Denver artist's book: Holocaust survivors tale, testament to faith in family, compassion
DENVER — From her kitchen window, Paula Burger can see children playing in the snow. On days like this, she thinks of the harsh winters when she, her little brother, her father and other Jews were hiding from the Nazis in the wilderness.
"I remember the cold, being in a forest without having anyplace else to go, and not even being safe where you are," she said in an interview in her Denver apartment. "You make a conscious effort to live in the present. But the past is never far from you. It can come back in an instant."
In her Holocaust memoir, Burger does not immediately confront the reader with the time when her choices were cold, disease and hunger in the forest; or brutality, cold, disease and hunger in the ghetto. Instead, she opens with her father carrying her on his shoulders to Sabbath services on a winter day before World War II. Afterward, the two walk home hand-in-hand.
"The journey culminated in the arms of my mother Sarah, who would pick me up and spin me around..."
"Paula's Window: Papa, the Bielski Partisans and a Life Unexpected" is a story of survival, but also of faith in family, compassion and the possibility of beauty.
Hollywood's version of Burger's experience was shown in the 2008 move "Defiance." Daniel Craig stars as Tuvia Bielski, one of four Jewish brothers who led attacks on the Nazis from forests along the Polish-Belorusian border that also were hideouts for fighters and their families. In a forward to Burger's book, Tuvia Bielski's son Robert writes of an "unbreakable bond" uniting survivors and their families.
more: http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/15e771d5cb8f4f02930c896f959bc68b/US--Paulas-Window
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