Department of Sociology

2 June, 2004

As a non-Jewish child growing up in the ”Bible belt” of the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s, I remember the Jewish people being represented in Sunday School as extinct – a people who played a pivotal yet passing role in history. Awareness of Israel's contemporary struggles filtered through with news of the 1967 and Yom Kippur wars, yet I recall thinking of this as evidence that a mere remnant remained of a people I still considered anachronistic

Through the years since then I have become aware, in successively deeper ways, of the miraculous survival of the Jewish people through millennia of persecution, pogroms, and threatened genocide. Ten years of travel to Israel, during which I have been privileged to share in festivals holy days, Shabbat tables, and many extensive conversations with Jews whom I am now honored to call friends, I have learned something of how the Holocaust almost made that Sunday School representation true yet how its crucible powerfully demonstrated their courageous and eternal character

One learns about the significance of the Holocaust and Jewish identity in layers. The depth of the tragedy or its importance in Jewish history are impossible to take in with a stroll through Yad Vashem or the reading of a book. Those help, but it is through the stories of individuals and families and communities that the realities sink in, and then only gradually.

Sheina Medwed’s telling of the Leah Kaufman biography, which brings to light new, documented information about the Holocaust in Romania, is one such story that has poignantly and powerfully represented yet another layer of the Holocaust history. Without getting in the way, Mrs. Medwed has allowed the simple story to shine through. It is simple because it is the story of a child, yet it is profound because it is a story of a child who, despite witnessing atrocities and the loss of her family, survived one of the most violent and virulent times in history with her faith in humanity intact. With the care of a scholar and a heart tuned to the depth of Mrs. Kaufman’s painful story, Sheina Medwed takes us with nine year old Leah on the Death Marches to Transnistria.

But the story does not stop there. We learn about how Leah Kaufman, with only a third grade education, graduated seminary, entered the teaching profession and built a normal life for herself and her family determined to remain silent about her past. At the advent of the Holocaust Deniers with an almost super-human determination, Mrs. Kaufman forced herself to undergo m emotional and psychological transformation in order to begin to testify about the horrors she witnessed. Mrs. Kaufman is a teacher by profession, but more profoundly by her life.

Jews and non-Jews alike will find in this story a new depth of understanding as to the scope of the Holocaust and the courage of a child. We should all be thankful that, after decades of painful secrecy, Leah Kaufman has had the courage to emerge and tell the story of her childhood. This is a fabulous book and a must read for those wanting a deeper understanding of the Holocaust story.

Sincerely,

David A. Williamson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair