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Lily Renée, Escape Artist

by Erika Dreifus on
4

Alerted and intrigued by Trina Robbins’s guest post for the Jewish Book Council blog, I spent part of Sunday afternoon at the lovely Books of Wonder bookstore in Manhattan, where Robbins and Lily Renée, the subject of Robbins’s Lily Renée: Escape Artist, spoke to a large group of admirers. (FYI: One of those admirers told me that she runs a website titled “Ladies Making Comics,” for those of you who may want to learn still more about “all the awesome women who make comics.”)

Subtitled “From Holocaust Survivor to Comic Book Pioneer” and illustrated by Anne Timmons and Mo Oh, Lily Renée, Escape Artist, chronicles the early life of one such awesome woman: Lily Renée. Born in Vienna, Lily Renée Wilheim was a young teenager when the Nazis annexed Austria. She became part of a Kindertransport to England and was eventually reunited with her parents in New York, which is where her artistic talents helped her obtain paying work for a comic book publisher. That is the story and timespan covered in the new book.

I must admit that I don’t normally read graphic narratives, and I also don’t spend much time with middle-grade literature, which is how this book seems to be categorized. I read through it quickly—it’s not long, and it captured and held my attention. I was impressed, and I hope that in the not-too-distant future I’ll be able to share it with my niece (8).

I was interested to read others’ impressions of the book, not only on Goodreads, but also elsewhere on the Web. If you’re similarly intrigued, please click on.

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
  • Last week, I mentioned that I wouldn’t make it to the Amos Oz event at the 92nd Street Y. But Andrew Silow-Carroll was there.
  • Fantastic interview with author Allegra Goodman on her own (and others’) Jewish fiction. (via @realdelia)
  • Beth Kissileff reports on an International Conference on the Life and Work of Aharon Appelfeld, held October 26 and 27 at the University of Pennsylvania. Appelfeld was in attendance.
  • Over on the Literary Commentary blog, D.G. Myers argues that fantasy is a genre of Christianity.
  • A reminder that I’ll be speaking as a guest of the Jewish Historical Society of New York on Sunday, November 13. The topic: “Looking Backward: History, the Holocaust, and Literary Writing in the Third Generation.”

    • Shabbat shalom!

    A Somber Anniversary: “für tot erklärt seit 30 Oktober 1940”

    by Erika Dreifus on
    4

    The other day, the Leo Baeck Institute posted this item on its Facebook page:

    “On October 22, 1940, the Jews of Loerrach, in the State of Baden, were deported to Gurs. Thousands of other Jews in Baden were deported to Gurs during this same time period. A vast amount of these people were later sent from Gurs to the death camps; many elderly people did not survive the harsh conditions of life in Gurs itself. We remember the anniversary of these deportations.”

    Part of me always remembers the anniversary of these deportations. Both of my paternal grandparents came from Baden. They emigrated from Germany in the late 1930s and met here in New York.

    My grandmother came from Mannheim; my grandfather, from a village you wouldn’t have heard of. Among my books is a softcover history devoted entirely to 22./23. Oktober 1940: Deportation Mannheimer Juden nach Gurs. If a similar history exists for my grandfather’s village, I haven’t yet encountered it.

    But I do possess a document that records the history of the Jewish community of that village. Which is how I know that through his mother, my grandfather could trace his ancestry there back to 1764, to a man named Abraham Levi Groß.

    The same document also identifies my grandfather’s aunt, Emma.

    I never knew much about this aunt. I knew only that after my grandfather’s mother died, and his father had gone off to fight in World War One, Emma was the adult left in charge of my infant grandfather and his elder sister.

    And she didn’t do a very good job of it.

    With that background–and then, a chilling phrase in the community history–I created the character (also named Emma) in my story “Matrilineal Descent,” the second story in Quiet Americans.

    After he returned from the war, my great-grandfather remarried. His second wife, Anna, was the only mother my grandfather knew. She was as devoted to her husband’s first two children as she was to the son they had together, and after my great-grandfather died, she kept the family together.

    Like Emma Groß, Anna Dreifus was deported to Gurs in October 1940. Unlike Emma–who, as other documents reveal, was among those many Baden Jews who were sent on to die in Auschwitz–Oma Anna survived.

    How she survived is something of a mystery–how she got out of Gurs to obtain a visa in Marseille and sail to New York from Casablanca in December 1941 to arrive in New York, where she immediately moved in with my newlywed grandparents. I never heard exactly what happened in Europe.

    But on this anniversary, especially, I wonder.

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
  • I wasn’t able to make it to Amos Oz’s appearance at the 92nd Street Y this week, but while he was in town, Oz recorded this broadcast with Brian Lehrer, and I hope to get to that very soon!
  • Another big prize for Charles Foran’s biography of Mordecai Richler.
  • More about Irène Némirovsky.
  • Némirovsky gets a mention in Trina Robbins’s post for the Jewish Book Council, too. Robbins is the author of Lily Renée: Escape Artist, “a comic by a Jewish woman about a Jewish woman who drew comics.” (Lily Renée was also part of the history of the Kindertransport trains.)
  • The second part of “A Jewish Writer in America,” excerpted from a talk that Saul Bellow gave in 1984, is now online.
  • The praise keeps coming for short-story writer Edith Pearlman.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    USHMM Seeks Contract Researcher/Writer in D.C.

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Received this job announcement via email from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington:

    CONTRACT RESEARCHER
    Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

    The Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is creating a multi-volume Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945.

    In support of this effort, the Center is seeking a contract researcher to gather information and write entries on particular sites (specifically, non-SS forced labor camps under governmental agencies and/or private industrial firms), using the Museum’s library and archival holdings as well as other resources in the Washington, DC area. The researcher may have the opportunity to publish his or her work in the encyclopedia. Some translation and editing duties may also be required. Work is to begin as soon as possible.

    Applicants must possess some education beyond the first degree and have experience in historical research and writing. Knowledge of the Holocaust is highly desirable. Applicants must have excellent writing skills in English and a thorough reading knowledge of German; other central- or eastern-European languages are desirable.

    The researcher will not be an employee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, but will perform the work on a contract basis. The initial contract will require delivery of entires and other related products in accordance with a six-month schedule, with extensions to the contract possible after that. Payment will be commensurate with the researcher’s education and experience, ranging between $1,500 and $3,000 per month.

    The researcher will also have the opportunity to participate in Center and Museum events such as colloquia, seminars, workshops, fellows’ discussions and lectures.

    Please send a cover letter indicating dates of availability along with a curriculum vitae and a short writing sample (no more than 1,200 words) by 1 November to:

    Geoffrey P. Megargee, Ph.D.
    Applied Research Scholar
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
    Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies
    100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW
    Washington, DC 20024-2126

    Email submissions are acceptable and may be sent to gmegargee(at)ushmm(dot)org