Once My Name was Sarah: A Memoir, by I. Betty Grebenschikoff, is an excellent Holocaust Memoir, written from a unique perspective. It is written before World War II begins, and then from within Hongkew, China, and eventually the Shanghai ghetto, during World War II.
Grebenschikoff recalls her life within China, beginning when her family fled Nazi Germany in 1939, as Jewish refugees, and were given refuge in China. They were able to move their without passports, as, at the time, China allowed Euorpean Jews into the country.
We follow Grebenschikoff’s family’s daily existence in the Jewish community of Hongkew as they adjust to their new life, and the hardships they endured with disease, cramped living conditions, the poverty and street beggars, Chinese citizens living on the streets, the beatings and brutality of the Japanese, the confines of the Shanghai Ghetto, air raid sirens, bombings, and adjusting in a foreign land.
We are given snippets of Grebenschikoff’s life through her memories, beginning with her childhood, through her adulthood, when she and her family move to Australia, and then finally move to America, where they are reunited with her parents.
I. Betty Grebenschikoff’s memoir is well-written, articulated with detailed descriptions of life. “Once My Name Was Sara” is an excellent book and resource for junior high aged students, as it contains a personal life accounting, remembered from childhood through adulthood, all the decades of life, through the present time. Students will be able to relate to her youth and teenage years, and therefore gain a better understanding of the events of the Jewish refugee during World War II, and the Holocaust. Adults will be able to understand and appreciate the emotions within the pages, the historical aspects and depths of the Holocaust, and how it affected Jewish refugees in China.
I am fortunate to have a signed copy of I. Betty Grebenschikoff’s “Once My Name Was Sara“. I recommend it to everyone, no matter what your age is.
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Jew Wishes…Peace to you all.
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