"Katarina" by Kathryn Winter
Apr. 23rd, 2023 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaIf I hadn't been so busy I would have posted this for Yom haShoah last week, but today I had lunch with the author, so that's also a good time to post.
Kathryn dances with the folk dance group I joined recently. I was chatting with her at a folk dance party, and explained how my grandparents had to leave Germany because of the Holocaust. She brightened in recognition and said, “I was a hidden child during the Holocaust.” Like Anne Frank, but she lived. I said, “That must have been hard!” She said no, at the time she thought the work camps were like summer camps.
Her lightly fictionalized memoir is beautifully written, a series of child’s-eye vignettes full of details about life in Slovakia at the time. It is also harrowing to read. Kathryn shows difficult events and physical and emotional pain in response, but doesn’t dwell on it. The child Katarína feels both joy and sorrow strongly, and keeps moving forward with fierce resilience. She survived through both inner strength and luck, through care from others and a loving response to care.
I emailed her and told her I really liked the book and wanted to learn more about how she came to the US, etc. She said she wanted to know more about me too, and invited me to lunch. I biked across town and ate with her in her back yard, under a towering redwood tree. Her house is tiny and wonderful, but she said she chose it for the tree, not the house. I lived a few blocks away 30 years ago, so we walked up to the place where I rented a room for a couple of years, and back down to her house, admiring the varied, colorful houses and gardens.
She's a warm, sturdy, peaceful person. She teaches piano for a living. (Still! At age 90!) She lives alone and drives and is grateful for the good fortunes in her life. She doesn't dwell on the ill fortunes. She's a vibrant counterexample to "Oh, he's like that because he was abused." (Usually he, because men are usually the ones I hear being excused rather than blamed.)
Highly recommended. In this time of rising fascism we need to understand fascism’s detailed cruelty to a child. This happened in living memory. We are well along on the road to it happening again. It needs to stop.
Powells has a couple of copies, and the Oakland library has a copy.jesse_the_k mentioned in comments that it's available from Internet Archive
Kathryn dances with the folk dance group I joined recently. I was chatting with her at a folk dance party, and explained how my grandparents had to leave Germany because of the Holocaust. She brightened in recognition and said, “I was a hidden child during the Holocaust.” Like Anne Frank, but she lived. I said, “That must have been hard!” She said no, at the time she thought the work camps were like summer camps.Her lightly fictionalized memoir is beautifully written, a series of child’s-eye vignettes full of details about life in Slovakia at the time. It is also harrowing to read. Kathryn shows difficult events and physical and emotional pain in response, but doesn’t dwell on it. The child Katarína feels both joy and sorrow strongly, and keeps moving forward with fierce resilience. She survived through both inner strength and luck, through care from others and a loving response to care.
I emailed her and told her I really liked the book and wanted to learn more about how she came to the US, etc. She said she wanted to know more about me too, and invited me to lunch. I biked across town and ate with her in her back yard, under a towering redwood tree. Her house is tiny and wonderful, but she said she chose it for the tree, not the house. I lived a few blocks away 30 years ago, so we walked up to the place where I rented a room for a couple of years, and back down to her house, admiring the varied, colorful houses and gardens.
She's a warm, sturdy, peaceful person. She teaches piano for a living. (Still! At age 90!) She lives alone and drives and is grateful for the good fortunes in her life. She doesn't dwell on the ill fortunes. She's a vibrant counterexample to "Oh, he's like that because he was abused." (Usually he, because men are usually the ones I hear being excused rather than blamed.)
Highly recommended. In this time of rising fascism we need to understand fascism’s detailed cruelty to a child. This happened in living memory. We are well along on the road to it happening again. It needs to stop.
Powells has a couple of copies, and the Oakland library has a copy.
jesse_the_k mentioned in comments that it's available from Internet Archive
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Date: 2023-04-24 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-24 04:02 am (UTC)