Names in a Jar by Jennifer Gold
2021; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 74; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2021.0370
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoReviewed by: Names in a Jar by Jennifer Gold Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Gold, Jennifer Names in a Jar. Second Story, 2021 [336p] Paper ed. ISBN 9781772602074 $14.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10 It's 1940 and sisters Anna and Lina are barely surviving in the Warsaw Ghetto, watching family and neighbors fall victim to illness, starvation, and violence. With the help of a social worker, twelve-year-old Anna is smuggled out to a caring couple's farm in the Polish countryside, while Lina stays behind and is eventually transported to the Treblinka death camp. The sisters share narration as Lina tries to survive the camp to make her way to Anna, and Anna, now called Maria, lives with her guilt over her escape, her grief over losing her family, and her constant terror of being revealed as a Jewish girl. Gold paints a powerful picture of a sibling bond withstanding the very worst humanity has to offer, juxtaposing, even within the same paragraph, acts of profound generosity and absolute cruelty. The violence, from that in the ghetto to the camp and even on the farm, escalates from taunts and jeers to physical and sexual assault, and Anna's rape by a Nazi and her subsequent [End Page 466] botched abortion reflect both the immediate horror and the generational trauma that will come. The girls' narrative voices are distinct and authentic, with the science-minded Anna channeling her pain into playing the farm's de facto veterinarian, while scholarly Lina uses her writing and lying skills to play a part in the Resistance. Readers get a fleeting look at Irena Sendler's real-life work of rescuing young Jewish children from the ghetto, and a short author's note will likely send them to the web looking for more info, but even without that context, this remains a harrowing tale, steeped in realism but buoyed by hope. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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