G1097 Claiming my place; coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust
Author: Planaria Price and Helen Reichmann West
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
Publishing Date: 2019
ISBN: 978-0-374-30529
Summary:
Young adult nonfiction about a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by moving into Nazi Germany and hiding in plain sight.
Gucia Gomolinska grew up comfortably in Piotrkow, Poland, a devoted student, sister, daughter, and friend. Still, even in the years before World War II, she faced discrimination as a Jew—but with her ash-blond hair she was often able to pass as just another Pole. When her town was invaded by Nazis, she knew her Aryan coloring gave her an advantage, and she faced an awful choice: stay in the place she had always called home, or leave behind everything she knew to try to survive. She took on a new identity as Basia Tanska, and her journey led her directly into Nazi Germany.
Planaria Price, along with Basia's daughter Helen West, tells this incredible life story directly in the first person. Claiming My Place is a stunning portrayal of bravery, love, loss, and the power of s
torytelling.
Author Info:
(From HFVBT)
About the Author
After graduating from Berkeley and earning a Master’s Degree in English Literature from UCLA, Planaria Price began her career teaching English to adult immigrants in Los Angeles. She has written several textbooks for University of Michigan Press and has lectured at over 75 conferences. In addition to her passion for teaching and writing, Planaria has worked with her husband to save and restore over 30 Victorian and Craftsman homes in her historic Los Angeles neighborhood. Claiming My Place is her first book for young adults.
For more information, please visit Planaria’s website at www.planariaprice.com.
Personal Opinion:
I think because I am in a different place now, but reading Claiming My Place; Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust was both a sad and heartbreaking tale. (I think also because I have been gifted a wonderful little boy about three years ago, and if I read something tragic, then I often place myself in the character's to see how I would feel.) I also feel that when my son grows up, I will be using this book as a way to introduce him to Holocaust and to what his great-grandparents, (may G-d rest their souls) have experienced. In other words, a more definite connection. (Although by then I would wish to discover tales of Holocaust that will take place in Ukraine and Russia...) This is a tale of human resilience and its a good read for young adult population as well as adult population. While the narrator didn't live in a concentration camp, this book shows a painful lesson I have learned; evil isn't black and white, and evil doesn't happen right away; it happens in increments of time, little by little like the carving of a mountain by water.
This is for HFVBT
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Review at Just One More Chapter
4 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)
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