DAY AFTER NIGHT
Anita Diamant
Scribner
Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780743299848
DAY AFTER NIGHT is based on an actual event that took place in October 1945, months after the end of World War II. Four brave young women --- Holocaust survivors --- are freed along with thousands of others, only to find themselves again behind rolls of razor wire.
Shayndel, a fiery resistance fighter, is a Polish Zionist whose spirit inspires the others. Tedi, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dutch girl, had hidden out in Holland but lost her home and family in the final bombings. Leonie, a waif-like French orphan, grew up on the streets of Paris and survived the last years of the war in a Parisian bordello that catered to the occupying German forces. Zorah is a concentration camp survivor whose personal horrors have transformed her.
These women are among the thousands of “paperless” Jews --- primarily young adults whose families, personal belongings and official documents no longer exist. Loaded onto cattle cars with other survivors and sent by rail to their new location, then herded directly to the delousing shower stalls, they were confronted by horrifying reminders that they just may have entered a new Hell. The only difference is the surroundings --- they are now on Atlit, a British Army base near Haifa in Palestine. And the armed guards who man the surveillance towers are not Nazis but British soldiers. The survivors are assured that, once cleared, their new lives are in front of them. In most cases, they speak only the languages of their European homelands. Daily lessons in Hebrew --- the tongue of their newly adopted country --- will help them assimilate once they are released. After years of starvation, they learn to eat foods alien to their stomachs and their palates.
Their detention in the camp is the result of something called the Balfour Agreement, established in 1938, setting a cap of 75,000, the number of Jewish immigrants who could settle in Palestine. However, in 1945, when the newly freed Jewish refugees flee to their ancestral land, that number rises to the hundreds of thousands. The British make efforts to relocate those with records and papers, but the unfortunates who had lost everything --- like our heroines --- are in a state of limbo. As days turn to weeks, and weeks turn to months, over 200 detainees still remain.
As a result, a group of young men from a nearby Israeli settlement (or “kibbutz”) begin planning to break the prisoners out of the encampment. As the secret planning begins, the four young women, who have formed a growing bond during their months of captivity, are called upon to join with the young men from the surrounding kibbutzim to help rescue the others. Shayndel must draw upon her undercover survival expertise to covertly help plan the escape, while the other three have to call upon skills --- ones that they would prefer to leave behind --- in order to take the lead with the other prisoners.
There has been an ever-growing collection of literature, movies and plays on the subject over the 65 years since the horrors of the Holocaust were uncovered. DAY AFTER NIGHT is one of the finest works honoring those whose lives were marred by the despicable event. And unfortunately, the number of people alive who carry the tattooed numbers from the prison camps is dwindling; with their loss, gone as well will be the first-line witnesses to the greatest crime of the 20th century.
Anita Diamant, who dedicates the book to her grandfather and an uncle who died in the Holocaust, offers homage to the survivors and has added an important piece of historical fiction to that body of work. One hopes that the stories will continue to be written and the memories --- however horrific --- will never be lost.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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