Some of my readers know that my husband Jamie works with autistic children. He has worked with the same family for years now and I’ve seen many of their ups and downs. So on some level, reading about children with special needs fascinates me. I have so much respect for the parents and caregivers because they seem to have a strength and patience that I feel like I lack. Read more…
Hey, a book post! I haven’t been diligent about updating my sidebar or doing book reviews. It isn’t that I haven’t been reading, though! During the months of March & April, I finished (in no particular order):
In between reading these, I started cruising through some of the Sookie Stackhouse books. While they aren’t exactly intelligent literature, they sure are fun! Last year, I got hopelessly addicted to the “True Blood” series on HBO. The series takes a lot of liberties with the storyline, but Sookie’s character is true to the books.
The new season of “True Blood” starts in June. Yay!
Nonna Bannister appeared to be a typical American housewife. She married Henry, the love of her life, in 1951 and together they raised three children in Memphis, Tennessee. But Nonna was far from average. For half a century, she kept her story secret while living a normal life. She locked all of her photos, documents, diaries, and dark memories from World War II in a trunk in her attic.
Tyndale House Publishers announces the publication of The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister written by Nonna Bannister with Denise George and Carolyn Tomlin (April 2009, Tyndale House), the haunting eyewitness account of Nonna Lisowskaja Bannister, a remarkable Russian girl who saw and survived unspeakable evils during World War II.
Questions & Answers
1. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is written by Nonna although she passed away in 2004. Did she write the book before she died?
Yes, she slipped up into the attic each night, translated her diaries (from several different languages), and recorded them in English onto yellow legal pads. Much later, after she told her husband, Henry, about her incredible past, she showed him the stacks of yellow legal pads on which she had translated her diaries and recorded her thoughts about her past, and he typed them up into a manuscript.
2. Would Nonna have liked to see her book published before she died?
Nonna translated her diary into English and her husband, Henry, typed the manuscript. However, she requested the diary not be published until at least 2 or 3 years after she died. Henry honored this request. (She died in 2004.) The story was very painful and reminded her of the suffering her family endured. When she came to America in 1950 she was overwhelmed by her new life. She was determined to make a new life for herself and to give her husband and children a happy home.
3. Nonna came from a privileged family. Are there any interesting stories of people her ancestors knew?
Nonna’s family “ran with” the upper crust in the Ukraine and Russia. Her mother and father were educated in Russia’s great cultural city, St. Petersburg. Nonna’s grandmother and grandfather knew the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and Nonna kept a postcard sent by him (shortly before his death) to her grandfather, Jakob, for his birthday (dated 1913?). Jakob was killed during the Revolution while trying to help Russian families escape.Nonna writes in her diary of living on the ”Chekov Lane” in Taganrog, the street where Russian writer Anton Chekov (1860–1904) had once lived.
The family also visited often the boy Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (nicknamed “Sasha”) and his mother, Taissia. She and Nonna’s mother, Anna, were good friends. They enjoyed giving concerts and playing the violin and piano. Nonna writes of eating ice cream with her mother and Taissia, and spending the night in the Solzhenitsyn home during a thunderstorm. Alexander was older that Nonna, studying at the university.
4. Many people assume most of the people killed by the Nazis were Jewish. Was Nonna’s family Jewish?
Although it is estimated that approximately 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, other nationalities experienced suffering and death, also. Nonna’s family was Russian and owned seven grain mills and homes in southern Russia and the Ukraine. Her father, Yevgeny, and his family were from Warsaw, Poland, which included a large population of Jews. Due to border restrictions, Nonna never met her father’s family. Yevgeny never told Nonna and her brother, Anatoly, if his family was Jewish. If the children didn’t know, they could not let it slip. The admission of being Jewish could have meant deportation or certain death. There is speculation, but no one is certain.
5. Nonna saved many documents from her time at Nazi camps; what are these artifacts?
In a small ticking pillow she kept tied around her waist, she kept many one inch square photos of her family and friends in the Ukraine. She also kept her small childhood diary. On tiny slips of paper, she wrote her experiences (in diary form) and also kept these in the little pillow.
