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CM . . . .
Volume VII Number 16 . . . . April 13, 2001
Ghost Children, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz's first published collection
of poetry, consists of 48 poems which explore the spiritual and emotional
trauma suffered by child survivors of the Holocaust. Herself a Holocaust
survivor, the author was born in Warsaw and emigrated to Canada in 1947.
She has written a trilogy of historical fiction for young adults: The
Old Brown Suitcase (1995), which won the Sheila A.Egoff Award for
children's literature, The Sunflower Diaries, (1999) and The
Lenski File (2000).
The "Ghost Children" of the title refers not only to the one and one-half
million children murdered in the Holocaust but also to the many child
survivors who, in the author's words "...had no language with which to
describe our visions of terror...we simply felt and observed, remaining
silent like trees." Boraks-Nemetz believes that the soul of a Holocaust
child survivor is forever scarred and that its ghost will seek to redeem
the past through tenacious and unforgiving memories.
It is those searing memories that provide the material for the poems in the first section of the
anthology, entitled "Wound." Each short poem is vivid and filled with painful images. Many have
a nightmare quality to them. In "Journey," the second section of the book, the author travels to
Europe to visit the concentration camps, ghettos and towns where Jews once flourished. In the
Cracow market ("Cracow: The Dichotemy"), the poet finds smiling yellow-haired Polish dolls
arranged beside sober black-coated Hassidic dolls. In "A Walk Through the Warsaw Ghetto," she
writes: "humans stroll these grounds/seeking shade while history/ smoulders beneath their feet."
Finally in "Healing," the third section of Ghost Children, the
bitterness of the earlier poems begins to give way to feelings of hope and
redemption. "The Gardener of Children" is a powerful poem in memory of
Janus Korczak, a Polish Jewish pediatrician who sacrificed his life for
200 Jewish orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto. Her last poem, "Flickers in the
Dark," expresses the idea that the risen ghosts of memory give birth to
words which, like flickers in the dark, can throw light onto the long
shadow cast by hatred and prejudice. By using poetry to share her painful
journey, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz has made an important contribution to the
elimination of those twin evils.
Lillian Boraks-Nemetz' collection should provide an invaluable resource for teachers whose
students are involved in studying the Holocaust and reading young adult novels set during that
terrible time. Moved as they so often are to write poetry in response to their reading, young
readers will find themselves inspired by the poems in Ghost Children. A helpful glossary
of place names and words used throughout the book appears at the end of the volume, a feature
that will undoubtedly increase students' understanding of the poems and their setting.
Recommended.
Valerie Nielsen is a retired teacher-librarian living in Winnipeg, MB.
To comment on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
Copyright © the Manitoba Library Association.
Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice
is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without
permission.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS ISSUE - April 13, 2001.
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