Concentrating on his experiences in the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine, Zsolt provides a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but also a shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings are capable in extreme circumstances.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Certificate, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more. |
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Amazon Review
Nine Suitcases is Bela Zsolt's memoir of the Holocaust--his personal experiences in the Hungarian ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine is as tragic as it is moving. Zsolt's writing forces us past the simplicities of good versus evil and shows the awful human weaknesses, personal complicities and daily heroism and tragedy of war at its most brutal.
The difficulties and dangers of Holocaust literature are legion. (What could or should Holocaust literature be? Has Adorno's warning--no poetry after Auschwitz--been misunderstood or forgotten?) Norman G Finkelstein's provocative The Holocaust Industry has brought our attention to the difference between memorialising Nazi genocide and learning real historical lessons. But Nine Suitcases hugely deserves its publication and can fully stand alongside the work of Primo Levi or Elie Wiesel's Night. Originally published in weekly instalments, Zsolt describes in detail how he came to be in the ghetto (and the significance of those eponymous suitcases), his work as a gravedigger and labourer (ironically, in 1942, force to fight alongside the Germans); the bravery of a local Madame in serving her Jewish prostitutes; his feelings towards his Orthodox fellow inmates; and his plan to pretend a Typhus outbreak. And all of this is done with a matter-of-fact simplicity and without rhetorical flourishes or indulgences. This is an important, great book. Sometimes, Zsolt says, in the ghetto there was "a silence that provoke(d) prayer or blasphemy". We should read Zsolt and, in the ensuing quiet, decide anew what our strategies for learning and understanding should be. --Mark Thwaite
Review
[A] heartbreaking memoir... Unbearably immediate (Laurence Phelan Independent on Sunday 20050410)
A sombre yet strangely beautiful account, devoid of sentimentality...the recent publication of his work in English is long overdue (Phil Baker Sunday Times )
Remarkable...exceptional (Caroline Moorehead Times Literary Supplement )
This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews (Tibor Fischer Guardian )
Very, very rarely you read something that knocks the breath out of you... This masterpiece does (Carole Angier Literary Review ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
A sombre yet strangely beautiful account, devoid of sentimentality...the recent publication of his work in English is long overdue (Phil Baker Sunday Times )
Remarkable...exceptional (Caroline Moorehead Times Literary Supplement )
This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews (Tibor Fischer Guardian )
Very, very rarely you read something that knocks the breath out of you... This masterpiece does (Carole Angier Literary Review ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bela Zsolt's Nine Suitcases is a memoir of the Holocaust in wartime Hungary. The author, a Hungarian writer of Jewish background, begins recounting his tale from the wartime ghetto in Nagyvarad (now in modern-day Romania). From his confinement in the ghetto hospital, Zsolt describes a Jewish community stricken with poverty and panic. There is talk of euthanasia amongst Jews in order to prevent further mutilation and debasement of their bodies. Despite the looming threat of deportation to concentration camps the community remains fractious, with children chafing at family penury and individuals attempting to curry small favours with their tormentors. The imprisoned Jews hide their valuables in the vain hope of recovering them when they are free men. They yearn for escape but have nowhere to go, even when the door is held open for them. It is a desperately grim position.
Rather than laying out his story in a straightforward chronological fashion, Zsolt turns his narrative back and forth in time. In on of the most powerful passages in the book, he tells the story of his deportation to Russia as if he is still in the ghetto talking to his friend Friedlander, adding details every now and again about the developments in the ghetto affecting himself and his friend. Like the other narrative threads in Nine Suitcases, this is all revived in clear and compelling prose. Zsolt adopts a detached, dispassionate tone for much of Nine Suitcases, reflecting the hopelessness and exhaustion that came upon him in the ghetto. His calm description of Jews being hoarded onto cattle wagons for deportation to the concentration camps is truly chilling.... Read more ›
Rather than laying out his story in a straightforward chronological fashion, Zsolt turns his narrative back and forth in time. In on of the most powerful passages in the book, he tells the story of his deportation to Russia as if he is still in the ghetto talking to his friend Friedlander, adding details every now and again about the developments in the ghetto affecting himself and his friend. Like the other narrative threads in Nine Suitcases, this is all revived in clear and compelling prose. Zsolt adopts a detached, dispassionate tone for much of Nine Suitcases, reflecting the hopelessness and exhaustion that came upon him in the ghetto. His calm description of Jews being hoarded onto cattle wagons for deportation to the concentration camps is truly chilling.... Read more ›
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Poignant is a word often used of Holocaust literature and yet it fails to capture exactly the measure of this classy autobiography. The author, a journalist and critic before the war, never abandons his masterful journalistic restraint while buzzing between the various situations in which he finds himself in the aftermath of capture, yet we feel his seething anger oozing through the ironic description, an anger which dissipates into resignation. Perhaps feisty would be more appropriate.
