Eva Hnizdo's Blog, page 4
October 30, 2021
Stolpersteine
This week, my family held a ceremony to mark the installation of a Stolpersteine in the pavement in front of the house from where my family was deported to Theresienstadt in 1943.
The Stolpersteine, which literally means ‘stumbling block’ in German, was an idea of a German artist Gunter Demnig who wanted people to discover the last address of those deported by the Nazis by accident as they walked along the street.
They were Jewish, Roma, gay, political opponents, or sometimes just people with a mental illness or disability.
The Stolpersteine ceremony was moving. Many of my friends came, my primary school teacher, family. We even had the 5th generation with us, my grandchildren.
So now, people walking on that Prague embankment will look down on those golden tiles, and think about the Holocaust, and how we should never let anything like that happen again. There are four names. My grandmother and mother who survived and my grandfather and uncle who didn’t.
“They didn’t come back”, a strange euphemism for murder.
The next day, we travelled to Terezin-Theresienstadt and saw the museum, the town, remembering the stories my mother and my grandmother used to tell me.
Two days remembering my family’s fate in the Holocaust was a bit too much. I had to go back to normal life.
Part of the Small Fortress at Terezin where my family was imprisoned 1944-1945.
October 25, 2021
The play Leopoldstadt and coping with traumatic family past.
I am in Prague. Tomorrow, we are going to lay Stolpersteine
http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ in front of the house in Prague where my family lived before they were deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp.
There will be the 5th generation there, my grandchildren.
I will blog about that, of course, but I’d like to talk about a play I saw in London the evening before the flight to Prague.
It was Leopoldstadt by my favourite playwright Tom Stoppard.
Tom Stoppard is like me originally a Jewish Czech. The play is about a Jewish Viennese family .It was wonderful and moving. I don’t cry in theatres I did that time.
https://www.thearticle.com/leopoldstadt-tom-stoppards-last-play-but-his-first-tragedy-is-a-triumph
And I am thinking about the fact that it took Tom Stoppard, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Singapore with his parents in 1939 many years before he wrote a play about the Jewish question and the Holocaust.
I couldn’t possibly compare myself to a genius like Mr. Stoppard, but I also only started thinking about my Jewish family past when I was older.-63,
Then gradually it became very important, and I just had to write my novel “ Why Didn’t They Leave?”
It is as if the memories of my family had to mature, grow in my mind.
So if you hear people say: It was a long time ago!” talking about Holocaust or slavery in America, think about it. Sometimes digesting horrible past and dealing with it takes a long time.
Maybe the more traumatic the situation is, the longer it takes.
If you can, go and see the play, it is fantastic.
I am in Prague. Tomorrow, we are going to lay Stolpersteine
http://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/home/ in front of the house in Prague where my family lived before they were deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp.
There will be the 5th generation there, my grandchildren.
I will blog about that, of course, but I’d like to talk about a play I saw in London the evening before the flight to Prague.
It was Leopoldstadt by my favourite playwright Tom Stoppard.
Tom Stoppard is like me originally a Jewish Czech. The play is about a Jewish Viennese family .It was wonderful and moving. I don’t cry in theatres I did that time.
https://www.thearticle.com/leopoldstadt-tom-stoppards-last-play-but-his-first-tragedy-is-a-triumph
And I am thinking about the fact that it took Tom Stoppard, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Singapore with his parents in 1939 so many years before he wrote a play about the Jewish question and the Holocaust.
I couldn’t possibly compare myself to a genius like Mr. Stoppard, but I also only started thinking about my Jewish family past when I was older.-63,
Then gradually it became very important, and I just had to write my novel “ Why Didn’t They Leave?”
It is as if the memories of my family had to mature, grow in my mind.
So if you hear people say: It was a long time ago!” talking about Holocaust or slavery in America, think about it. Sometimes digesting horrible past and dealing with it takes a long time.
Maybe the more traumatic the situation is, the longer it takes.
If you can, go and see the play, it is fantastic.
