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by F. Linda Cohen (Author)
Sarinka is an evocative family memoir detailing the rarely heard Sephardic Jewish experience during the Shoah. What began as a daughter's hunger to faithfully recount as a family heirloom her parents' unique story of great love and great loss at the hands of the Nazis is now a gift to us all. With fastidious attention to detail and to history, Linda Cohen immerses us in the twists, turns, terrors and daily miracles of her hastily wed parents' harrowing flight from their homes, their families, and eventually from their country. With painterly descriptions that engage all the senses, Cohen has us right there with Sarinka and Leon as the Nazis invade Yugoslavia mere hours before their planned wedding celebration, with the Muslim neighbors who came to their aid, with the partisans in the freezing woods, and with Ruth Gruber, the young American journalist who had a bold plan, capitalizing on Franklin Roosevelt's modest exception to tight US immigration quotas to help save a handful of Europe's doomed Jews. Sarinka is a significant addition to Holocaust literature. --Karen Tintori, author of Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family, St. Martins Press Sarinka is a moving Holocaust story that traces the life of a young woman beginning with her childhood in prewar Yugoslavia to experience living on the run, in hiding, and as a nurse among Tito's partisans. She was one of the 982 refugees who resided at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter that was established in America for victims of the Nazi Holocaust during WWII. Author and daughter of the heroine, Linda Cohen takes the readers on a unique journey as she describes life in Yugoslavia-through her mother's eyes-during the war and all the restrictions and dangers she encountered once Yugoslavia became occupied by the Axis powers. Heroic and tragic in parts, Sarinka embodies the resiliency of the human spirit. --Rebecca Fisher, Researcher at the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum Oswego, NYSarinka is beautifully written, historically accurate and a genuine page turner. Young people who read this book will understand the truth of being a refugee. They will learn what it means to lose everything-one's home, one's language, one's culture. And yet they will find hope in this very moving story. --Ruth Gruber, March 14, 2010 Sarinka, a true story about a young girl set in WWII is one of perseverance and survival. Her world was suddenly shattered when the running and hiding began the very day she dreamed of her whole life, her wedding day. Sarinka and her husband face danger and uncertainty as they desperately tried to save their lives. No matter how tough life gets, they never give up hope, even when they find themselves in an internment camp in America, one that many never knew existed in 1944. Also appropriate for teens and young adults interested in Holocaust books.
