Local UH resident, Alex Zelczer, a Holocaust Survivor has recently written a book entitled Eight Pieces of silk: What I could not tell my children. A very brief article about the book and what the author wrote it appears in the Cleveland Magazine.
Today, over sixty years later, Alex can still hear those imploring words reverberating in his head. “As soon as we get through with this, return to Vásárosnamény. Don’t go anywhere else. Let us wait for each other at home,” his distraught father had entreated. Well, … the SS had other plans. Eight Pieces of Silk is the touching memoir of Alex Zelczer, a keen observer and astute reporter of the daily savagery and mayhem of Nazi-controlled Hungary. From the wretched ghetto streets to the ghastly concentration camp barracks, the reader is swept along on a virtual journey to a man made Hell.
Eight Pieces of Silk is a vivid description of the devilish SS brutality, faithfully yet painfully recorded for eternity. Like a lone star against an inky firmament, however, stands Kapo Schteig who dares to shout a Hebrew warning word buried among his German curses, to save the innocents from additional beatings by the Nazis. Eight Pieces of Silk is the culmination of a lifetime of observations, containing the author’s reflections on the years before, during and after the Holocaust, as well as an invaluable repository of physical, statistical and political information. Eight Pieces of Silk….More than just a personal history, this chronicle is also that of countless others who did not survive to tell theirs.
mordechai says
From the time I picked up the book, I could not put it down. I read, re-read until I finished the book. What a great testimony.
It is not about what the author could not tell his children, but, what other survivors could not tell their children as well. Without a doubt this was a great painstaking effort for author to have to relive his ordeals and put it in writing. He has done justice for the Kedoshim of the Shoah, the Korbonos of the Holocaust.
A must read for all.
We must not forget and remember that it could happen again. We live a modern, secure and free society. So did the Jews of Europe until the beast, Hitler, yemach shemo, came in to power.
Read the book and pass it along to you children and your friends.
Never forget the past and always remember NEVER AGAIN.
Sarah says
I ordered this from Amazon as soon as I saw it and must comment.
I am so grateful to Mr. Zelczer for his commitment, his courage and his resolve in bringing his intensely painful and difficult story to us.
This book is a tribute to the precious lives of his family and they are remembered with much love and detail.
This book is well written and gives us an intimate glimpse of life in the Europe that so many of our families shared.
Perhaps more than all else, it is a Kiddush Hashem – a sanctification of G-d’s name – and I feel privileged and honored to know him and to live in the same city.
We are about to go into the holiday of Pesach, the Jewish holiday that made us a nation.
Redemption takes many forms. Telling and retelling our history is one level.
Reading this book is another.
Having Mr. Zelczer’s book gives us the outline and the impetus to transmit that which must be said.
We owe this to the witnesses who we are burying each and every day.
That transmission now becomes our hallowed responsibility.
Community Member says
This is a book written by Cleveland’s own, Mr. Alex Zelczer, entitled: “Eight Pieces of Silk, the Stories that I Could Not Tell My Children”. It is a painful record of Mr.Zelczer’s holocaust memories and his life pre and post the war. How interesting, that I had received the book a few days before Pesach and read most of it before leil seder, and as I broke the Levi Matzoh, and explaining the meaning to my family, a flash of the section in his book which dealt with him only receiving a small ration of bread once at night from the Natzi’s Yimach Shemom flashed before me. Mr. Zelczer relates that as a prisoner and slave laborer to the German’s, it was a struggle for him to decide, should he break a piece of the bread off and save it for later or the next day, since he would be hungry the next day and wouldn’t know if he would receive another piece or not….indeed this is the Lechem Oni, that we commemorate. My Shver, zol gezunt zeim, who is also an Auschwitz survivor, and about the same age as Mr. Zelczer was from a village, which was in the vicinity of Mr. Zelczer’s town. He cannot bear to speak about the horrors that he went through, so we do not know much of his story. He buried those horrors deep into the depths of his mind. But I am certain that his horrible story must have been similar to Mr. Zelczer’s. This is a MUST read for us and for our children, when age appropriate. And we MUST relate the Emunah Shelaimah that tzadikkim like Mr. Zelczer, sol gezunt zein and yebadel Lechaim, his brother of sainted memory, reb Herschel ZT”l, who was a complete tzadik and valued every Amein. I recall that he would stay in shul from the 1st minyan at 6am until the last minyan and go around listening to the Birchas Hashachar that everyone woudl say to answer Baruch Hu UBaruch Shemo and Amein to countless people’s brachos and Chazoras Hashatz. Who would have known that he lost his first wife and children in the Holocaust. We must transmit these stories to our children and children’s children. Finally, Mr. Mendy Klein gave a heartfelt presentation today at the Statehouse.
Link to the video. Robert speaks at 30:50
Governor John Kasich : Governor’s 33rd Annual Holocaust Commemoration
You can also watch the video of the program by going to website http://www.ohiojc.org
Description
Holocaust activist Robert Klein of Cleveland is the featured speaker and the theme is “Never Again : Heeding the Warning Signs” at the Governor’s 33rd Annual Holocaust Commemoration at the Ohio Statehouse on April 9, 2013.
A child of Holocaust survivors, Robert Klein arrived in the United States in 1956 with his parents and two siblings. His late father, Armin Klein, lost his first wife and three children after a Nazi deportation action in their hometown in Hungary. Armin spent several years in Hungarian forced labor camps before being sent to Auschwitz. Mr. Klein’s late mother, Jolan, survived Auschwitz’s gas chambers twice: once due to a mechanical malfunction and once because of a surprise Red Cross visit. Armin and Jol… [ More