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My book is subtitled, "Recalling a World War II Childhood" and is a memoir of my peaceful childhood in Czechoslovakia; how my life was radically changed by the Holocaust, and my experiences in surviving six German concentration camps from the age of 14 - 15.
- Sales Rank: #1819865 in Books
- Published on: 2012-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .27" w x 5.50" l, .33 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 118 pages
About the Author
I was born in 1930 in a town called Trencin, in what was then Czechoslovakia -- a country that no longer exists. It is now called Slovakia. I was the only child of a well-to-do Jewish couple. My father was the owner of a store, a kind of department store, in a prime location of the town's principal square. We lived in a large, comfortable apartment above the store. I grew up bi-lingual -- fluent in German, in addition to Slovak. I attended a local Jewish elementary school where, at the age of six, I also started studying Hebrew. Additionally, from the age of eight I received private lessons in English. This peaceful existence was shattered in 1939 when Hitler's Germany annexed the Czech part of the country, with Slovakia becoming a quasi-independent country governed by a local fascist party, firmly allied to Nazi Germany. A firm feature of this Slovak government was its anti-Semitism. A series of anti-Jewish laws was promulgated, ultimately stripping us of our property and all civil rights. In 1942, the Slovak government started deporting the Jewish population to concentration camps in "the east," as the euphemism had it. Between March and November of that year, of a Jewish population of close to 90,000 people, some 60,000 were deported -- the vast majority to their annihilation in extermination camps such as Auschwitz. You can read in my book how my family escaped deportation in 1942; and how we were finally caught in the net and deported in October, 1944. I describe this desperate period in my book: how I was separated from my family and how I survived a succession of six German concentration camps. In 2006, I published my memoir entitled "1000:1 ODDS." My current memoir is an expanded version of my earlier book and is now published under the new title, "Memories of Evil." I immigrated to this country in November, 1946. I mark this event of my life as my rebirth and my new life. After a fruitful and satisfying 68 years in the U.S., the travail of my childhood years -- of what I call my previous life -- ought to be long forgotten. And yet, survivors of the Holocaust cannot forget, cannot forgive. Vestiges of our trauma will remain with us to our last breath. If you want to come a little closer to understanding the Holocaust, read my modest book. It is far from the whole truth, which is beyond human understanding. But it is nothing but the truth, based on fragments of my memory, supplemented by historical research.
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
A riveting tale of family, faith, terror and survival.
By Charles S. Weinblatt
In his memoir, Memories of Evil, Peter Kubicek bears personal witness to the terror of the Holocaust. His book is a testimonial to those who by strength of spirit and conviction, and sometimes through kind fate, managed to survive humanity's worst genocide - the Holocaust.
Kubicek describes the degradation and inhumanity felt by Nazi victims. His narration uncovers the horror of incarceration, starvation, forced labor and brutality. His descriptions are remarkably detailed, especially considering his young age at the time and the decades that have passed since the Holocaust. Miraculously, Kubicek's mother also survived at Bergen-Belsen, although his grandmother died there. His father had managed to immigrate to the United States just before his family and friends were taken from their homes.
Mr. Kubicek hails from a Slovak city called Trencin. Of the 18.000 inhabitants, about 2,000 were Jewish. Only a few survived the deadly whirlwind of the Shoah. Kubicek's life as a child was normal in all respects. His parents were devoted to religious tradition; he enjoyed school, he loved hiking and he participated in the cultural life of the Jewish community. Zionism was an important aspect of his family's life. His parents owned a general store in town and he spent much of his childhood there.
In the summer of 1939, as war neared, Kubicek's father left for America, eventually settling in New York City, where he called for his family to join him. But it was too late. Jews were denied travel permits and visas. The author and his mother were stranded in a land where being a Jew meant being destined for extermination.
Germans soon evicted Jews from Kubicek's apartment building, including their valuables and furniture. The family business was also taken. Trains began transporting the Jewish population to Nazi concentration camps, emptying the town of its Jewish inhabitants and their culture. At age nine, Kubicek was engulfed by the horror of the Holocaust. The first camp was Bergen-Belsen, where their valuables and clothing were taken, their heads were shaved and they were issued striped pajama-type uniforms. There, they were put to work, serving the Nazi war machine.
