Winner of:
2015 National Jewish Book Award; Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir
This memoir is a fascinating portrait of mother and child who miraculously survive two concentration camps, then, after the war, battle demons of the past, societal rejection, disbelief, and invalidation as they struggle to reenter the world of the living. It is the tale of how one newly takes on the world, having lived in the midst of corpses strewn about in the scores of thousands, and how one can possibly resume life in the aftermath of such experiences. It is the story of the child who decides, upon growing up, that the only career that makes sense for him in light of these years of horror is to become someone sensitive to the deepest flaws of humanity, a teacher of God's role in history amidst the traditions that attempt to understand it-and to become a rabbi. Readers will not emerge unscathed from this searing work, written by a distinguished, Boston-based rabbi and academic.
Industry Reviews
After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring is a Winner! - Urim Publications is proud to announce that After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring is the winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Biography / Autobiography. Another book on the Holocaust? Yes and no; this book is about a different Holocaustthe one that survivors of concentration camps endured after April 1945. That is when survivors began to experience the horrific and persistent memories of what they had lived through, according to Joseph Polak, who entered the camps when he was just a toddler. - -Eleanor Ehrenkranz, Jewish Book Council As one of the last witnesses to the Shoah, certainly one of the youngest, Joseph Polak has written a memoir that is an essential contribution to the body of Holocaust literature...This is a must read for anyone not afraid of grappling with the unfathomable. - Blu Greenberg Joseph Polak has written a memoir that begins where Anne Franks diary leaves off. We dont have many books like this one, books that tell what Hell was like for children who were too innocent to understand where they were, and too young to remember it clearly afterwards. So read this book and absorb what it has to say. And take some comfort from the fact that its author grew up to be a teacher of Torah and a counselor of young people on campus, hard as that is to comprehend. - Jack Reimer, South Florida Jewish Journal The story is so fantastic that, as Polak himself says, it goes against what we know of the Holocaust and the concentration camps. Every page teaches the reader something new, in language that is fresh and original. - Alan Rosen, PhD "It is haunting and melancholic, unforgettable and poignant. Polak is a wonderful writer, proffering a terrifying truth while speculating about the wisdom of the Torah and the apparent absence of God." - Charles Weinblatt, NY Journal of Books "I have a thought about why this particular memoir, of all memoirs, deserves to be read, indeed, must be read. World-wide, Anne Frank is considered to be the authentic voice from within the Holocaust. Her diary is indeed precious and incredibly touching. And yet it ends with her deportation to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen where she dies a gruesome death. That is not part of her diary. The reader is left in a void. From that same hideous place that claims her life emerges a little boy to continue the story. Joseph's voice originates from within Bergen-Belsen, and perhaps poses the questions and challenges to G-d that Anne might have posed, had she survived. His story and her story merge. These two youngsters from Holland, Anne forever a teenager, Joseph approaching the status of elder, provide a perspective of unusual insight from within the Holocaust, and from within survival. Surely Joseph's sensitive portrayal of this brief period of his life illustrates dramatically that for Jewish children, liberation was not particularly liberating. By reading this memoir and savoring its wisdom and lessons, perhaps we can assume a degree of [Joseph's] burden and confer meaning upon it by sharing its insights with our children and grandchildren." --Robert Krell, MD, professor emeritus, department of psychiatry, University of British Columbia
