After Long Silence: A Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Understanding the silent & why we must break our own silence
Review: As the son of a survivor, I read this book differently than most. I understand the author's parents need for silence. I also understand the destructiveness of it on the survivors and their children. Ms. Fremont has created a wonderful framework for the telling of HER story.

Those who read this just for the story of her parents are missing the point of writing the book. The silence of her parents - like many survivors of the Shoa - cannot be completely broken, so admittedly the author 'fills in' or 'imagines' details so painful that her parents are unable or unwilling to remember.

This novel is an exploration into the author's movement OUT OF SILENCE. She skillfully represents this personal growth by sharing with the reader her journey into her family's and her own past. It is during this journey as she questions why her parents kept so silent that she puts herself to the ultimate test and breaks her own conspiracy of silence to her parents and family about her sexual orientation. Bravely she works to stop all the silences of her family - silence of Shoa experiences, silences of avoiding one's true identity - so that they may no longer live in the shadow that silence casts.

The book is to be applauded as a journey to self truth. A journey we are always on and must always work at.

Read the book as a tool to remove your own silences.

Rating:
Summary: Reaching for the unknowable
Review: Helen Fremont and her sister Lara had a typical post-War childhood. Raised Catholic, their lives were not unlike so many others recovering from the war. Or were they? As the girls grew they began to ask questions. What happened to their grandparents? What happened to their father's arm? Why were so many of their friends Jewish? They became driven to understand their history and themselves.

"After Long Silence" is a remarkably well-written, compelling story. The author takes us with her, into her own life and that of her parents and aunt. Through her writing we come to know that what she seeks -- what we seek -- is unknowable.

Three times through the course of the book I found myself stunned by the impact of simple dramatic moments. Not the excitement of escape or the fear in hiding, but moments of realization that we will always be outsiders, always removed from the depth of the truth. We can never understand.

The characters in this true story create an impenetrable armor, each in their own way, revealing only what is needed, leaving the reader to wonder just what we still don't know.

Best book I've read this year. The author has a gift for descriptive language -- I hope to read more true stories from her. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Silence is deadly
Review: I totally agree with all those who said that this book is an outstanding peace of art. One more example of that there cannot be too 'MANY" books about the Holocaust subject. I understand,however the reluctance and even hostility of Helen and Lara's parents(as well as some of the readers) about the exposing Helen's parents life story.It is definetely painful, as well as possibly embarassing to let the whole world to know their very private life.(even though they have nothing to be ashamed about).But to that you can also add that Lara and Helen have a RIGHT to know about thier roots and their family. So in that respect I agree that their parents made a big mistake by SUPRESSING it all. It seems that they mostly defnding themselves rather than their kids about the truth.When our children are small that is understandable. But it is WRONG to hide the truth about the family once children are all grown up. Amazing story and I wish Zosia and Helen's mom would open up and tell everything. Once they die... no more memory...
(...)

Rating:
Summary: One family's surprising secrets!
Review: It's not until Helen Fremont is an adult that she discovers that her Polish parents, whom she always believed were Catholic, were in fact both Jewish by birth. Because surviving World War II had been so difficult for them, neither wanted to share details of their past with Helen or her sister Lara until the daughters started researching family history for themselves.

AFTER LONG SILENCE is a fascinating story of survival against great odds, yet the focus of the story keeps coming back to the author and her sister. Throughout the heartbreaking story of Helen's family, it somehow seems as if it's told through the eyes of the author instead the mother. Much of the historical context is missing, such as a thorough description of the town in which her parents lived, a closer look at extended family and friends, and a clearer picture of wartime atrocities. It's agonizing to realize the extent to which Helen's parents, at first very unwillingly, had to open up to share their

painful past with her. It's also disturbing for the reader to learn that the book is about family secrets rather than a clear picture of one family's history. Nevertheless, as a gripping saga of survival in World War II Poland, this book should be read to learn of yet another way one particular family was able to get through a most gruesome time in recent history.

Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Book
Review: Like Helen Fremont, my parents are also Jewish Holocaust Survivors. However, unlike her, my parents never hid their past. Even with our differences, she does a remarkable job of showing something most children of survivors have in common - how truly difficult it is to "ask" our parents about their past; I label it "a difficult dance" - we, as their children, feel we must know about their past, but we don't want to hurt them by making them spill their guts about the utter inhumantiy they lived through. This is a difficult topic to capture, but Fremont did it magnificently. I also felt tremendous sympathy for her. I truly understand how she felt. The incredible "jolt" (and this is putting it mildly) when she learned her real identity is probably one of the hardest things she has ever had to live through. I hope that committing her story to paper, in the moving way that she did, will help her resolve her background. She should be commended for opening her life to the rest of us.