Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in AmericaRoutledge, 2017 M07 5 - 355 pages Against All Odds is the first comprehensive look at the 140,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to America and the lives they have made here. William Helmreich writes of their experiences beginning with their first arrival in the United States: the mixed reactions they encountered from American Jews who were not always eager to receive them; their choices about where to live in America; and their efforts in finding marriage partners with whom they felt most comfortable most often other survivors.In preparation, Helmreich spent more than six years traveling the United States, listening to the personal stories of hundreds of survivors, and examining more than 15,000 pages of data as well as new material from archives that have never before been available to create this remarkable, groundbreaking work. What emerges is a picture that is sharply different from the stereotypical image of survivors as people who are chronically depressed, anxious, and fearful.This intimate, enlightening work explores questions about prevailing over hardship and adversity: how people who have gone through such experiences pick up the threads of their lives; where they obtain the strength and spirit to go on; and, finally, what lessdns the rest of us can learn about overcoming tragedy. |
Contents
5 | |
9 | |
13 | |
Beginnings of a New Life | 19 |
The Struggle to Rebuild | 58 |
Making a Living in America | 86 |
All for the Children | 120 |
The Social World of the Survivor | 148 |
Other editions - View all
Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in ... Limited preview - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
activities agencies Amer American Jewish American Jews anti-Semitism arrived asked attitudes Aufbau Auschwitz B'nai B'rith became Brach Bukiet children of survivors Christian City CJFWF concentration camp culture Dorothy Rabinowitz DP camps Elie Wiesel Europe European experiences fact faith father feel felt friends Gail Sheehy German ghettos happened Hasidic Helen HELMREICH HIAS immigrants important individual Interview involved Israel Jewish community Jewish organizations Jewry Lantos look married Meed Morton Weinfeld Nazi NCJW never newcomers number of survivors observant ODDS Orthodox parents percent Poland postwar problems professional Rabbi refugees religious response Robert Lifton Sandy Mayer sense simply social Society someone sometimes SOURCE NOTES story survived survivors living synagogue thousand told Tom Lantos Trauma United USNA vivors vors WILLIAM woman Yad Vashem Yehuda Bauer Yiddish YIVO York Zionist