Rena's Promise

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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title
:
Rena's Promise : A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
author
:
Gelissen, Rena Kornreich.; Macadam, Heather Dune.
publisher
:
Beacon Press
isbn10 | asin
:
0807070718
print isbn13
:
9780807070710
ebook isbn13
:
9780807070680
language
:
English
subject
Auschwitz (Concentration camp) , Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives, Gelissen, Rena Kornreich,--1920-
publication date
:
1995
lcc
:
D805.P7G45 1995eb
ddc
:
940.53/18/094386
subject
:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp) , Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives, Gelissen, Rena Kornreich,--1920-
Page iii
Rena's Promise
A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
Rena Kornreich Gelissen
with
Heather Dune Macadam
 
page_iv<br/>
Page iv
Disclaimer:
This book contains characters with diacritics. When the characters can be represented using the ISO 8859-1 character set (
http://www.w3.org/TR/images/latin1.gif
), netLibrary will represent them as they appear in the original text, and most computers will be able to show the full characters correctly. In order to keep the text searchable and readable on most computers, characters with diacritics that are not part of the ISO 8859-1 list will be represented without their diacritical marks.
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 1995 by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
"The Story (for Rena)" appears by permission of its author, Annette Allen.
04 03 02 01 00 9 8 7 6 5
Text design by Boskydell Studio
Composition by Wilsted & Taylor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gelissen, Rena Kornreich, 1920
Rena's promise : a story of sisters in Auschwitz / Rena Kornreich
Gelissen with Heather Dune Macadam.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
0-8070-7070-
X
(cloth)
ISBN
0-8070-7071-8 (paper)
1. Auschwitz (Poland: Concentration camp) 2. Holocaust, Jewish
(19391945)Personal narratives. 3. Gelissen, Rena Kornreich,
1920- . I. Macadam, Heather Dune. II. Title.
D
805.
P
7
G
45 1995
940.53'18'094386dc20 95-10359
CIP

 

Page v
Dear Mama and Papa:
This book is for you. For fifty years
I've been telling you this story in my mind.
Now it's finally written down
and I won't have to tell it anymore.
Love, Rena
And for Danka:
Without you there would
be no story.
 
page_vii<br/>
Page vii
It goes on burning in the bones,
in the brain, years after, smoke
still rising behind the walls, even on
May second, a birthday to liberate
all others. In Poland, though the stone
well-water near Tylicz never ceases,
it never soothes the smoldering,
nor the fearful dreams fueling sleep.
For months a redwood tree can flame
the fire that consumes it, burning
a black scar to its core. Within the
burnt sepulchre, as if a miracle, seeds
bearing a young tree begin to green. Let
us sift the ashes for new life, for the story
forged in suffering; where the birth into
language is as terrifying as fire or love. A
NNETTE
A
LLEN
The Story (for Rena)

 

Page ix
Contents
Prologue
xi
Tylicz
1
Slovakia
19
Auschwitz
55
Birkenau (Auschwitz II)
97
Stabsgebaüde (Staff Quarters)
197
Neüstadt Glewe
255
Epilogue
267
Acknowledgments
273
Bibliography
275
 
page_xi<br/>
Page xi
Prologue
I touch the scar on my left forearm, just below the elbow. I had the tattoo surgically removed. There were so many people who didn't know and so many questions: "What do those numbers mean?" "Is that your address?" "Is that your phone number?"
What was I supposed to say"That was my name for three years and forty-one days"?
One day a kind doctor offered to remove it for me. "This is not charity," he assured me. "It is the least I can do as an American Jew. You were there, I was not."
So I chose to have the questions excised from my arm, but not my mindthat can never be erased. The piece of skin the doctor surgically removed rests in a jar of formaldehyde which has turned the flesh to an eerie green. The tattoo has probably faded by now, I haven't checked. I need no reminders. I know who I am. I know what I was.
I was on the first Jewish transport to Auschwitz. I was number 1716.
RENA GELISSEN
JANUARY 1994

 

Page xii
Rena's Passage through Wartime Europe

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