Jewish History - Europe - General & Miscellaneous, Holocaust - History, Holocaust - General & Miscellaneous, Netherlands - History, World War II
Rescued Images: Memories of a Childhood in Hiding
Ruth Jacobsen
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Overview
Ruth Jacobsen spent her first childhood in Germany. It ended one night when she was six years old and hiding in terror as she watched people being thrown from windows. It was Kristallnacht, the Night of Breaking Glass.
Her family fled and found haven in the idyllic Dutch village of Oud Zuylen. There Ruth became a child again.
When she was eight, the Germans invaded Holland. When she was nine, her grandmother was put on a train and never seen again. Soon she was wearing a Jewish star on her coat. When she was 10, she was separated from her parents. Frightened and alone, she went from house to house, hiding from the Nazis in the homes of strangers. Ruth Jacobsen's childhood was over forever. For the rest of her life she tried to forget her loss.
One day, forty years after the war, she opened an album of family photographs that had lain in a box at the bottom of a closet, untouched.
"My fear had always been that I would break down or become hysterical," she writes. Instead, she transformed the images into art, creating a series of vivid collages that pieced together her shattered childhood. As she worked, long suppressed memories came to the surface. She wrote them down.
The result is a unique document of a life and a time. Rescued Images combines Ruth's collages and her moving memoir of the wrenching events of a half century ago. Young Ruth Jacobsen is brought back to life on these pages: frightened and bewildered, buffeted by forces she cannot understand or control, bending but never breaking.
Synopsis
The story of a holocaust survivor. Ruth Jacobsen's childhood was spent in hiding, separated from her parents and living in the homes of strangers. She became an accomplished collage artist, and this book of memories and collages is based on family photos.
Kate McDowell
Stands out for its moving marriage of art and text and as a chilling reminder.
Editorials
Foreword Magazine
Book of the Year, Silver Medal, Young Adult NonfictionNational Council for the Social Studies and The Ch
Notable Children's Book in the Field of Social StudiesParents' Choice Foundation
Parents' Choice Gold MedalBook Report
Jacobsen's memoir of the Holocaust represents a unique perspective -- one that should be included on school library shelves.Booklist
An unusual blend of memoir and image that reveals the horror of war and the transformative power of art.Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Stands out for its moving marriage of art and text and as a chilling reminder that the effects of the Nazi regime extend far beyond the barbed-wire fences of concentration camps and gnaw at the lives of so-called survivors.Canadian Literature
Succeeds in bringing past experiences back to life... Jacobsen uses autobiography to voice experiences silenced by history, to speak back to oppressive structures, and to claims new positions of power.Kate McDowell
Stands out for its moving marriage of art and text and as a chilling reminder.Rosemary Black
Versatile recipes, as well as a wealth of helpful tips...the eclectic collection of recipes features a number of ethnic dishes.Book Report
Jacobsen's memoir of the Holocaust represents a unique perspective -- one that should be included on school library shelves.Publishers Weekly
Jacobsen, a Jewish artist, was six or seven years old when her parents fled with her from Germany to Holland in 1939, taking only the clothes on their backs. They survived the war in hiding, but to minimize the risks, Ruth was parted from her parents and sheltered by a long succession of people. Both parents would later commit suicide after the war. Astonishingly, neighbors had saved the family albums, but 40 years passed before Jacobsen, who had emigrated to the U.S. and had been producing collages and "constructions," could bear to look at them. When she finally did look, she writes, "The photographs evoked feelings I could only express in collage form. I needed to move the photographs out of the albums and into my life." The collages she made with the photos (and with often unsettling painted compositions), appear here in color, along with her episodic and sometimes elliptical recollections. Jacobsen writes with intelligence and unusual frankness. However, the author's voice is invariably that of her adult self, and she appears to take for granted that readers will understand not only the historical context but the psychological forces that affect her memory (for example, after a visit from her hiding place to her parents', "I felt my only option was to hate my parents. That way I wouldn't have to think about their helplessness or worry about them"). Accordingly, this poignant volume may be better directed toward adults than young people. Ages 12-up. (Dec.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Publishers Weekly