In various concentration camps, Kubicek had to endure the unendurable. Separated from his mother, he was left to fend for himself in a nightmarish world of beatings, humiliation, slavery and murder. Everyone that he had loved had been taken away from him. He suffered through sickness, starvation, forced labor, brutal weather and vicious cruelty. Kubicek soon learned to find work valued by his nefarious Nazi captors. In one camp, he learned how to mend and darn socks, a valuable skill that aided him greatly in another camp.
As Allied forces neared, in 1945, Kubicek and 32,000 other prisoners were led on a forced march through the countryside. For many days and nights, the march continued. Those who were too slow, who had stopped or sat down, were moved into the ditch and shot. This particular action later became known as "the hunger march." One morning, Kubicek arose to discover that the German soldiers were gone. They had left during the night. Ironically, the 3,000 prisoners left at the camp because they were too sick to travel were liberated by the Russian Army shortly after the march began.
As the war ended, Kubicek, like all of the prisoners, faced a myriad of physical and emotional problems. Kubicek weighed less than 70 pounds. Severely malnourished, doctors discovered that Kubicek had also contracted tuberculosis. Almost everyone suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. He was eventually hospitalized and forced to live in a sanitarium because of his tuberculosis.
Miraculously, Kubicek's mother had also survived. Reunited, they seek to join his father in America. When Kubicek had largely recovered from tuberculosis, they returned to Trencin; where they discovered that Christian neighbors had taken their apartment and furniture. Eventually, Kubicek's mother found the person who had taken their furniture. Under a false bottom in a china cabinet, the cache of jewelry that she had hid there four years earlier was recovered.
Kubicek and his mother eventually were able to communicate with his father and he helped them immigrate to America. But many of the Jews remaining in displaced persons (DP) camps had no such luck. With no nation, except Sweden, willing to take in Jews who survived the Holocaust, they had had nowhere else to live. These plucky Jews had survived starvation, being beaten within an inch of their lives, survived rigorous slave labor and the loss of everyone that they had loved. Yet they remained homeless because most nations had an immigration quota on Jews, including Great Britain and The United States. Many of these survivors attempted to enter Palestine; the ultimate quest for a Zionist. They were rebuffed by the British, who controlled the Palestinian Territories.
Kubicek is a very competent writer, although a memoir is hardly the medium for a sparkling new talent. Still, Kubicek delivers a panorama of feelings and experiences that one might anticipate in a Nazi concentration camp. We discover remarkable characters and vivid descriptions. The flow of this memoir is steady and constant. The reader is immersed within the cascading bowels of terror inflicted by Nazi Germany upon innocent Jewish families. In this, Kubicek proffers exactly what the reader expects to discover.
This book might have been enhanced with the inclusion of additional family pictures (if possible). Adding more maps and diagrams, which are plentiful and easily available, would have enriched the experience for visual learners. And while a memoir is not a novel, there is room for enhanced character development and a more evocative description of the senses.
Many memoir authors write about their experiences not for public consumption, but as a gift for their progeny. That is certainly the sense here. Should the author desire, this memoir has the capacity to be turned into a novel. As such, a vast new universe of characters, situations and emotional responses would open. Of course, it is not for the reader to dictate what the author intends to provide, particularly in a memoir. Regardless, Kubicek has given us an opportunity to live within his Holocaust, which is the quintessential desire of the memoir author.
Peter Kubicek's memoir produces a powerful historical description of life as a Jew in Nazi concentration camps. His story is remarkably accurate and insightful. This is a riveting tale of family, faith, terror and survival. Memories of Evil is a thrilling, compelling memoir.
Reviewer Charles S. Weinblatt is the author of Jacob's Courage: A Holocaust Love Story (Mazo Publishers 2007).
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A ONCE IN A LIFETIME BOOK and EXPERIENCE!
By ittybit
"Memories of Evil: A World War II Childhood" by Peter Kubicek is A ONCE IN A LIFETIME BOOK & EXPERIENCE!
