I Wish It Were Fiction: Memories, 1939-1945

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

As the years since World War II and the Holocaust continue to pass, many
elderly Holocaust survivors wish to have the personal testimony of their
treatment at the hands of the Nazi death machine placed on the public
record. I Wish It Were Fiction is one of these memoirs. It describes the
experiences of Elsa Thon (born Balbina Synalewicz), a Polish Jew who at
the age of 16 was separated from her family early in the war. How she
coped for the next six years is the theme of this narrative.

To tell her story, Thon uses an essentially chronological approach
interspersed with her original poems. For several years, she survived by
keeping her Jewish heritage hidden within a Christian Poland. Her
training as a photo retoucher allowed her some semblance of living a
“normal” life under German occupation, but when her Jewish heritage
was discovered she was forced to spend time in both the Warsaw and
Krakow ghettos before being sent to labor camps in Plascow and
Skorzysko-Kamienna, and later to a munitions plant in Leipzig. A forced
march to Germany, a brief return to Poland after the war, and a trip
back to Germany mark an abrupt end to the memoirs. Her marriage in
Germany to another survivor, their 25-year residency in Argentina, and
their immigration to Canada in 1980 are briefly mentioned in the
introduction.

Throughout her ordeals, Thon maintained a belief that “everything
would work out” and that “the Lord [would] provide.” Her testimony
provides another primary source in the survivor literature of the
Holocaust.