Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
    Unavailable
    Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
    Unavailable
    Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
    Ebook330 pages3 hours

    Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust

    By Planaria Price and Helen Reichmann West

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    A Junior Library Guild selection

    Claiming My Place is the true story of a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by escaping to Nazi Germany and hiding in plain sight.

    Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski. As the war escalates, Gucia and her family, friends, and neighbors suffer starvation, disease, and worse. She knows her blond hair and fair skin give her an advantage, and eventually she faces a harrowing choice: risk either the uncertain horrors of deportation to a concentration camp, or certain death if she is caught resisting. She decides to hide her identity as a Jew and adopts the gentile name Danuta Barbara Tanska. Barbara, nicknamed Basia, leaves behind everything and everyone she has ever known in order to claim a new life for herself.

    Writing in the first person, author Planaria Price and Helen Reichmann West, Barbara's daughter, bring the immediacy of Barbara’s voice to this true account of a young woman whose unlikely survival hinges upon the same determination and defiant spirit already evident in the six-year-old girl we meet as this story begins. The final portion of this narrative, written by Helen, completes Barbara’s journey from her immigration to America until her natural, timely death.
    Includes maps and photographs

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 13, 2018
    ISBN9780374305307
    Author

    Planaria Price

    After graduating from Berkeley and earning a Master’s Degree in English Literature from UCLA, Planaria Price began her career teaching English to adult immigrants in Los Angeles. She has written several textbooks and lectured at numerous conferences. In addition to this, Planaria has worked with her husband to save and restore over 30 Victorian and Craftsman homes in her historic Los Angeles neighborhood. Claiming My Place is her first book for young adults.

    Related to Claiming My Place

    Related ebooks

    YA Biography & Autobiography For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Chris Bohjalian

      Apr 12, 2021

      Chris Bohjalian
      12 min read

    • Article

      Past Times

      Oct 24, 2021

      Past Times
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fiction is a Power Trip: The Millions Interviews Eleanor Henderson

      Sep 25, 2017

      "I think we have to acknowledge that fiction does have that dangerous allure. Is it presumptuous? Sure. It’s a sacred enterprise, it’s the best means of empathy and understanding we have, and it’s also presumptuous." The post Fiction is a Power Trip:

      10 min read

    • Article

      Lan Samantha Chang Revisits ‘Hunger,’ 25 Years Later

      Sep 26, 2023

      "I had a piercing sense that I had completed a work encompassing everything I’d written over the seven years." The post Lan Samantha Chang Revisits ‘Hunger,’ 25 Years Later appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      WRITING Lost Voices

      Nov 2, 2023

      WRITING Lost Voices
      8 min read

    • Article

      Bearing Witness

      Nov 6, 2023

      by Rachelle Unreich (Hachette, $34.99) by Anne Berest (Hachette, $34.99) A few weeks ago, I attended a discussion at Princeton University between distinguished American authors AM Homes and Joyce Carol Oates about the state of the novel in contempo

      5 min read

    • Article

      Gene Wolfe And The Book Of Gold

      Apr 25, 2019

      His example was a welcome counter to the romanticized notion of the philandering rebel artist. Regular habits, a strong work ethic, and a love of revision were the secret ingredients to a successful writing career. The post Gene Wolfe and the Book of

      8 min read

    • Article

      Resurrecting Forgotten Lives: The Millions Interviews Stacy Horn

      May 10, 2018

      Stacy Horn defies death by ceaselessly writing books about it. Although her first book, a memoir titled Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town, was about her creating the New York City-centered social network Echo (a network

      9 min read

    • Article

      Hilton ALS

      Jun 15, 2018

      Hilton ALS
      29 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Naima Coster

      Dec 3, 2021

      These books reminded me of why I read and write fiction. They take us deeper into ourselves, the richness and limits of our own imagination and experiences. The post A Year in Reading: Naima Coster appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Sep 11, 2023

      Books
      5 min read

    • Article

      Hunting For A Lesbian Canon

      May 17, 2018

      Hunting For A Lesbian Canon
      8 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Mar 1, 2021

      Table Talk
      13 min read

    • Article

      Santa Montefiore

      Oct 1, 2020

      Santa Montefiore
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Claiming My Place

    4/5

    5 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Planaria Price and Helen West meet in a restaurant and get to talking. Their encounter leads to this book telling the life story of Gucia Gomolinska, later know as Basia. A young woman who survived the Holocaust by assuming the identiy of a Gentile and moving to Germany to work as a Polish worker. The book later follows the family to the United States.
    • 5/5
      This memoir recounts one young woman's courage, determination and luck to survive through the Nazi occupation of Poland.This book was classified as Young Adult biography in my library system.I loved how the recording and telling of this memoir came into being.One can never truly fully comprehend the horrors and far-reaching impact of the Nazi regime on all the lives and families it impacted. This one story reminds one to think of the millions of other lives.