Journal - Hardcover

Berr, Hélène

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847245749 ISBN 13: 9781847245748

Publisher: MacLehose Press, 2008

Synopsis

From April 1942 to March 1944, Helene Berr, a recent graduate of the Sorbonne, kept a journal that is both an intensely moving, intimate, harrowing, appalling document and a text of astonishing literary maturity. With her colleagues, she plays the violin and she seeks refuge from the everyday in what she calls the 'selfish magic' of English literature and poetry. But this is Paris under the occupation and her family is Jewish. Eventually, there comes the time when all Jews are required to wear a yellow star. She tries to remain calm and rational, keeping to what routine she can: studying, reading, enjoying the beauty of Paris. Yet always there is fear for the future, and eventually, in March 1944, Helene and her family are arrested, taken to Drancy Transit Camp and soon sent to Auschwitz. She went - as is later discovered - on the death march to Bergen-Belsen and there she died in 1945, only weeks before the liberation of the camp. The last words in the journal she had left behind in Paris were 'Horror, Horror, Horror', a hideous and poignant echo of her English studies from The Heart of Darkness. Helene Berr's story is almost too painful to read, foreshadowing horror as it does amidst an enviable appetite for life, for beauty, for literature, for all that lasts.

About this title

Review

Thoughtfully, heartrendingly, completely, the book that Helen Berr wrote in the darkest days of the City of Light answers her own question - Mariette Job in the Scotsman. It is a beautiful but harrowing experience reading the words of Helene Berr Her journal is a devastatingly powerful evocation of the pointlessness of war and one that will have a lasting effect on its readers - Wales on Sunday. Helene is a striking diarist writes lucid, lovely prose we are lucky that Helene chose to tell her own story - David Bellos interview, Times Online. A very moving account devastatingly sad - Oxford Times. --Reviews.

From the Back Cover

“This is a voice and a presence that will stay with us for the rest of our lives” Patrick Modiano. “This is the diary of a young girl who contemplated the beauty of the world with dazzling eyes…and at the same time encountered unimaginable horror. Yet her vision of life does not falter, even in the face of onrushing danger…Page after page, the trap closes on her. Constantly aware she is a prisoner in a historical tragedy, Helene nevertheless displays a gift to rise above her situation that goes well beyond the limits of courage…An exceptional book” Nathalie Levisalles, Liberation. “At once the diary of a young Jewish girl under the German Occupation of Paris, a work of exceptional literary quality, and a powerful historical document” Simone Veil, L'Express. “In the depth of its analysis, literary quality and bleak clarity…Helene's answer to the question of deportation is one of the most poignant we may ever read” Thomas Wieder, Le Monde. “Books that detail everyday life during the dark hours are rare…the document that Helene Berr has left behind should be read by everyone…A testimony of rare power” Mohammed Aissaoui, Figaro.

Edition details

• Publisher: MacLehose Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1847245749
• ISBN 13: 9781847245748
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300