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Stalemate
A classic of Holocaust literature from “one of the great masters of the short novel.”
—The New Yorker
In the Vilna Ghetto during World War II, Nazi Commandant Schoger demands that all children be sent to the death camp. When Abraham Lipman pleads with him to spare their lives, Schoger reconsiders, and tells Lipman there will be a chess match between himself and Lipman’s only...more
—The New Yorker
In the Vilna Ghetto during World War II, Nazi Commandant Schoger demands that all children be sent to the death camp. When Abraham Lipman pleads with him to spare their lives, Schoger reconsiders, and tells Lipman there will be a chess match between himself and Lipman’s only...more
Paperback, 176 pages
Published
November 17th 2005
by Other Press
(first published 1964)
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Meras is a Lithuanian Jew, born in 1934, who lived through the horrors of the Nazi Occupation, went to school after the war, and began to write. He was expelled from Lithuania in the early 1970s when the Communists took a dislike to his work and now lives in Israel. In short, a common coming-of-age story for a whole generation of Eastern European writers born between the two World Wars. He has written a number of novels but I've only read this one -- STALEMATE (translated by Jonas Zdanys). It is...more
Im Remis für Sekunden stehen sich der 16 Jährige Isaak Lipmann und Oberkommandant Adolf Schoger in einer Schachpartie gegenüber. Ort des Geschehens ist ein Ghetto in Polen als die Nationalsozialisten herrschten. Ein Interessenrat im Ghetto schickt Abraham Lipmann, Isaaks Vater, zu Schoger, um zu erbitten, dessen Vorhaben, alle Kinder bis 10 Jahre aus dem Ghetto wegzuschicken - angeblich in ein Kinderheim - zu verhindern. Lipmann handelt eine Schachpartie zwischen Schachliebhaber Schoger und Isaa...more
Mazel
marked it as to-read
Vilna. 1943 :
" Ecoute-moi, dit Schoger, le commandant allemand du ghetto, au jeune Isaac Lipman, joueur d'échecs prodige, écoute-moi bien. Nous allons jouer ensemble, toi et moi.
Si tu gagnes, les enfants ne seront pas déportés, mais je te tuerai.
Si tu perds, tu vivras, mais tous les enfants de moins de dix ans partiront pour les camps.
Si la partie est nulle, nous en resterons là. "
La partie va se jouer devant tout l...more
" Ecoute-moi, dit Schoger, le commandant allemand du ghetto, au jeune Isaac Lipman, joueur d'échecs prodige, écoute-moi bien. Nous allons jouer ensemble, toi et moi.
Si tu gagnes, les enfants ne seront pas déportés, mais je te tuerai.
Si tu perds, tu vivras, mais tous les enfants de moins de dix ans partiront pour les camps.
Si la partie est nulle, nous en resterons là. "
La partie va se jouer devant tout l...more
I did enjoy this book, but wanted it to be so much more intimate than it really was. To me, chess, strategy, love and loss all seem like such intimate situations. This book literally showed snapshots, which was interesting, but not quite intense enough for its subject matter. This was a very short novella and overall a good read.
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Meras was born in 1934 in Kelmė, a town in northwestern Lithuania, which contained one of the country's oldest Jewish communities. His family perished during the fateful and tragic summer of 1941 when the Nazis undertook the liquidation of Lithuania's Jews, but young Icchokas escaped the Holocaust. "On July 28, 1941, I was being taken to a ditch to be shot," he wrote later. "Due to ...more
More about Icchokas Meras...
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