Chosen: A Holocaust Memoir

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

“I survived the Holocaust. Now I want the memory of the Holocaust to
survive me.” So writes Fredericton resident Eta Fuchs Berk, who
experienced the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi killing machine in
her native Hungary, as an inmate at Auschwitz, and as forced laborer in
Germany.

In his introduction, University of New Brunswick history professor
Gilbert Allardyce calls this book “a study in the history of Jewish
victimization ... part of a larger literature of survival which concerns
not only the Jewish people, but Jews and gentiles together.” Berk’s
purpose in telling her story is “to defend the memory of loved ones
who died in the gas chambers, and to bear witness to the reality of
Jewish suffering in the Holocaust.”

Simultaneously a history of central and eastern Europe in the
post–World War I years and a story of Jewish life in the first half of
the 20th century, the book recalls Elie Wiesel’s Night, only Berk’s
account is less philosophical and much more accessible.

With the success of the movie Schindler’s List, this volume should
attract readers interested in expanding their knowledge of the Holocaust
era.