October 16, 2021
My brave Russian teacher in 1969- 1971
I watched an interesting film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Within_the_Whirlwind about Yevgenia Ginzburg a Russian Jewish dissident who spent more than 10 years arrested in Siberia in Stalin’s time. I didn’t know that her son was Alexei Aksjonov. I have a funny story about him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Aksyonov
In secondary school – I went in September 1968-I was in the humanities section, so the 4 final graduation exams were Czech, Russian, History and another foreign language + another subject whatever we wanted.
Our Russian teacher Mr. Knenicky was mainly a PE teacher, but there were not enough hours, so he taught Russian. His parents allegedly came from Russia in 1922. Mr Knenicky, the teacher boycotted our teaching by bringing various Russian books, in Czech translation.
He read to us his Ticket to the Stars (1961). He read well, like an actor. He read us other things, too, but I remember what it was, Ticket to the Stars described live hippie like Russian teenagers. Eventually , the writer Aksjonov became a dissident and was exiled by the Soviet government.
Half a year before out graduation, the government decided, that instead of history, we will have Russian . Nobody was more worried than Mr. Knenicky. You can’t learn properly just by being read a dissident Russia book in Czech translations. We were not complaining. We were 15 at the time of the Soviet invasion in August 1968 and we hated the Russians with passion.
Our teacher was more worried than we were and tried very hard to make us catch up with the curriculum. At the exam , there was him, and 2 teachers from other schools. By the oral part of my exam, he kept kicking me under table when I made a mistake. I passed, so did everybody else. My other subjects- Czech, German and Chemistry were OK.
I have a feeling that the teacher went back to teaching just sport, Despite being Russian, but from anti-Communist background, and the fact that there was a lack of Russian teachers.
It was 1977 a time of worsening oppression . I went to medical school, and I haven’t heard from the teacher. I wonder what happened to him. He was brave. Was he re-arrested or exiled like Vasyli Aksjonov before ?
I am going to Prague for a month, and I will try to look for him. I never thought about him before. He must be at least 83.But he was a sports teacher, and hopefully stayed fit. Maybe he emigrated, like I did.
We’ll see. But I would like to thank him. And tell him I recently bought the English translation of Ticket to The Stars and read it with enjoyment.
He was one of the rare teachers in Communist Czechoslovakia who were brave and risked their careers by not repeating lies written in the curriculum ( school syllabus).
If I was a teacher, would I have done the same? I don’t know. I like to think I would, but you can’t tell if you are brave before you get not the situation requiring it. And Mr Knenicky was brave, and he was a good teacher.
October 15, 2021
Travelling Mercies by Anne Lamott
I don’t read books by very religious people. Not often.
But this was very surprising. I am faithless. Completely . Not just deity. Even science. I believe that as far as we know… but I also know that some scientific evidence will be replaced by new one, maybe contrary. A lot of things I learnt in medical school are no longer true. That’s good that science unlike religion allows that development . Maybe even that is not true. Maybe religions change their idea of God. I am not saying there is evidence God doesn’t exist. There is also no evidence he does. For me though, even if he existed, there is a very unlikely chance he would care about us humans.
So reading a book by Anne Lamott, someone with so strong faith in Jesus and God and like the book is the least thing I would expect.
There are other things completely alien to me. Her alcoholism and drugs, the obsessive anxious mothering to her beloved son Sam. I don’t think she could be any different from me or my idea about what person should aim for.
Yet I loved the book.
Her self deprecating humour, her lack of pomp, her love for people from her church and others. The style. Those witty sentences, each of them could be a quote . I would feel happy if I could write event just 3 sentences as human , humorous and kind like she does. Her book is full of them .
I’d like to read her fiction. This is more a diary or a memoir.
If she was my friend she would probably drive me nuts, although she seems to be a caring, kind and faithful friend. She is a strange but a good creature. But she is not a friend, she is a famous writer that I would never meet, this book made me love her, albeit from a safe distance.
As I said; surprising. I don’t pray. But her prayers ” Help me , help me, help me ” and ” Thank you, thank you, thank you ” are the best prayers I can imagine. Will I pray? Nope. But if I was that in my opinion non existing God , I would answer her prayers while chuckling at her humour.
