dangerous line between conscience and compromise.

Ester and Ruzya is a spellbinding work of storytelling, filled with political intrigue and passionate emotion, acts of courage and acts of betrayal. At once an intimate family chronicle and a fascinating historical tale, it interweaves the stories of two women with a brilliant vision of Russian history. The result is a memoir that reads like a novel—and an extraordinary testament to the bonds of family and the power of hope, love, and endurance.

About this title

Review:

A loving memoir of two grandmothers that offers a penetrating look at two killer regimes. Masha Gessen's wonderful book portrays human beings trying to live justly when there is virtually no way to do so." ---William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

"This blend of historical depth with personal experience is a powerful mix, illuminating how family and friendship can grow in even the darkest eras." --Publishers Weekly

"A journalist's memoir of her grandmothers also paints an eloquent portrait of two totalitarian powers, the havoc they wrought, and the countless burdens they imposed on ordinary families.... A masterful chronicle of dark and dangerous years, and a distinguished addition to the history of totalitarianism." --Kirkus Reviews

"Reviewers sometimes call a work of nonfiction 'as exciting as a novel, ' but that would be an understatement applied to this extraordinary family memoir.... Ester and Ruzya will remind you how much life, history and emotional and moral complexity the genre can convey in the hands of a wonderful writer." --New York Times Book Review

From the Hardcover edition.

"Reviewers sometimes call a work of nonfiction 'as exciting as a novel, ' but that would be an understatement applied to this extraordinary family memoir. . . . Ester and Ruzya will remind you how much life, history and emotional and moral complexity the genre can convey in the hands of a wonderful writer."--The New York Times Book Review

"Masha Gessen has written an indispensable history of Soviet Jews as seen through the eyes of two unforgettable women--her grandmothers. The scope and complexity of their characters rivals anything you will find in contemporary fiction. Their lives, underscored by hardship, compromise and hope, are rendered both with a granddaughter's love and a journalist's insight. A beautiful book."--Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Little Failure

"A loving memoir of two grandmothers that offers a penetrating look at two killer regimes. Masha Gessen's wonderful book portrays human beings trying to live justly when there is virtually no way to do so."--William Taubman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era

"This blend of historical depth with personal experience is a powerful mix, illuminating how family and friendship can grow in even the darkest eras."--Publishers Weekly

"A journalist's memoir of her grandmothers also paints an eloquent portrait of two totalitarian powers, the havoc they wrought, and the countless burdens they imposed on ordinary families. . . . A masterful chronicle of dark and dangerous years, and a distinguished addition to the history of totalitarianism."--Kirkus Reviews

"A saga of two fascinating Russian-Jewish women making ends meet, making love, making homes, making agonizing compromises in the most terrible times of the twentieth century--witty, colorful, tragic, seething with life and character, it is a little classic of storytelling."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Romanovs: 1613-1918

"This is a deeply moving account of what it meant to be a Jew under Hitler's rule and, equally brutal, Stalin's rule. Masha Gessen, a talented writer with a human touch, has brilliantly used her grandmothers as a way to bring to life a grim era of East European history."--Daniel Schorr, former senior news analyst for National Public Radio

"Ester and Ruzya is an example of what's best in Russia's literary tradition--a beautifully written personal story with universal significance."--Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs, The New School

"Beautifully written and deeply felt, Masha Gessen's Ester and Ruzya tells the story of the two totalitarian regimes that reigned in twentieth-century Europe from a completely fresh perspective. Gessen's description of the compromises people made to survive should force those of us living in a luckier era to think harder about what we mean by 'morality.'"--Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine

About the Author:

Masha Gessen was born in the U.S.S.R., emigrated to the United States when she was fourteen years old, and later returned to Russia as a foreign correspondent. She makes her permanent home in Moscow with her partner, Svenya, and their two children but is currently living in Boston, where she has a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dial Pr
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0385336047
• ISBN 13: 9780385336048
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 371