Jacobsen, a Jewish artist, was six or seven years old when her parents fled with her from Germany to Holland in 1939, taking only the clothes on their backs. They survived the war in hiding, but to minimize the risks, Ruth was parted from her parents and sheltered by a long succession of people. Both parents would later commit suicide after the war. Astonishingly, neighbors had saved the family albums, but 40 years passed before Jacobsen, who had emigrated to the U.S. and had been producing collages and "constructions," could bear to look at them. When she finally did look, she writes, "The photographs evoked feelings I could only express in collage form. I needed to move the photographs out of the albums and into my life." The collages she made with the photos (and with often unsettling painted compositions), appear here in color, along with her episodic and sometimes elliptical recollections. Jacobsen writes with intelligence and unusual frankness. However, the author's voice is invariably that of her adult self, and she appears to take for granted that readers will understand not only the historical context but the psychological forces that affect her memory (for example, after a visit from her hiding place to her parents', "I felt my only option was to hate my parents. That way I wouldn't have to think about their helplessness or worry about them"). Accordingly, this poignant volume may be better directed toward adults than young people. Ages 12-up. (Dec.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Children's Literature
The author's terrifying childhood was spent hiding from the Nazis in Germany and Holland, shifted from family to family as the danger of being discovered escalated. Her salvation was constantly learning a new name and a new history, while forgetting the previous ones. This habit became so ingrained that it took her forty years and opening a box of family photographs that had lain untouched all that time, to begin reconstructing her past. And her medium was the photographs themselves, torn and cut and arranged into collages to express the emotions and memories she could recall no other way. This is a fascinating story, exquisitely told and accompanied by haunting artwork that singes the soul. Why, one must ask of such a hunted and haunted childhood? There are no answers, but there is solace in the emerging of this book from those horrors. 2001, Mikaya, $19.95. Ages 10 up. Reviewer: Judy ChernakVOYA
During the Nazi occupation of Europe, Jewish parents had to make a choice between keeping their families together under the threat of being discovered and separating, whether temporarily or permanently, to spare their children's lives. Those children who were fortunate enough to be spirited away from the chaos, either through the generosity of relatives or the goodness of gentile friends and associates, lived to share their recollections of the evils and their hopes during hiding. What makes this survivor's collection of vignettes unique are the collages and artwork by professional artist Jacobsen that are intermingled with the text. Written simply, the book brings the reader into the insecure world of the author as a ten-year-old girl: "There weren't any shadows or faint outlines of the attic room. I could only sense the rafters overhead and an enormous space surrounding me. I was in a large dark hole." As readers follow her moves from home to home with no end to the war in sight, they sense a girl torn between the love for her hidden parents and the affinity she feels for her various caretakers. Best suited for younger teen readers, each vignette focuses on a particular aspect of the girl's experience—"Flight," "The Yellow Star," "Harm," "Liberation." Jacobsen's storytelling is in fine company with Halina Nelken's memoir And Yet, I Am Here! (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999/VOYA December 1999) and the classic, The Diary of Anne Frank. This title would be shelved best in the young adult section under Holocaust Studies. Illus. Photos. Maps. Appendix. VOYA CODES: 4Q 2P M J (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; For the YA with a special interest in thesubject; Middle School, defined as grades 6 to 8; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2001, Mikaya/Firefly, 96p, $9.95. Ages 11 to 15. Reviewer: Beth Gilbert SOURCE: VOYA, February 2002 (Vol. 24, No.6)School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-Hidden in Holland during the Holocaust, the author explains that she came to write this memoir after years of suppressing memories of her experiences, including the suicides of her parents after the war. Opening family photograph albums that she had kept packed in a box for 40 years released feelings that she was impelled to express through the art that accompanies this narrative: color collages mixing streaks of paint with photographic fragments and memorabilia. They are the most emotionally engaging aspect of the book, combining frightening wartime images with pictures of the author as a child, her family, and her dolls. In contrast, the writing style is deliberate and unemotional, distancing Jacobsen from overwhelmingly sad memories, perhaps, but also distancing readers from an affective understanding of what she experienced and the price she paid for survival. Among the memoirs of child survivors of the Holocaust that have preceded this one, Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures (Greenwillow, 1998) is more successful in re-creating a terrified child's resentment toward her parents for their inability to protect her. Among recent novels, Ida Vos's The Key Is Lost (Morrow, 2000) portrays the loss of childhood and the protective measures that hidden children were forced to adopt with greater poignancy. The art that Jacobsen's memories inspired is the main object of interest in this book.-Linda R. Silver, Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, OH Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.Book Details
Published
October 1, 2001
Publisher
Mikaya Press
Pages
96
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781931414005