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A television producer, in 1978 Vlock was given the assignment to produce a program on the commemoration of Yom Hashoah (Day of Holocaust Remembrance) in New Haven, Connecticut. To make it memorable, she interviewed Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosinski. The result was so powerful that she realized that there were many such stories that needed to be captured before the witnesses died. She founded the Holocaust Survivors Film Project Inc. in 1979 to do just that, and archived the resulting testimonies at Yale University. In 1981, she won an Emmy Award for her documentary about Holocaust survivors, Forever Yesterday, and her work inspired similar work by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. Vlock died July 8 of injuries from an auto accident. She was 74. From This is True for 9 July 2000 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Diane Ackerman List Price: $23.95 Amazon Price: $16.29 Editorial Review: Amazon Significant Seven, September 2007: On the heels of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us I picked up Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife. Both books take you to Poland's forest primeval, the Bialowieza, and paint a richly textured portrait of a natural world that few of us would recognize. The similarities end there, however, as Ackerman explores how that sense of natural order imploded under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Jan and Antonina Zabiniski--keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who sheltered Jews from the Warsaw ghetto--serve as Ackerman's lens to this moment in time, and she weaves their experiences and reflections so seamlessly into the story that it would be easy to read the book as Antonina's own miraculous memoir. Jan and Antonina's passion for life in all its diversity illustrates ever more powerfully just how narrow the Nazi worldview was, and what tragedy it wreaked. The Zookeeper's Wife is a powerful testament to their courage and--like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise--brings this period of European history into intimate view. --Anne Bartholomew A true story—as powerful as Schindler's List—in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes. With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. 8 pages of illustrations.  By: Allan ZulloMara Bovsun List Price: $4.99 Amazon Price: $4.99 Editorial Review: These are the true-life accounts of nine Jewish boys and girls whose lives spiraled into danger and fear as the Holocaust overtook Europe. In a time of great horror, these children each found a way to make it through the nightmare of war. Some made daring escapes into the unknown, others disguised their true identities, and many witnessed unimaginable horrors. But what they all shared was the unshakable belief in-- and hope for-- survival. Their legacy of courage in the face of hatred will move you, captivate you, and, ultimately, inspire you.  By: Olga Lengyel List Price: $13.95 Amazon Price: $11.16  By: Cynthia Ozick List Price: $10.50 Amazon Price: $8.40 Editorial Review: A devastating vision of the Holocaust and the unfillable emptiness it left in the lives of those who passed through it.  By: Louise Murphy List Price: $14.00 Amazon Price: $11.20 Editorial Review: In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel." They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called "witch" by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children. Combining classic themes of fairy tales and war literature, this haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children, and tells a resonant, riveting story. |
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