If Holocaust literature is concerned with the motivation of the German authorities, Zsolt's tome is more concerned with the reasons why the ordinary peasantry, like his Hungarian gendarme companion, consents to participate in the outrages, and the equally enigmatic question of why the Jews failed to resist or escape when they had the opportunity. Rightly, it is a book of questions and pastiches, rather than easy answers, but when the latter is proffered it is generally in confirmation of the reader's own suspicions.
The translator's prose style is impeccable, lucid and becoming, and the words and pages seemed to fly past at twice my standard reading pace.
In short, splash out your week's wages if necessary, but you won't be disappointed.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By C. Gladwell
Format:Paperback
I have never read a book quite like this.
The translation into English has been done so well and this makes the reading so much richer.
The sentences are often long which is his slyle but the content is just incredible.
It casts a whole different light to the getto reality in the 1943-44 period and the depth of observation and detail of the many moments is so humbling.
Now its difficult to empathise with the madness of the nazi indoctrination and the hate of the many peasants for the jews.
I will have to read this again as its so so full of rich writing.
Its not full of the brutality but more the other forces which were so much more terrifying.
If you want to read and understand about life around the gettos this is a must.
The translation into English has been done so well and this makes the reading so much richer.
The sentences are often long which is his slyle but the content is just incredible.
It casts a whole different light to the getto reality in the 1943-44 period and the depth of observation and detail of the many moments is so humbling.
Now its difficult to empathise with the madness of the nazi indoctrination and the hate of the many peasants for the jews.
I will have to read this again as its so so full of rich writing.
Its not full of the brutality but more the other forces which were so much more terrifying.
If you want to read and understand about life around the gettos this is a must.
Format:Paperback
This book is the account of how Bela Zsolt mananged to survive what was Hungry's darkest hours in the Second World War.
The title of the book is taken from the number of suitcases his wife took when they tried to escape the coming war by taking a train to Paris and then on. But she was only allowed to take one Suitcase from the onward journey and because they could not take all nine suitcases went back to Hungry.
This is a remarkable story of survival against the odds and unusual in that it records the efforts of the Hungarian Jews to survive not only the Nazis but also Hungry's own fascists.
This really is a book about survival during Europe's darkest hour but at times the dark humour keeps people going. I would recommend this book because it is intense and written with feeling and hope.
The title of the book is taken from the number of suitcases his wife took when they tried to escape the coming war by taking a train to Paris and then on. But she was only allowed to take one Suitcase from the onward journey and because they could not take all nine suitcases went back to Hungry.
This is a remarkable story of survival against the odds and unusual in that it records the efforts of the Hungarian Jews to survive not only the Nazis but also Hungry's own fascists.
This really is a book about survival during Europe's darkest hour but at times the dark humour keeps people going. I would recommend this book because it is intense and written with feeling and hope.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a strange book but one that will be of interest to anyone who has studied the holocaust. The writer has a viewpoint that one rarely comes across as an educated central-European Jew who had a chance to get to safety at the start of the war and then endured the horrors of the Eastern Front and the ghetto. You always feel that you are hearing the voice of an individual which is so precious given that the holocaust robbed many millions of their unique lives and experiences. It is terribly sad at times and yet also retains a real sense of people's little struggles against tyranny and adversity that can almost be described as cheering. Zsolt's perceptions of the Western powers, the Germans and his fellow Hungarians provides a rich and varied insight into aspects of the war with which most of us in England are unfamiliar.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > 1901 Onwards
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Biography > Holocaust
- Books > Biography > Political > Countries & Regions > Europe
- Books > Biography > War & Espionage > World War II
- Books > History > Europe > Holocaust
- Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Biographies & Memoirs
- Books > History > World History > World War II 1939-1945 > Origins
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
