From Publishers Weekly
Fifty-three years after being chased out of Nazi Germany, Korman returned to the land he'd called home for the first 10 years of his life. He and his younger brother visited the places throughout Europe that had marked their itinerant youth: their first home in Hamburg, a Polish refugee camp and then Talaton, the English town where they found refuge as part of the Kindertransport. Korman movingly recounts his childhood years as a refugee in war-ravaged Europe and then as an immigrant in the United States. With a scholar's gift for historical analysis, Korman (a professor of American history at Cornell) uses his experiences to explore the self-contained world of American-Jewish immigrants and the scattered experience of growing up in several countries and on two continents. While Korman's tale is more fortunate than those of many Holocaust survivors—he was eventually reunited with both his parents—his identity was irrevocably shaped by the trauma of his teenage years. The young adult who emerged was a collage of disjointed personas: an American Jew eager to embrace his new home, an immigrant who never shed the traces of his foreign accent and a historian eager to tell the story that defined him, his family and his people. (Dec.)
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Review
“This work is a gem. In this highly original and sensitively written book, Korman’s honesty is a palpable presence throughout.”—Alan L. Berger, series editor and Raddock Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University
From H-NET October 2006
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu (October 2006)
Reviewed for H-German by Kimberly A. Redding, History Program,
Carroll College
More Than a Memoir
Nightmare's Fairy Tale recounts the coming-of-age experiences of two young Jewish brothers during World War II. Thanks to the combined efforts of their parents, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, distant relatives and others, Gerd Korman and his brother Manfred became stateless refugees--not camp inmates--after being expelled from Germany in 1938. Sent via Kindertransport to England, the boys spent the war years struggling to preserve their cultural, familial and religious identity, before being reunited with their parents in New York City. This account is more than a thoughtful memoir by one of the relatively few child survivors of the Holocaust. The book stands out from a growing body of survivor narratives because Korman, professor emeritus of American history at Cornell, interweaves a compelling story with astute observations on memory and collective identity. The author situates his childhood experiences within multiple historiographical traditions, thereby creating a work with both general and scholarly appeal.
The book has four sections, the first of which focuses on the geography of memory. Having "made it" in American society, Korman--like many an immigrant before him--revisits sites of remembrance from his early childhood, at once experiencing and analyzing his own sometimes visceral reactions to long-lost people, places and events. Through this reflective travelogue, Korman also explores the long-lasting repercussions of trauma, the malleable nature of both memory and identity and--perhaps
of particular interest to historians of Germany--the evolving nature of public memorials.
Parts 2 and 3 follow a more conventional memoir format. Korman delves only lightly into his earliest years, thereby drawing attention to the year 1938, when he and his family were expelled from their home in Hamburg to Zbaszyn, Poland. Relying not only on his own memories, but also letters, journal entries and conversations with family members, Korman reconstructs both his own experiences and those of his father (interned in Westerbork) and mother (who immigrated to New York City) through
the family's reunification in the mid-1940s. Central themes echo those found in other works on the history of youth, particularly those dealing with youth in wartime. For example, Korman places considerable emphasis on the responsibilities that fell to him as the eldest of the two brothers and describes the magnified importance of cultural traditions during times of socio-political upheaval. Students of World War II will also recognize the stubborn, yet understandable silences that separated parents and children in the postwar era.
Korman's considerable experience as a professional historian is particularly apparent when he confronts the occasional dearth of reliable information. He forthrightly acknowledges gaps in his memory and sources and allows the narrative to be guided by the not always chronological thread of memory, as opposed to a structure dictated by political or military history. Korman also recognizes that, although his perspective is uniquely shaped by antisemitism and the Holocaust, he nonetheless shares much in common with millions of non-Jewish immigrants who have sought refuge and opportunity in the United States.
The conclusion of the book returns to a more analytical consideration of memory and identity. Korman suggests that the reunification of his family, along with the public airing of a radio play based on their wartime experience, marked the "end of the beginning." Like others of his generation--Jewish or otherwise--he looked to the future, striving for "normalcy" and the mantle of the successful immigrant, before turning to reconsider the events of his childhood. A brief epilogue further contextualizes Korman's narrative by situating it within a historiographical overview of Holocaust scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic.
Among a growing number of memoirs written by the WWII generation, Korman's book stands out as a bridge between genres. He understands himself at once as a Zionist Jew, a member of a broader (international) cohort of youth displaced by war and one of countless refugees seeking better lives in safer environs. As a historian, Korman uses his own youth to explore mid-century urban subcultures and reflect on issues of collective memory and identity. Undergraduates will undoubtedly be drawn in by Korman's ability to recreate the actions and emotions of a youth coming of age in turbulent surroundings, while more advanced audiences will appreciate the scaffolding of more theoretical questions on which this story is constructed. By simultaneously explaining, analyzing and contextualizing his own experiences, Korman offers an accessible, thoughtful work that defies pigeonholing as either personal narrative or professional history. Nightmare's Fairy Tale, it turns out, is both.
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From Central Conference of American Rabbis Newsletter: April, 2006
Full disclosure. Gerd Korman is a friend of mine. That said, this is an extraordinary memoir. The author was twelve when his family was forcibly removed from Germany to the Polish border. After detours, deportations,and hours of panic, he and his brother ended up on a kindertransport to England, while their mother subsequently arrived in New York. Their father, managing to leave only later, was on the St. Louis and was sent back to Europe, spending the duration of the war years at Westerbork Camp in Holland, where he became a close friend of Etty Hillesum ( some of whose letters Korman later published). Meanwhile, the boys were able to join their mother in New York, and were reunited with their father only after the war.
What is unusual and compelling about this particular memoir, in addition to the twists and turns that are characteristic of most accounts of that period, is that Gerd Korman went on to become a historian. He is thus able to tell his story through a double lens. It is the moving tale of a family's tribulations through the eyes of a precocious twelve-year-old. At the same time, Korman is able to add the perspective, footnotes, and interpretive framework of a trained academic. He also sees the connections made by understanding "the Holocaust as a historical phenomenon," writing of "Jewish cinders, now commingled with the black salt of the Atlantic Ocean and the red dust of the American prairie."
In addition to his personal story, korman has thorough knowledge of the development of Holocaust studies as an acadmeic field. It is an area to which he has contributed significant articles, and one of hte earliest books on the subject, Hunter and Hunted. The readers thus gest a rare and fascinating glimpse of some of the ways in which autobiography intersects with professional and political commitments. --Laurence Edwards
