Gizelle HershReseñas

This powerful Holocaust memoir, whose title is taken from the last words spoken to the author by her mother, before they were separated forever by the gas chambers of Auschwitz, follows the story of a young Hungarian Jewish girl who somehow managed to survive three concentration camps, and to help her three younger sisters survive as well.

Fluent in German, Gizelle had the unwelcome distinction of interpreting for the infamous Dr. Mengele, as he decided the fate of his victims, and was able to inflate the ages of her siblings, thereby saving their lives. Through their time at Auschwitz, and then later at Geislingen and Dachau, Gizelle continued to uphold her promise to her mother, watching over the younger girls and their Lagerschwester (camp sister), who together made up a row of five. Upon liberation, the girls eventually found themselves in a refugee camp in Bavaria, where they met General Eisenhower.

I read Gizelle, Save the Children! shortly after Isabella Leitner's Fragments of Isabella, and was struck by the similarities between the two. Both relate the story of a Hungarian Jewish family caught up in the terrible events of the Shoah, in which a group of sisters survive together. Although I went through a period in my adolescence in which I read over thirty Holocaust memoirs (what can I say, I have an obsessive streak?), these two titles stand out in my memory, and I can't help thinking it is because I myself am one of three sisters. Perhaps the suffering of others is most vivid to us, when we can somehow identify personally with the victims?