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A review by heatherems
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
4.0
6 Million people were murdered in the Holocaust.
That is more than three times the number of all the people who currently live in my Mid-Western city of Cincinnati, OH. It is hard for me to imagine what this number of murdered people actually encompasses. It's also difficult to think of the survivors, to hear and acknowledge their stories and to know that there is not enough empathy in the world for people who have experienced the trauma of the Holocaust.
Cynthia Ozick's two short stories, The Shawl and Rosa are presented in this collection. The book is 70 pages long. In The Shawl, we hear the Holocaust story of Rosa. Rosa is a young mother who is being marched from the Ghetto to a prison camp. Marching with her are her 14 year old niece, Stella, and her infant daughter, Magda. Magda is hidden in a shawl, wrapped around Rosa's chest like a sling. The shawl is instilled with some magical realism powers, meaning that as long as Magda has the shawl, she can survive. They are all starving and experiencing unbelievably horrific conditions. The story ends tragically.
The second story, Rosa, was written a few years later. Rosa is now in her 50's, filled with grief, fury, rage. She is an American Immigrant, and has been living in NYC. The story picks up with her move to Florida to a retirement apartment, where she writes daily letters to Magda and Stella and is barely able to leave her apartment. She has tried to share her story with other Jews in NYC, with Stella, and in this story with a man named Persky who is compassionate and friendly with Rosa. No one can understand her, though. Stella, wants her to forget and get over it, already! Her customers in NYC have only the vaguest idea of things that happened in the Holocaust and don't really want to hear about them. And Persky, though compassionate, was safe in the US at the time.
What happens when a human has a traumatic experience that very few others can relate with? Although it is safe to say that each human experience is unique, many would react as Rosa is. With a deep mistrust of humans, with grief, with rage, with suspicion, with self-loathing. Humans need to share their stories in order to connect to the rest of humanity. Ironically, there is a scientist who is trying to connect with Rosa and hear her story, but she does not really understand and feels that she is just a "number" to him due to his clinical and methodical ways of contacting her, so she does not engage. Much more is needed.
A lot of reviews speak about Rosa's actions, how she loses her underpants at the laundry and goes searching for them. Reviews about what her walk through nighttime Miami symbolizes. What sticks with me is her need to connect with other humans. After getting locked into a beach that is surrounded with a fence with barbed-wire on top to keep non-guests out, Rosa says to the manager:
"Mister, you got barbed wire by your beach.
"Are you a guest here?
"I'm someplace else.
"Then it's none of your business, is it?
"You got barbed wire.
"It keeps out the riffraff.
"In America, it's no place for barbed wire on top of fences......Only Nazis catch innocent people behind barbed wire........
"My name is Finkelstein.
"Then you should know better!...A shame, A Finkelstein, like you.
Humans need to share their stories in order to connect to the rest of humanity, and Rosa cannot connect.
Overall, the writing in The Shawl and in Rosa came across as a bit dream-like and floaty with a definite feel of madness to it. Deserved madness. The writing is very strong in this way, and I felt it to be true to the situation of a survivor. Recommended for those who are interested in holocaust literature, or the shared human experience. Definitely, a tough and sad read.
That is more than three times the number of all the people who currently live in my Mid-Western city of Cincinnati, OH. It is hard for me to imagine what this number of murdered people actually encompasses. It's also difficult to think of the survivors, to hear and acknowledge their stories and to know that there is not enough empathy in the world for people who have experienced the trauma of the Holocaust.
Cynthia Ozick's two short stories, The Shawl and Rosa are presented in this collection. The book is 70 pages long. In The Shawl, we hear the Holocaust story of Rosa. Rosa is a young mother who is being marched from the Ghetto to a prison camp. Marching with her are her 14 year old niece, Stella, and her infant daughter, Magda. Magda is hidden in a shawl, wrapped around Rosa's chest like a sling. The shawl is instilled with some magical realism powers, meaning that as long as Magda has the shawl, she can survive. They are all starving and experiencing unbelievably horrific conditions. The story ends tragically.
The second story, Rosa, was written a few years later. Rosa is now in her 50's, filled with grief, fury, rage. She is an American Immigrant, and has been living in NYC. The story picks up with her move to Florida to a retirement apartment, where she writes daily letters to Magda and Stella and is barely able to leave her apartment. She has tried to share her story with other Jews in NYC, with Stella, and in this story with a man named Persky who is compassionate and friendly with Rosa. No one can understand her, though. Stella, wants her to forget and get over it, already! Her customers in NYC have only the vaguest idea of things that happened in the Holocaust and don't really want to hear about them. And Persky, though compassionate, was safe in the US at the time.
What happens when a human has a traumatic experience that very few others can relate with? Although it is safe to say that each human experience is unique, many would react as Rosa is. With a deep mistrust of humans, with grief, with rage, with suspicion, with self-loathing. Humans need to share their stories in order to connect to the rest of humanity. Ironically, there is a scientist who is trying to connect with Rosa and hear her story, but she does not really understand and feels that she is just a "number" to him due to his clinical and methodical ways of contacting her, so she does not engage. Much more is needed.
A lot of reviews speak about Rosa's actions, how she loses her underpants at the laundry and goes searching for them. Reviews about what her walk through nighttime Miami symbolizes. What sticks with me is her need to connect with other humans. After getting locked into a beach that is surrounded with a fence with barbed-wire on top to keep non-guests out, Rosa says to the manager:
"Mister, you got barbed wire by your beach.
"Are you a guest here?
"I'm someplace else.
"Then it's none of your business, is it?
"You got barbed wire.
"It keeps out the riffraff.
"In America, it's no place for barbed wire on top of fences......Only Nazis catch innocent people behind barbed wire........
"My name is Finkelstein.
"Then you should know better!...A shame, A Finkelstein, like you.
Humans need to share their stories in order to connect to the rest of humanity, and Rosa cannot connect.
Overall, the writing in The Shawl and in Rosa came across as a bit dream-like and floaty with a definite feel of madness to it. Deserved madness. The writing is very strong in this way, and I felt it to be true to the situation of a survivor. Recommended for those who are interested in holocaust literature, or the shared human experience. Definitely, a tough and sad read.