"Binjamin Wilkomirski was a tiny child when the round-ups in Poland began. His father was killed in front of him, he was separated from his family, and found himself completely alone in a series of death camps. Only in adulthood did he find a way to recover his memories. He recounts these fragments with a child's unadorned speech and unsparing vision. Written with brilliant, heart-piercing simplicity, this memoir is a small masterpiece, incredible in it's power to move."


The author writes from his childhood perspective, where he understands little of what is happening around him. He describes a series of horrific scenes and situations which no adult, let alone child, should ever have to experience. An image of freezing, dying babies will stay with me for a long time.

During the book we catch glimpses of extraordinary cruelty, but also of amazing kindness and bravery from others who put themselves at risk to look after this child.

This is incredibly painful, but such a worthwhile read. It's also very quick.

This is such a wonderful book that I'm sending it out on an international ring. This is the order so far, please PM me if you'd like to join in.

Chelseagirl - UK
PsychJo - UK
AnglersRest - UK
Tanis - UK
Caro1 - UK
Juliebarreto - Hawaii, USA
CoolBoxUK - UK

and then back to Chelseagirl please.

Book Ring Rules (Adapted from psychjo)
1) Everybody should leave a journal entry when receiving the book and after the read! Please let us all know what you think about it...
2) Also PM the next person on the list for a mailing address and when that person doesn't answer within 7 days MAX! please PM the one after...
3) Everybody should also try to read the book soon (max - one month?)- but in a joyful speed. It's not about how many books someone can read within a certain amount of time - it's about enjoying it...
4) You can send the book via surface mail or airmail - that is completely up to you.
5) If you find you don't have the time to read it when it's your turn please PM and I'll move you to a later slot.

4.3.05 Passed onto Chelseagirl today on the start of it's travels.

KleptoKitty finished reading this book while she was at my house and she persuaded me that I had to read it too! I've got a book and a half in front of it in the queue, but will get on to it soon.

Rarely have I found such a simple quick read that is so blisteringly thought-provoking. In Fragments, Wilkomirski tries to make sense of the flashes of memories he has about his childhood - the deaths and disappearances of his family, the years spent in one death camp or another, living in filth, eating scraps, learning how to survive from day to day. He writes his memories as he remembers them, and the child-like style really brings home the horrors of war and of events that no one should have to go through, least of all a child.

After his release from the camps he is mistrustful of everyone and everything - no one has thought to tell him that the war is over and he is free, so he sees every offer of help as suspicious, every kind person as having an ulterior motive. To make matters worse, he is told to forget the events of his childhood, but to deny the horror just keeps it alive.

Fragments is a frightening glimpse of the horrors humankind can inflict on itself, but it's also full of hope for these amazing children who lived through the most dreadful childhood imaginable.

Thank you so much for persuading me to read this, KleptoKitty. I'm going to keep an eye out for my own copy as I feel I'd like to read this again in the future.

Chelseagirl passed on to me tonight at meet-up in Winchester. Will read and pass on asap.

Wow - couldn't put this down when I started reading. I can only support what Kleptokitty and Chelseagirl have already said. It gives a real insight into what this (and other traumatic situations) must be like for children who are trying to make sense of what is going on around them. Throughout the book I was horrified and amazed at what they were going through, and just when you think everything should be alright for him when he's with his new family, safe from the horrors of the deathcamp, he almost feels less at home and more confused about the new world around him. The simplest images stick with me, like being given an orange for the first time and not knowing what it is and how to eat it. The lack of understanding of those around him shows what can be learnt from Binjamin's experiences and sharing of them in working with children involved in trauma.

Thank you Kleptokitty for sharing this amazing book.

I've PMed Anglersrest, and as soon as I get his/her address I will post on.....

This arrived this morning from Psychjo. Thanks very much. I shall start this in the next week or so.

I have nearly finished this very moving book. I have PM'ed Tanis,who is up next for his/her address. Will journal further when I have finished the book.

