Questions I Am Asked About The Holocaust
Translated by Alice E. Olsson
Overview
One of the few remaining living Holocaust survivors answers the questions children ask her
“There are no stupid questions, nor any forbidden ones, but there are some questions that have no answer.”
Hédi Fried was nineteen when the Nazis snatched her family from their home in Eastern Europe and transported them to Auschwitz, where she and her sister were forced into hard labor until the end of the war.
Now ninety-eight, she has spent her life educating young people about the Holocaust and answering their questions about one of the darkest periods in human history. Questions like, “How was it to live in the camps?” “Did you dream at night?” “Why did Hitler hate the Jews?” “Do you see yourself in today’s refugees?” and “Can you forgive?”
With sensitivity and complete candor, Fried answers these questions and more in this deeply human book that urges us never to forget and never to repeat.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Hardback
- 5.1in x 7.8in
- 160 pages
- 9781947534599
- USD$20.00
- 2 April 2019
Categories
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2017 August Prize, Best Swedish Non-Fiction Book of the Year
- 2020 USBBY Outstanding International Books List
- Shortlisted for the 2020 UKLA Book Awards
Praise
“Something like what Anne Frank might have written had she survived…Timeless lessons taught with simple eloquence.”
“Hédi Fried is a remarkable woman and her writing offers important insights into truly terrible events and the slow, insidious way in which hatred can be fostered. Questions I Am Asked About the Holocaust is an easy to read account of things that are almost too horrible to comprehend. The essays represent an individual’s reflections on matters that touch the whole of humanity and, as Fried hopes, the lessons she has to teach about the past should serve as a warning for the future.” FIVE STARS
About the Author
Hédi Fried (1924–2022) was an author and psychologist. She was deeply committed to working for democratic values and against racism. She was born in the town of Sighet, in Romania, was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, and worked in several labour camps, eventually ending up in Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, she moved to Sweden with her sister.
Her bestselling autobiography, Fragments of a Life: the road to Auschwitz, was published in English and Swedish in the 1990s.
Translator
Alice E. Olsson is a literary translator, writer, and editor working across Swedish and English. She has served as the Cultural Affairs Adviser at the Embassy of Sweden in London and is the recipient of a fellowship as well as multiple grants from the Swedish Arts Council. She has been shortlisted for the 2020 Peirene Stevns Translation Prize and the 2023 Bernard Shaw Prize.
