Overview

The role of Christians who collaborated with the Jewish underground to assure Jews’ survival begs for greater attention. Their informal cooperation emerges as a key element in Holocaust Survival in Antwerp: On Foreign Soil, a memoir of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, translated and with an introduction by Jeffrey Kleiman. Alter Kleiman fled Polish antisemitism in 1926 and settled in Antwerp. By 1942, life under German rule became unsustainable, so he fled the city and found refuge in the Belgian region of Wallonia where the industrial city of Charleroi offered protection. There, he shared the basement apartment in a boarding house. In this memoir, Kleiman recounts how, despite his fears of betrayal, Christians not only sheltered him but helped him further by directing members of the Jewish underground to this apartment, who were then able to provide cash and food coupons.

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9781666907933

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"Kleiman has translated an extraordinary journal written by Alter Kleiman (no relation), a Holocaust survivor who lost his wife and child in one of the Nazis' murderous concentration camps. Together with his family, Alter left Poland in 1926 because of anti-Semitism, settling in Antwerp, Belgium, where he believed Jews would find acceptance. Unfortunately, however, German rule eventually prompted them to flee again in 1942, this time to Charleroi, Belgium, where they found a modicum of protection. Alter's memoir details his subsequent time in a Nazi ""work camp,"" his want of food, his constant hunger, his foreboding about the safety of his wife and child, his fear of betrayal to the Nazis, and his time hiding in the darkened cellar of a Yugoslavian immigrant named Marc in exchange for rent money. The translator took on this project in the hope ""that people who read this might end up with some sort of a bridge to a survivor who had lost everything."" Acknowledging that there are many survivor accounts, Kleiman's testimony is not diminished by this fact. Rather, as he writes, acquiring knowledge of the Holocaust is like building a beach, one grain at a time. The volume includes an excellent bibliography. Recommended. General readers and undergraduates. -- ""Choice Reviews"""

"Kleiman has translated an extraordinary journal written by Alter Kleiman (no relation), a Holocaust survivor who lost his wife and child in one of the Nazis' murderous concentration camps. Together with his family, Alter left Poland in 1926 because of anti-Semitism, settling in Antwerp, Belgium, where he believed Jews would find acceptance. Unfortunately, however, German rule eventually prompted them to flee again in 1942, this time to Charleroi, Belgium, where they found a modicum of protection. Alter's memoir details his subsequent time in a Nazi ""work camp,"" his want of food, his constant hunger, his foreboding about the safety of his wife and child, his fear of betrayal to the Nazis, and his time hiding in the darkened cellar of a Yugoslavian immigrant named Marc in exchange for rent money. The translator took on this project in the hope ""that people who read this might end up with some sort of a bridge to a survivor who had lost everything."" Acknowledging that there are many survivor accounts, Kleiman's testimony is not diminished by this fact. Rather, as he writes, acquiring knowledge of the Holocaust is like building a beach, one grain at a time. The volume includes an excellent bibliography. Recommended. General readers and undergraduates."

Author Information

Jeffrey Kleiman is professor of history at University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point.

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