Memory Fields: The Legacy of a Wartime Childhood in Czechoslovakia

by Shlomo Breznitz

Memory Fields recounts Shlomo Breznitz’s devastating experiences upon being placed in a Sisters of Saint Vincent orphanage just hours before his parents were sent to Auschwitz. He tells of events with other orphans, his teacher, classmates, the prelate and dreaded visits by Nazi officers periodically searching for Jewish children. He describes overwhelming feelings of isolation and loneliness, and persistent dread of being discovered. Interwoven throughout the book, Breznitz, the psychologist, draws on his history and explores the nature of cruelty and kindness, of stifling fear and outstanding courage, and the ways in which memory shapes our lives. University of Haifa psychology professor Breznitz, who was caught up in the Holocaust as a child, has written a spare and eloquent memoir of his experiences. Born into a Jewish family in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, he narrowly avoided transport to a concentration camp, because his parents, who were soon shipped to Auschwitz, managed to place the six-year-old Shlomo and his 10-year-old sister, Judith, in a Catholic orphanage, where they remained until the end of the war. There Shlomo strove to become a good Christian, hiding his circumcision from the other boys, who frequently treated him cruelly, and memorizing the Catholic litany so well that he was chosen to recite for the prelate. The pain of his memories of the convent was reinforced by an anti-Semitic incident that took place in 1959 when the author was traveling through Hungary as a member of the Israeli student chess team. The book is a moving contribution to Holocaust literature.

190 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2017