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Description
"This book was so memorable and yet so complex to me that I went back and read it a second time. its honesty and authenticity shine through"-- Mysteryfan2, Amazon costumer
A little girl is smuggled out of a Ghetto. Two courageous women. And an inspirational story of survival.
In 1941, at the height of World War II, in a Polish ghetto, a baby girl named Rachel was born. Her parents, Jacob and Zippa, were willing to do anything to keep her alive. They nicknamed her Lalechka.
Just before Lalechka’s first birthday, the Nazis began to systematically murder everyone in the ghetto. Her father understood that staying in the ghetto would mean certain death for his child.In a desperate but hope-filled move, Lalechka’s parents decided to save their daughter, no matter at what cost.
Jacob smuggled them outside the boundaries of the ghetto where Zippa’s Polish friends, Irena and Sophia, were waiting. She entrusted her beloved Lalechka to them and returned to the ghetto to remain with her husband and parents – unaware of the fate that awaited her.
Irena and Sophia took on the burden of caring for Lalechka during the war, pretending that she was part of their family despite the grave danger of being discovered and executed.
Lalechka is based on the unique journal written by the young mother during the annihilation of the ghetto, as well as on interviews with key figures in the story, rare documents, and authentic letters.
About the Author
Amira Keidar was born in the fall of 1963 in a kibbutz in Israel. After serving as an officer in the Israeli Army, she lived for 3 years in Paris where she studied Business French and Political Science. Coming back from France, she completed her B.A. in International Relations at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Amira worked for six years as a flight attendant for the Israeli Airline EL-AL and then started to work as a researcher in a national T.V. channel.
During her work as a researcher, Amira wrote dozens of mini-biographies for an interview show that aired on the channel at that time. Researching and writing about people's lives made her realize that writing biographies might be her target.
In 2003, Rachel, a long-time friend of Amira's mother, was dying from cancer. On her deathbed, Rachel gave her friends the diary her mother wrote during the liquidation of the ghetto of Siedlce (east of Warsaw) in August 1942. In the diary – a 9-page document translated from Polish – the 27-year-old woman described in bright and sober words all the atrocities of the Nazi rule in her hometown and above all – the horrifying days of the Jewish community's annihilation in Siedlce. Rachel's mother described in detail the days she and the one-year-old Rachel spent in an attic while the Nazis were pursuing Jews in the streets of Siedlce in order to send them to extermination camps.
Reading this diary as a young mother, about the baby struggling to stay alive and about her mother fighting against the dangers outside and inside the attic, made Amira decide she wants others to know about this stunning story.
In June 2007, Amira quit her work as a researcher and a month later she found herself on a plane to Poland, starting her own research for the book she already had in mind.
It was not until 2009 that Lalechka was completed.
Since then, Amira wrote biographies and other family stories for her living.
After living almost 20 years in different places, Amira now lives with her two daughters in the kibbutz where she was born.
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| Amira Keidar |
Rating: 4.6/5
Author: Amira Keidar
Publisher: Independently published
Publishing Date: Octobeer 6, 2019
Edition Language: English
Genre: Warsaw Travel Guides, Holocaust Biographies, Jewish Biographies
ISBN-10: 1697342353
ISBN-13: 978-1697342352
Pages: 279 (Paperback)
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