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by Sara Rena Vidal (Author)
We were lying there in the dark. Me and your daddy.
Unable to move. Eighteen months in a hole in the ground ...
I thought I would go mad. But I saw a white tablecloth ...
Bella and Chaim, the author's parents, were known as Basia and Heniek. For eighteen months from late 1943 they hid in a hole under the backyard workroom of a retired Polish policeman in a suburb of occupied Warsaw. In the claustrophobic dark, they waited while outside a world war raged.
Bella and Chaim is a testament to the human spirit. It embraces their memories and mingles them with fragments of the 1950s, the author's real-time journal entries, and the historical record; interspersed are musings on the light, dark and potential of being alive. After the total destruction of their way of life and the murder of their families, they were eventually liberated and migrated to Australia to make a new life.
"Many migrant stories have recorded atrocities during WWII. But to link the deep past with the recent past and the present, and to find themes that connect them all, that is fabulous." - Liliane Grace
"...interesting, informative, affecting and challenging ... rich with descriptive detail." - Les Rosenblatt
"This is wonderful stuff. Fascinating and moving smoothly between your present and your parents' past. Just the right amount of detail." - Leslie Cannold, author of 'The Book of Rachael'
