Book recalls young Holocaust victims

FLORENCE - Seventy-three years ago, on a chilly night on the 19th of November, Adolf Hitler unleashed his soldiers on Germany's Jewish community.

They burned synagogues, ransacked Jewish homes and looted Jewish businesses.

It's a night commemorated each year in the Jewish community as Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night.

"It was a landmark because it was the first real time for something like this to happen on such a large scale, and others came to realize that (the terrorism by Hitler) was more than just mouthing off by the extreme population," said Stanley Goldstein, member of the Shoals Interfaith Council.

It gave rise to the European Holocaust that would not end until 1945. And some of the stories that would come out of what some historians call the greatest human tragedy of the modern era would appear as part of Alexandra Zapruder's book, "Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust."

She was at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library on Thursday to share some of the entries from her book and what she learned throughout the process of chronicling experiences of some of the youngest victims of the event.

"Ultimately, it's a story of humanity and how humans behaved and that there was great striving as well as great failures on the part of humanity," Zapruder said. "I think the fact that we still see genocide is important because of what it does to make us understand about history and that there is still so much at stake and so much we have yet to learn."

The author said "Salvaged Pages" was the result of research she did while employed at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The diaries were part of the children's exhibit. Upon coming across them, Zapruder said she was struck by how insightful, amazing and poignant they were.

"All of them were victims of the Holocaust," she said. "Some were refugees, some hid their identities or passed themselves off as non-Jews, and many (of the diary entries) were written while the children were in the ghettos of Europe where they were held while waiting to be transported to concentration camps."

There are a total of 15 diaries excepted in the book, many of which received their first English translation to be part of "Salvaged Pages."

The majority of the writers are between the ages of 14 and 17; the youngest was 12.

Zapruder said of the 15 writers, six died while in concentration camps.

One of those who died was Yitskhok Rudashevski. Zapruder said she wonders from time to time what kind of career he could have had, had he lived.

"He was a beautiful, gifted writer and I identify with his desire to write and that he had something to say," she said.

"He is an unusual and remarkable spirit, and I still feel that deeply."

Zapruder was in Alabama as part of a statewide tour sponsored by the Alabama Holocaust Commission and the Birmingham Holocaust Education Committee.

Locally, the library and the Shoals-Interfaith Council were sponsors.

She will wrap up her visit today with a lecture for teachers at the Florence City Schools central office.

Michelle Rupe Eubanks can be reached at 740-5745 or michelle.eubanks@TimesDaily.com.