Inherited Words: A Testimony of Resilience

Zoltán Roth

 

There were many times when I felt an irresistible desire to stop, and those were moments that I had to really choose between fighting for life or not. My other option was to continue walking. It seems that struggling for the yet unlived part of my life was stronger. I didn’t stop.

 

NIS 104.00

In 1940, as a result of the Second Vienna Award, Hungary annexed Gherla and the surrounding region of Northern Transylvania, where Zoltan Roth lived with his family. As Jews, the Roth family immediately felt the effects of the Hungarian government’s racial laws that turned them into second-class citizens overnight.

In May 1942, Zoltán was conscripted into the Jewish labor service of the Hungarian army. He endured harsh labor, constant antisemitism, and endless forced marches across Eastern Europe. Following his hospitalization for severe frostbite, he returned home to his family in Gherla. However, when German troops entered Hungary in March 1944, Zoltán and his family became the target of anti-Jewish legislation, ghettoization, and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz, Zoltán managed to survive the extermination camp, the death marches, and incarceration in several other concentration camps until his liberation from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945.

Inherited Words is Zoltán Roth’s testimony, entrusted to his family for safekeeping and publication. It is the story of a man who repeatedly looked death in the eye and managed to overcome some of the worst atrocities before finally returning home to Gherla. It is a true testament to his resilience and determination to survive. .

In 1940, as a result of the Second Vienna Award, Hungary annexed Gherla and the surrounding region of Northern Transylvania, where Zoltan Roth lived with his family. As Jews, the Roth family immediately felt the effects of the Hungarian government’s racial laws that turned them into second-class citizens overnight.

In May 1942, Zoltán was conscripted into the Jewish labor service of the Hungarian army. He endured harsh labor, constant antisemitism, and endless forced marches across Eastern Europe. Following his hospitalization for severe frostbite, he returned home to his family in Gherla. However, when German troops entered Hungary in March 1944, Zoltán and his family became the target of anti-Jewish legislation, ghettoization, and subsequent deportation to Auschwitz, Zoltán managed to survive the extermination camp, the death marches, and incarceration in several other concentration camps until his liberation from Bergen-Belsen in April 1945.

Inherited Words is Zoltán Roth’s testimony, entrusted to his family for safekeeping and publication. It is the story of a man who repeatedly looked death in the eye and managed to overcome some of the worst atrocities before finally returning home to Gherla. It is a true testament to his resilience and determination to survive. .

מפרט המוצר
Size 23.5X15.5
Year 2023
Translator Mihai Grünfeld
No. of Pages 120
No. of Pages 120
ISBN 978-965-308-686-9
Format Hard Cover
Publisher Yad Vashem
תגיות מוצר
גולשים שקנו מוצר זה קנו גם

Written in a Barn: The Diary of a Young Woman from Vilna

Ruth Leimenzon Engles| Edited by Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky

 

At last, I have gotten a notebook in which to write. I have a pencil. I will try. Maybe it will make it easier to push through the days. It’s hard for me. As soon as dawn breaks, my first thought is: how does one endure until the end of the day.
Ruth Leimenzon Engles, May 15, 1944

A few days after the Germans occupied Vilna at the end of June 1941, Ruth Leimenzon’s husband was seized by local collaborators and was never seen again. Ruth, the sole survivor of her murdered family, managed to survive two years in the ghetto using her intelligence and common sense, helped by luck and perhaps miracles. Just two days before the ghetto’s liquidation in September 1943, Ruth escaped with the help of a Christian woman, her former boss’ wife, and found a hiding place in a barn on a farm 20 kilometers from Vilna, where she hid for nearly a year. During the last two months in the barn, Ruth wrote a diary in Yiddish describing her three-year ordeal.

NIS 104.00

After the Darkness?

Holocaust Survivors’ Emotional, Psychological, and Social Journeys in the Early Postwar Period

Editors: Constance Pâris de Bollardière and Sharon Kangisser Cohen

 

His reaction to my cautious questions about his parents, his brothers and sisters, his experiences in the concentration camp was characteristic. His only response was to let his head drop onto his chest. He remained sitting in this posture in silence for some time. It must be said here without pathos or literary embellishment that it is only now that he has been returned to normal life that this child feels the pain and torment of everything he has seen and experienced.

Hans Keilson

NIS 169.00
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