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Flory: A Miraculous Story Of Survival

May 9, 2008

Laurie Legum
Special to the Jewish Times

Flory A. Van Beek
HarperOne 2008, 242 pages (paperback), $23.95

Raised in a loving Orthodox family as the youngest of four, Flory Cohen has a seemingly idyllic childhood in Amersfoort, Holland. Under the tolerant reign of Queen Wilhelmina, Dutch Jews live in an environment devoid of anti-Semitism.

In 1937, Flory meets her future husband, Felix Van Beek, a recent immigrant from Nazi Germany who is acutely aware of the looming danger. As the war escalates in Europe and a German invasion seems imminent, Felix arranges for a job transfer to Argentina and asks Flory to accompany him.

The couple boards the SS Bolivar but in the North Sea, the ship hits German mines and sinks. Over 104 passengers perish. Flory and Felix manage to cling to life, rescued by a passing British destroyer. They are brought to England to recuperate but after they convalesce, they are denied permanent esidency and are forced to return to Holland just before the German invasion.

As the Nazi’s anti-Jewish deportations escalate, Flory receives a summons to report to a German work camp. A chance meeting with Piet Brandsen, a member of the Resistance, saves Flory from her dire fate.

Flory and Felix go into hiding with Brandsen’s family, who also arranges hiding places for other family members. When Brandsen is arrested by the Gestapo, Henk and Cor Hornsveld, total strangers to Flory and Felix, allow the couple to take refuge in their farmhouse.

Throughout her ordeal, Flory meticulously records her experiences with over 1,000 documents, diaries, newspaper clippings and photographs that she hides in metal boxes and buries in the Brandsen’s yard. After the war, Flory recovers the boxes intact.

These priceless archives, peppered throughout the memoir, enrich the tapestry of Flory’s remarkable story of survival. While Flory’s account of the Holocaust forms another critical piece of survivor testimony, it is also a moving portrait of the courage of Dutch families who risked their lives to protect their fellow countrymen. 


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Artists In Exile

May 2, 2008

Bob Jacobson
Special to the Jewish Times

Joseph Horowitz
HarperCollins 2008, 458 pages (hardcover), $27.50

Would America’s performing arts have developed or thrived in the first half of the 20th century without the contributions of European artists? Probably, but Joseph Horowitz’s entertaining work, “Artists in Exile,” demonstrates the enormous contributions those artists made, primarily to dance, classical music, movies and theater.

Europe at the time was engulfed in war, revolution and the rise of fascism. But those were not necessarily the factors pushing them toward the United States. Yes, some were forced out by the Nazis. But as Mr. Horowitz points out, others were literally hungry or restless, and still others sought opportunity or new artistic frontiers.

Some of the immigrant artists embraced, and were embraced, by America. Others never adapted. Many never achieved the level of success here that they attained in their native countries.

Mr. Horowitz profiles more than three dozen immigrant artists, examining their work in Europe and here, and their degree of “cultural exchange” with America. As a historian and critic of classical music, he devotes considerable attention to composers and conductors.

The German immigrants often preached the superiority of their own classical music, at times holding back the emergence of American composers. The non-Germans were generally more open to working with American art forms.

In one of the more fascinating examples of cultural exchange, Mr. Horowitz describes the work of an all-Russian creative team — choreographer/director George Balanchine, composer Vernon Duke (nee Vladimir Dukelsky), set designer Boris Aronson — on the African-American musical, “Cabin in the Sky.”

Some of Mr. Horowitz’s subjects will be familiar names, including Balanchine, Igor Stravinsky, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Arturo Toscanini and Billy Wilder. Somewhere among the three dozen profiles, however, you’ll probably discover new names and become intrigued by their creations.

For me, those two figures were Rouben Mamoulian, whose work in America encompassed opera, film and musical theater, including “Porgy and Bess,” and Boris Aronson, whose pioneering work in set design took him all the way from the Lower East Side’s Yiddish Theater to Broadway’s “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret” and “Company.”


Previous Book Reviews

The Diplomat’s Wife
The History Of Last Night’s Dream: Discovering The Hidden Path To The Soul
“Sit, Ubu, Sit: How I Went From Brooklyn To Hollywood With The Same Woman, The Same Dog, And
The End of the Jews
The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father’s Lives
1940: A Novel
Adam The King
Artists In Exile
Flory: A Miraculous Story Of Survival

2007 Jewish Book Award Finalists

Finalists for the 2007 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, administered the Jewish Book Council, have been announced. The $100,000 prize, the largest of its kind in the Jewish literary world, honors an emerging author in the field of Jewish literature who has written a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in Jewish themes.

Finalists are: Ilana M. Blumberg for "Houses of Study: A Jewish Woman Among Books"; Eric L. Goldstein for "The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race and American Identity"; Lucette Lagnado for "The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World"; Michael Makovsky for "Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft"; and Haim Watzman for "A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel's Rift Valley."

The inaugural Rohr Prize, awarded in 2006, went to Tamar Yellin for "The Genizah at the House of Shepher.”

2006 Jewish Book Winners

The National Jewish Book Association announced its 2006 award winners and finalists in a variety of categories. The winners are:

Jewish Book of the Year:
"A Code of Jewish Ethics" by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
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American Jewish Studies:
Winner:
"Emma Lazarus" by Esther Schor
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Finalists:
"The Price of Whiteness" by Eric L. Goldstein
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"Crown Heights" by Edward Shapiro
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Anthologies and Collections
Winner:
"Writing a Modern Jewish History" by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
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Finalists:
"Scribblers on the Roof" by Melvin Jules Bukiet and David G. Roskies
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"Daughters of Sarah" by Eva Martin Santori
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Biography and Autobiography
Winner:
"The Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn
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Finalists:
"This Has Happened" by Piera Sonnino and Ann Goldstein
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"A Family of Strangers" by Deborah Tall
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Children's and Young Adult Literature
Winner:
"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak
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Finalists:
"Solomon and the Ant" by Sheldon Oberman and Peninnah Schram
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"Yellow Star" by Jennifer Roy
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Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice
Winner:
"Fragmented Families" by Ellen Sucov
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Finalists:
"The Jewish Book of Days" by Jill Hammer
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"Auschwitz" by Laurence Rees
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Eastern European Studies
Winner:
"Caviar and Ashes" by Marci Shore
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Finalists:
"Men of Silk" by Glenn Dynner
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"Fear" by Jan T. Gross
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Education and Jewish Identity
Winner:
"Building Jewish Roots" by Faydra Shapiro
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Finalist:
"Rethinking Synagogues" by Lawrence A. Hoffman
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Fiction
Winner:
"The World To Come" by Dara Horn
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Finalists:
"Accidents" by Yael Hedaya
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"Disobedience" by Naomi Alderman
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"Golden Country" by Jennifer Gilmore
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History
Winner:
"Becoming Eichmann" by David Cesarani
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Holocaust
Winner:
"The Enemy" by Jeffrey Hart
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Jewish Family Literature
Winner:
"Lilith's Ark" by Deborah Bodin Cohen
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Women's Studies
Winner:
"Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised?" by Shaya Cohen
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