Overview
Say the Name vividly describes in the voice of a fourteen-year-old the experiences of a Jewish girl who was imprisoned in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp during World War II. Miraculously, Judita Sternova of Kurima, Czechoslovakia, survives persecutions, hiding, flight, capture, deportation, and the Camp. Like the few other surviving Jews, she could not bear to remain in her village emptied of family and other Jews and emigrates to England and, eventually, the United States. After more than fifty years Sherman gets up from her years of memories, private resistance, and public silence to write this book. She is triggered to do so upon hearing a lecture by Professor Carrasco at Princeton on "Religion and the Terror of History."
The narrative is interspersed with Sherman's powerful poems that grab the reader's attention. Poignant original drawings made secretly by imprisoned women of Ravensbruck, at risk of their lives, illuminate the text. Sherman courageously bears witness to the terror of man and simultaneously challenges God for answers.
This book should "jolt us into remembrance, warning, and action."
Editorials
KLIATT
Sherman takes readers on a painful guided tour of the Holocaust, "the Grand Canyon of terror," with internal scenery so horrific as to defy description. Yet describe it she does, in eloquent and unflinching detail, with frequent challenges to God for his apparent desertion of the Jewish people. Poems alternate with short prose passages that illuminate the author's comfortable childhood in Czechoslovakia, through deportation, escape into Hungary, hiding from the Nazis, and ultimate imprisonment in the Ravensbruck death camp beginning in her 13th year. Her journey requires her to endure torture, unrelenting hunger, and the death of family members, including a brother who will "forever be nine." Now a mother and grandmother, Sherman ends with reflections upon her life "on two tracks," confessing that, to this day, when grocery shopping she always takes the fruits and vegetables from the top of the pile, refusing to engage in "selections" reminiscent of Auschwitz and Mengele. People she meets cause her to speculate upon their ability to survive the Holocaust. Would this person be willing to share a potato or know how to steal one? Would that one risk hiding a Jew? The poem "You Are Invited to My Funeral" permits optional attire for her guests, but no stripes please. "You come too, Lord (were you too embarrassed to attend in Auschwitz?)" Valuable primary source material for studies on the Holocaust, this slim volume shouts the names of those who cannot speak for themselves. KLIATT Codes: JSA*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2005, Univ. of New Mexico Press, 170p., Ages 12 to adult.—Jessica Swaim