Good Beyond Evil

by Eva Gossman

Good Beyond Evil is the story of a handful of ordinary people who risked their lives to save the lives of one Jewish family. It begins in the spring of 1939, weaves through the post-liberation period and ends in 1997 with a ceremony at Yad Vashem. The acceptance of two of the main characters into the Community of 'Righteous Among the Nations' provokes humbling reflection on the richness of opportunities enjoyed by members of the family who were saved compared with the narrowly circumscribed lives of those who saved them. Set in the broader context of Czechoslovakia's short history, its democratic institutions and endemic anti-Semitism, Good Beyond Evil is a also a requiem for a once-flourishing Jewish community.

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Lennyag]

I know the author and have heard a presentation by her of the book. I read the book many years ago. Yet even today 4/6/2024 she is sharp, intelligent, and clear thinking about her experiences and the book. The telling of her story is a vehicle to enable her to shine a light on her rescuers. They were “good” in the midst of “evil.” Every holocaust story is unique. Eva’s story is filled with goodness and bravery along with the necessary randomness (luck) that led to her survival. A great contribution to the holocaust literature.

[Meaghan]

The author, as a teenager, survived a couple of ghettos in Slovakia and Hungary and eventually went into hiding with her parents, sister, brother and cousin. They were kept by a Slovak woman and her daughter (both of whom have been honored as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem). Eight people stayed in a one-room cottage, and only four of them officially existed and had identity papers, and two of those sets of papers were forgeries. It was a nerve-racking existence for everybody and fortunately it happened towards the end of the war, so they didn't have to maintain their double life for more than a year or so. After liberation, the author's family stayed in Slovakia for several years and then emigrated -- her cousin wound up in England, her father in Israel and the rest went to the United States.

This memoir is not very detailed -- the author admits to huge, inexplicable gaps in her memory -- and a person who hasn't read very many Holocaust books would probably be disappointed by its lack of a good picture of the author's war experiences. I think it's more valuable for the beginning part, giving the history of anti-Semitism in Slovakia and detailing the rise of Nazism there, and the ending, describing the Yad Vashem ceremony honoring the rescuers (the first such description I've seen) and author's reluctant return to the country in the 1990s. There isn't a whole lot of literature out there on the Holocaust in Slovakia, so the book is worth reading just for that.