Smorgasbord Cafe and Bookstore Update – #Reviews – #History #JewishFiction Eva Hnizdo, #Fantasy Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene, #Poetry Balroop Singh
Not only reblogging it because of selfish reasons. It’s the other brilliant parts of this,too.
Welcome to the Friday edition of the Cafe and Bookstore with recent reviews for authors on the shelves
The first review is for Eva Hnizdo and her new novel, released on 28th September. The historical Jewish fiction Why Didn’t They Leave?
About the book
You can’t ask for asylum in another country just because your mother drives you nuts, so when 19-year-old Zuzana flees from communist Czechoslovakia to England in 1972, she says she just wants freedom. Her relationship with her mother, Magda – a Holocaust survivor who lost most of her family in the concentration camps – is toxic and Zuzana finds happiness in London with a loving husband and beautiful son. But when her mother dies, Zuzana is crushed by guilt and feels an overwhelming urge to discover more about her family’s tragic history. So, she embarks on a life-changing journey, discovers some incredible stories and tries to…
View original post 904 more words
October 13, 2021
Some new reviews and reactions.
A British reader I didn’t know on Face Book contacted me writing :
I was in the car driving to my mother’s house and happened to catch your Radio 4 programme. It was really very well structured, put together and spoken. Your book was already on order, but it would have been on the back of that if not. The book happily arrived the next day by chance and is currently going round the family for reading.
Apparently his mother is reading the book now.
I also had several lovely Amazon reviews. Read them only if you want to. https://www.amazon.com/Why-Didnt-They-Leave-Hnizdo/product-reviews/1913913368/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews
So it looks promising. Still, it is far to go. I hope I will get some opportunities for interviews.
Wish me luck.
October 9, 2021
Smorgasbord Cafe and Bookstore – New Author on the Shelves – #Historical #Witchcraft – Bitter Magic by Nancy Kilgore
Sounds fascinating
Delighted to welcome Nancy Kilgorefrom Vermont, with her books to the Cafe and Bookstore. Today I am featuring her most recent release in August 2021, Bitter Magic: Inspired by the stgory of a confessed witch.
About the book
Bitter Magic, inspired by the true story of Isobel Gowdie and her witchcraft confession, reveals a little-known corner of history—the lives of both pagan and Protestant women in the Scottish Reformation of the 1600s as witch trials and executions threatened their lives, values, and beliefs.
The story is told by Isobel herself and also by Margaret Hay, a fictionalized seventeen-year-old noble woman. When Margaret stumbles across Isobel one day, it seems as though Isobel is commanding the dolphins in the ocean to dance. Margaret is enchanted. She becomes interested in Isobel’s magic, in fairies, and in herbal remedies; Isobel freely shares her knowledge. While Margaret worries that being around Isobel…
View original post 550 more words
October 5, 2021
Smorgasbord Book Reviews – #Memoir – Flashes of Life: True Tales of the Extraordinary Ordinary by Pamela S. Wight
Delighted to share my review for Flashes of Life: True Tales of the Extraordinary Ordinaryby Pamela S. Wight
About the collection.
Wow! Life goes by in a flash.
Philosophers and mystics ponder the mystery of these flashes. Pamela Wight writes about life flashes in her short stories that include family and friends, love and life’s challenges. Wight’s “Flash Memoir” promotes the belief that we all share sparks of the extraordinary that occur in our everyday life. Each short story is true and brings a smile of recognition to her readers: that life transports and enthralls us in all its confusing, amusing, challenging, and astonishing ways. Each story is light-hearted and short – like a flash – but be prepared for a page-turner that keeps you in your seat, smiling.
My review for the book October 5th 2021
How often do we hear the expression, or even use it ourselves…
View original post 513 more words
October 4, 2021
A fun gift to myself, jewellery with my book cover.
I got this as a gift for myself for the book. From https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HappyFutureStudio
They are made from my book cover design. Fun isn’t it? Any writers out there who would like to do the same? And no, I have no financial or other interest in promoting this studio apart from the fact that I am very pleased.
