Out of Chaos

Book excerpt: The stories in Out of Chaos forms a profound testament to lost and found lives that are translated into compelling reading. The collection illuminates brief or elongated moments, fragments of memory and experience, what the great Holocaust writer Ida Fink called “a scrap of time.” In all, the anthology expresses survivors’ memories and reactions to a wide range of experiences as they survived in so many European settings, from Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, and France. The writers recall being on the run between different countries, escaping over mountains, hiding and even sometimes forgetting their Jewish identities in convents and rescuers’ homes and hovels, basements and attics. Some were left on their own; others found themselves embroiled in rescuer family conflicts. Some writers chose to write story clusters, each one capturing a moment or incident and often disconnected by memory or temporal and spatial divides.