Praise for Resilience
âBased on years of painstaking research, travel, and oral histories, this is an important work about the Holocaust and how it affected the authorâs family. But like Shalom Aleichemâs Tevya stories, Judy Stoneâs Resilience is not just about one familyâitâs about all families, because in it she captures the essence of family life everywhere: hardship and hope, estrangement and love, and the desire we all share to preserve the best of those who came before.â
âPeter Lovenheim, journalist and author of In the Neighborhood
âDr. Stoneâs oral history, describing how her family survived the Holocaust, is among the best of the genreâwell written and, above all, riveting. Highly recommended.â
âJack R. Fischel, PhD, Emeritus Professor of History, Millersville University, and author of The Holocaust and The Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust
âThere is so much to admire in this wonderful book about horror, love, family, hate, endurance, and memory: the reporting and research, at once sweeping and granular, that unearths the history of Stoneâs family; the acutely focused writing, exquisitely phrased but utterly free of artifice; and Stoneâs voice and presence, which are at once authoritative, thoroughly honest, and immeasurably understanding. Stone conveys with uncommon power what was lost in the crescendo of othering we call the Holocaust.â
âDavid Dobbs, author of My Motherâs Lover and contributor to National Geographic and the Atlantic
âPeopled by a large cast of unforgettable characters, this brave and unflinching second-generation family memoir is a daughterâs coming of terms with her parentsâ tragic past and with her own demons. Stone wrests a redemptive victory for the survivors and their descendants in this riveting narrative of historyâs darkest moments.â
âElaine Kalman Naves, author of Journey to Vaja and Shoshannaâs Story
âRemembering can be painful, and eliciting and sharing painful memories takes courage. Author and physician Judy Stone and her family prove they are more than courageous. Resilience will hurt your heart but may also help heal some of our deepest wounds.â
âAmy Friedman, author of Desperadoâs Wife
âHow many of us have said of aging parents and grandparents, âI wish I had asked more questionsâ? Judy Stone did just that. Unlike many Holocaust memoir authors who focus on victimization and survival, Dr. Stone gives us a three-dimensional view of a family before, during, and after the Shoah. This book is well researched and well written and fills in gaps that have previously been left for many of us in our attempts to understand the Holocaust.â
âJack Paskoff, Rabbi, Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
âA beautiful and important read, Judy Stoneâs memoir is a daughterâs quest to memorialize not only the pain and sorrow her immigrant mother and family faced but also how they transcended the unimaginable. She draws readers into the vulnerable space of her family life, and we emerge more fully human.â
âSunita Puri, MD, author of That Good Night
âWith the diligence of someone undertaking a sacred mission, Judy Stone excavates the history of her family as the Angel of Death passed over it during the Holocaust. In Judaism, there is a saying after a relative dies: âMay their memory be as a blessing.â In these times, the memories of Stoneâs family members are not just a blessingâthey are a stern warning of horrors that must never be forgotten lest they be repeated.â
âSteve Silberman, author of NeuroTribes
âAs a child survivor of the Holocaust who owes his life to a Dutch-Indonesian family and their Muslim nanny who shielded him from the Nazis, I was especially drawn to Judy Stoneâs remarkable memoir, Resilience. Judyâs indefatigable research and remarkable ear for detail give us an honest, near-firsthand account of Jewish family life in the small towns of Eastern Hungary before the Holocaust. Resilience bears witness to the Holocaust from the standpoint of one family but holds lessons for all who embrace âNever Again.ââ
âAlfred Munzer, MD, Holocaust child survivor, retired physician, and volunteer, US Holocaust Memorial Museum
âStoneâs story of her familyâs experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust is full of sharp observations and insights. Her portrait of the chaos following the war and the toll it inflicted is especially riveting. By sheer persistence and determination, Stoneâs family members survived seemingly insurmountable difficulties with their essential humanity and decency intact. This book lovingly recounts their strengths and weaknesses while portraying their experiences and offers lessons to us all.â
âJudith Graham, journalist
âStone brings her familyâs stories to life in her book and underscores their message: to go on being kind and brave in such a savage place is what it means to be human. The kind and brave Anne Frank would be ninety this year if sheâd lived, but she and her sister, Margot, perished in the Holocaust as teenagers when an epidemic of typhus swept through the camp where they struggled to survive. Itâs wonderful to be able to read of two sisters who made it out.â
âMiriam Shuchman, MD, physician-journalist and author of The Drug Trial
âWhile the Holocaust survivorsâ generation is almost gone, their children and grandchildren continue to tell us their stories. Despite all the horror of the Holocaust, the survivors had enough strength to return to normal life, raise children, and share their stories. Judy Stoneâs book not only preserves for us the unique story of her family but also shows what horrible destruction is brought to the world by racism, chauvinism, and antisemitism.â
âVictoria Khiterer, PhD, Associate Professor of History, Millersville University
âDr. Judy Stone, in her amazing analysis of the Holocaust in its last year or so of violence and murder, forces us to ponder what Jews were experiencing in what Elie Wiesel called the âTown beyond the Wallââand what they were thinking of those far beyond those walls who could have helped rescue them but did not. . . . She stands up courageously in protecting future generations of survivors and rescuers who know that for documenting and analyzing the Holocaust, we never can claim âenough.ââ
âHillel Levine, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Sociology, Religion, and Judaic Studies, Boston University, and President, International Center for Conciliation
âDr. Judy Stone eloquently highlights the intergenerational resilience that binds and unites the Jewish people. Together, we work daily to make good on an almost six-thousand-year commitment to tikkun olam, repairing the world.â
âPeter Hotez, MD, PhD, author of Science Tikkun and Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine
âThe book is a pleasure to read. It reads like a documentary, a novel, a social history, and historical fiction all at once. Stone has a gift for clear prose that is rich with meaning and imagery.â
âManuel Reich, MD, psychiatrist and child of survivors
âResilience is an intimate biography of two intertwined families from rural Hungary. Judy Stoneâs attention to detail, and her own resilience in telling this difficult story, is an impressive achievement.â
âMark Celinscak, Louis and Frances Blumkin Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Nebraska Omaha
âAs a child of Holocaust survivors, I read Judyâs account of her familyâs remarkable story with a mix of admiration and regret. While my parentsâ stories are well documented, I personally have not done the deep work that Judy has taken on with this inspiring story, told from multiple family membersâ experiences. Unique in the sheer number of members of her motherâs family who survived, the stories of each individual are told with honesty, remarkable consistency in detail, and a full account of how the events leading up to and during the Holocaust directly impacted each personâs trajectory in its aftermath. Each character is flawed yet heroic and seen with a loving and critical eye in Judyâs allegiance to truth.
âMost important are Judyâs repeated cautions that we note in our own time today the unmistakable and, tragically, all-too-familiar signs of an inexorable shift nationally and worldwide toward racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, demonization of the âother,â and inexplicable appeal of extreme-right fascist and totalitarian leaders taking the reins of what we believed to be progressive and civilized countries. These cautions flow organically from the events as they unfolded in the years and months preceding the horrors she describes.
âAs an educator at a school that values the teaching of history as key to our capacity to educate the next generation to be discerning citizens and an educated electorate, I believe that this book is a crucial âfirst person accountâ reading for students from middle school through university.â
âAvi Baran Munro, EdM, Head of School, Community Day School, Pittsburgh
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