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Between Sky & Sea
By Herz Bergner
Text Publishing, 215pp, $27.95
In Search of My Father
By Paul Drexler
JoJo Publishing,
221pp, $24.99
AS the number of Australian Holocaust survivors declines with time, the publication of books recording the crimes of the Nazis becomes increasingly important. Such memoirs, histories and novels seek to remind today's generation of the evil their grandparents suffered.
The republication of two important books from different genres further attests to the significance of Holocaust literature. Between Sky & Sea, a novel by Herz Bergner, was the winner of the Australian Literature Society's Gold Medal in 1948. Out of print for decades, it has been brought back to life so a new audience can read Bergner's reflective and passionate account of how refugees become the flotsam and jetsam (literally) of events beyond their control.
Paul Drexler's profoundly moving autobiographical story, In Search of My Father, takes us into the heart and soul of a young boy suddenly and catastrophically deprived of the love of his father when the family is split up and interned in different concentration camps by the Nazis.
Bergner, a Pole who migrated to Australia just before the outbreak of the war, was a Yiddish speaker, and his literary work was translated by one of the great, though sadly all but forgotten, pillars of Australian writing, Judah Waten. Bergner's work dealt with the...