I will return to write a "real" review, but I want to share some of my thoughts and feelings about this utterly from the heart and soul book. There are a plethora of reasons why this book stands out from other memoirs written by other Holocaust survivors. But two examples are that the author, Peter Kubicek, gives great insight into how and why many things occurred and how people reacted during The Holocaust, that I have never seen interpreted in the ways they are here...
"Memories of Evil: Recalling a World War II Childhood" written by Peter Kubicek, a survivor, is an intimate yet straightforward with zero fat journey into the lives of the author, his family and others. The author uses honest, accessible and clean prose that makes reading each page an experience of intimacy and an immersion in truth. Readers will find moving black and white photos throughout the book that draw you in like magnets to a world that is long gone, but comes to life right before your eyes and in your soul. I felt like I had been transported back in time and that I was seeing, hearing, and smelling everything right beside the author in real time.
I have read many, many books about The Holocaust, but I've never read anything like this work. INCREDIBLE!
RUN AND GET THIS BOOK NOW! If you can't find it, or if you can't or don't want to purchase it, I will get it for you. It is "that" good!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Slim but Poignant
By Mr. B
Holocaust survivor Peter Kubicek has written a slim but poignant memoir in Memories of Evil (itself an expanded version of an earlier work, 1000:1 Odds). One wishes there were more--more details, more narrative. However as the author admits: "There are . . . certain scenes of brutality and horror that I am simply unable to verbalize. . . . [T]hey will have to remain buried." What Kubicek has written is nonetheless fascinating.
The author begins by briefly describing his rather idyllic pre-war childhood in the Slovakian town of Trencin, an idyll which continued for a time even after the onset of World War II, as Slovakia fell under the control of a pro-German fascist regime. By 1942, however, the screws began inexorably to tighten--the family's business was expropriated ("Aryanized") as was the family's furniture--lock, stock and barrel-- and arranged in exactly the same order in the apartment below. Kubicek and his mother were soon reduced to a precarious existence (his father had fortuitously been caught in Switzerland when WWII began and was ultimately able to emigrate to the U.S.). But Aryanization was nothing compared to the fear engendered by the mass deportations which began in that same year. Although over two-thirds of Slovakia's 90,000 Jews were deported to the camps in 1942, Kubicek's mother had sufficient money and connections to remain unmolested. By the fall of 1944, however, the family's luck finally ran out, and no amount of money or connections could save you if you were a Jew. In the ensuing months, Kubicek, age 14, was shuttled between 7 different concentration camps, including such notorious places as Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen. Some kindly adults, and Kubicek's ability to make himself useful (darning socks for the SS, where he developed a loyal customer base) increased his chances for survival. Even so, it was a close run thing; by the time the war ended the author weighed less than 68 pounds. Kubicek's narrative easily succeeds in evoking the three sensations which he describes as the core of the concentration camp experience: hunger, physical exhaustion, and terror.
Memories of Evil abounds in poignant vignettes: the Prominenter prisoner who takes pity on Kubicek and gives him a wonderful pair of warm gloves--which are promptly confiscated less than a day later when the author is moved to yet another camp; the disdainful and emotionally distant German cellmate who nevertheless shares his prized possession, his warm overcoat, when Kubicek falls seriously ill; his delirious mother who awakens in a clean British hospital after collapsing near death in Bergen-Belsen and concludes that she has in fact died and gone to heaven. But the most poignant episode of all, at least to this reviewer, occurs when the author's father fails to recognize his own son when Kubicek and his mother finally arrive in the U.S. in 1946--the son he last saw a world ago, in 1939.
There are many memories of evil in this book, but also proof of deep family bonds and strong friendships, examples of the unexpected kindness of strangers, and evidence of reserves that even Kubicek didn't know he had, reserves which few people are ever asked to call upon. In his introductory Author's Note, Kubicek expresses his hope that his modest contribution might serve as his epigraph to the "inexpressible evil we call the Holocaust." Memories of Evil, slim, poignant and full of insights, is an altogether fitting epigraph indeed. Highly recommended.
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