Later she kept all these in a small trunk, which she painted bright green.
6. When Nonna finally revealed her secret, was her family shocked?
Henry knew there was something about her past that she didn’t want to talk about. Being a patient man, he never pressed her to speak about this secret. As they grew older, he asked her to write down some things about her family—so their children would know their heritage. After months of secretly translating her diary (written in several different languages) she took him to the attic, open the little green trunk and showed him her family’s photos and the yellow legal pages of the translated diary. Henry was astonished at what he saw.
7. Why did Nonna keep her devastating secret for so many years?
Nonna kept her secret past from her family/friends because she had, at last, found such happiness with her husband, Henry, and her three children. She didn’t want to express her past pain–she didn’t want it to interrupt the family’s happiness and cast a shadow of despair over them.
8. The diaries themselves were written in several languages and some were on scraps of paper. How did she go about transcribing them?
Nonna learned English after she came to America in 1950. This became her primary language. She realized they should be transcribed in English so Henry could type the pages. He spent several years typing these notes after work and on weekends.The miniature black/white photos, the diaries, the notes from the prison camp, her mother’s letters from the concentration camps, and other documents were organized and put into chapters for a book—one she hoped would be published after her death.
9. What can people of Christian faith or Jewish faith/descent take from The Secret Holocaust Diaries?
That grave injustice exists–Nonna learned that from the Red Army (who killed many of her family members) and Hitler’s army (who also killed many of her family members and imprisoned her in a labor camp). But that God’s love and forgiveness for those who hurt us are stronger than even Hitler’s evil and injustice. Nonna came out of the whole experience with her heart still filled with love. She experienced none of the bitterness and hatred that some Jewish Holocaust survivors have held onto. She was able to marry, raise children, and bring them much joy and happiness through her own love and through introducing them to God’s love.
10. Why did Nonna feel it was so important to share her story?
The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister is a true story of a young Russian girl whose family was caught up in the Russian Revolution and in World War II. In spite of the injustice inflicted on her family and millions of others, it is a story of love and forgiveness. Nonna wanted others to know the horrors that occurred during the Hitler and Stalin era so that it might never happen again.
Nonna felt compelled to tell her story because she was an eyewitness to many dramatic events, and she was the only survivor of her entire family.
Conclusion
Late in life, Nonna unlocked her trunk filled with memories from World War II first for her husband, and now for the rest of the world. Nonna’s story is one of suffering, torture, and death—but also of incredible acts of kindness that show the ultimate triumph of faith and love over despair and evil. The Secret Holocaust Diaries is in part a tragedy, yet ultimately it’s an unforgettable true story about forgiveness, courage, and hope.
Be sure to check out my review of Love Walked In, by Marisa de los Santos on Suzy Q Reviews.
Have you read this book? Leave me a comment over on my review post and I’ll link to your review.
Do you want my hardback copy of Love Walked In? Leave me a comment and I’ll draw a random person on January 23rd.
Last night, I finished The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (2000 Book Sense Adult Fiction Winner). My choir director recommended it to me a while ago, back when my sister first joined the PC. She confessed that she has always had a secret desire to go to Africa and lives vicariously through people like Thryn.
Publisher Comments:
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it–from garden seeds to Scripture–is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo’s fight for independence from Belgium, the order of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, this ambitious novel establishes Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers.
I really liked this book. Each chapter is from a different character’s point of view, telling the story in their own way. Very Faulkneresque–but I like Faulkner, so there. Not only do you get a multi-faceted plot, you get deep character sketches. I was glad that I didn’t like all the characters (though I’m sure that was rather the point).
The story itself was so rich, so full of interesting history that I found myself wanting to learn more as the the book drew to a close. The plot grew increasingly spotty toward the end, but I think it ended on a satisfying note.
Read for: Book Awards Reading Challenge
Also reviewed at:
Have you read this book? Leave a comment with a link to your review!
© Elizabeth Grant | LinkShare.com
Powered by eShop v.6
