Should be required reading....

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	• The Seamstress Sara Tuval Bernstein Putnam Adult, 1997 - 353 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Should be required reading....

This Holocaust survival memoir is both unique and remarkable and ensures we will never forget the tragedies suffered at the hands of the Nazis. This story in particular evinces the notion that no two Holocaust stories are the same- so many people suffered in so many different places and in so many different ways.

Seren's story teaches us that survival for so many depended upon connections with others- friends/ relatives, etc. Seeimingly so many Holocaust survival stories depict this idea of surviving for others or because of others. Hence, her story teaches us not only of love and relationships but of what it takes not to give up or give in.

I have read a few times that reviewers found the tone of this novel "detached," and/or "irreverant," and I wholeheartedly disagree. I was extremely connected with the characters and felt Seren's emotions throughout the various stages of her life. Indeed, in contrast to so many survivors who can not speak of the atrocities they witnessed and suffered, the very fact that Seren was able to tell her story shows a great deal of strength and her ability to connect with her past on an emotional level.

I HIGHLY recommend this book, and believe it should be required reading in all schools. It would make an excellent book club selection, and would greatly enhance any courses on the Holocaust, WWII, women's studies, history, etc.

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The Seamstress

I read many books on the Holocaust and have always found inspiration and admiration for those people who have experienced such an appalling event and have managed to survive. But this book left me totally disturbed with the graphics given by this amazing woman, Sara Tuvel Bernstein, and I highly commend her for sharing her horrific ordeal.
I recommend everyone should read this book and maybe,just maybe, we will learn something from it... that war is futile, and all people are equal.

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My New Heroine

Seren Tuval is my new heroine. Born ahead of her time, she was an independent force to be reckoned with. Having the sense of not wanting to be married too young and finding a career to support herself (which she did, hence the title) this brave woman not only fought her way through the Holocaust and survived, her intelligence, quick wit and sense of humor saved the lives of her sister and and close friend as well. She never lost hope that she would be reunited with other family members and her sheer will to survive is a true inspiration. I was always proud of my Eastern European descent, but now Seren Tuval makes me even prouder.

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riveting

True life events .. so well told .. The story is riveting from beginning to end .. I wish I could feel that this will never happen again but I worry that it can and that it will.

Unforgettable

Although I have an interest in Holocaust memoirs and have read dozens to date, I found Bernstein's story both unique and compelling.

Bernstein begins by providing a full picture of her life, starting from childhood. Then known as Seren, the young Bernstein was happy, growing up as one of the youngest children in a large blended family in Hungary. Her father, a mill supervisor, never failed to provide well for his plethora of children, in-laws and grandchildren.

However, even he couldn't stop the forces that wanted to annihilate the Jews. In the early 1930s -- well before many people even had an inkling of the depth of trouble brewing -- Bernstein, her family and friends were forbidden from working or socializing normally. Before long, the huge extended family was unable to keep in contact, though geographically close by; and Bernstein and her father were imprisoned.

Bernstein's troubles, though, were only just beginning. Over the next few years, as she and her sisters struggled to maintain some semblance of normal lives -- young Seren working as a seamstress -- the Iron Guard began to close in upon them.

Bernstein details the long months when she, her youngest sister Esther, and their friends Lily and Ellen struggled to survive at a little-known all-women's work camp. Although Jews were only a small number of the prisoners, they were treated the worst.

Bernstein, who had a friend amputate her big toe after gangrene set in from the cold, and literally became a walking skeleton, was considered one of the luckiest ones -- she survived.

Told in a manner that is simultaneously human yet matter-of-fact, Bernstein's story of survival against all odds is magnificent. It's impossible to read it and not feel incredulous, let alone to ever forget how one woman could possibly survive so much.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

"From its opening pages, in which she recounts her own premature birth, triggered by terrifying rumors of an incipient pogrom, Bernstein's tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania...and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father's orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him...After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp, [and] managed to survive...she tells this story with style and power." -Kirkus Reviews

"There are many recent accounts of Holocaust victims, but this work stands alone as a testimony to personal strength and an independent spirit." -Library Journal

"Extraordinary." -Booklist

"An engrossing history lesson as well as an important archive." -Faye Kellerman
"Well-told...deserves a prominent place in the archive of Holocaust survival stories." -Publishers Weekly

"One of the best of the recent wave of Holocaust memoirs" (Kirkus Reviews)

--An ALA choice for the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults, and the second-place winner in the General Trade Nonfiction category at the New York Book Show
--Includes an introduction by Edgar M. Bronfman
--Written by a strong woman with a colorful and unusual story to tell, this book is a standout in a popular subgenre of the memoir form

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