This is such an amazing and thought provoking book. Written in a child style, it makes the book all the more moving as we read of the danger, bravery of others, the total cruelty that, on the whole the children received, the starvation and simply being forced to lived in such deprevation.

To be posted to Tanis on Friday 29th April; Enjoy!

This arrived in yesterday's post. I've started reading it on the way to work this morning and I'm already gripped. Does seem to be a chilling read with the opening incident with the boy's father.

I'll have this read and on the move again within a week I hope.

I read this book in three days and was completely drawn in by it. Binjamin's experiences are so horrifying I found it hard to keep going sometimes and had to put it aside to think about what he had written before I could carry on.

I think I will buy a copy of this book myself to keep and lend to friends.

Now in the post to Caro1.

I received a pm regarding this book which I will copy below, it does appear that this book is fiction after all. In my opinion that doesn't much diminish the power of this book and I am grateful for the reminder it gives me to keep this appalling period in my mind.

Hello tanis,

I see from the journal entry for _Fragments_ that you recently finished the
book and passed it on to someone else.

As much as I hate to be a whistle-blower, as a librarian, I feel obligated
to point out that Wilkomirski's memoir has been proven to be a fraud. The
definitive book about it is _The Wilkomirski Affair : A Study in
Biographical Truth_ by Stefan Maechler, which includes the complete text of
_Fragments_ in it. Another book published about the fraud is _A Life in
Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski_ by Blake Eskin.

No less an authority than the Library of Congress has classified the work
as fiction (a re-classification, since it was originally catalogued as
non-fiction).

Like others, I think the book is well-written and deserving of respect, but
readers should be aware of what it is and what it is not. Please add a note
to the journal for this book, so that future readers will know more about
it.

Thanks,

jewishlibrarian
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/jewishlibrarian

Having now read The Wilkomirski Affair I have to add to my journal entry that Bruno Dosseker (Binjamin's real name) has done quite a bit of damage with his book, he has taken the real experiences of people who trusted him and used them as his own, often distorting them to suit his story better and causing undue upset and hurt to the real victims. I know Bruno is a damaged individual and I do sympathise with him in that sense but he has behaved very badly to people who had already suffered too much.

Arrived safely today. I have a book to finish for my reading group and another ring, then I will be ready to start this. More later.

I'm finding it difficult to know quite what to write about this book. The ring arrived at more or less the same time as I became aware of the controversy surrounding the book, and that has in turn had quite an impact of my reading of it. I'm going to use the words of other writers to sum up what I think, I think about Fragments.

'In an article on "witness literature", Timothy Garton Ash referred to Wilkomirski as an example of a writer on "the frontier between the literature of fact and the literature of fiction", but whose book lacks the essential "truth test" of "veracity" (On the Frontier", New York Review of Books, 11/07/02).

Reading Fragments now, one is amazed that it could ever have been hailed as it was. The wooden irony ("Majdanek is no playground"), the hackneyed images (silences broken by the sound of cracking skulls), the crude, hectoring melodrama (his father squashed against the wall by a transporter, dead women with rats crawling on their stomachs). Material which, once you know it is fraudulent, is truly obscene. But even before one knew that, all the aesthetic alarms should have sounded. For every page has the authentic ring of falsehood.
But it would be too simple, and wrong, to say that Wilkomirski lied. Apparently, Wilkomirski believes that his story is true: according to the New York Times, when the veracity of his book was challenged by his German publisher, he stood up defiantly and declared:

I am Binjamin Wilkomirski!.

Even his severest critics think that he is sincere.'

I'm torn between sympathising with a man who has obviously been traumatised in some way, the most heartfelt horror about what happened in the death camps, the importance of never forgetting, but at the same time the worry that, as Howard Weiss writes 'presenting a fictional account of the Holocaust as factual only provides ammunition to those who already deny that the horrors of Nazism and the death camps ever even happened.'

Mailed to Juliebarreto today, Tuesday 31 May.

It arrived yesterday and will be my next up. Mahalo!

6/9/5 - Before I read the book, I googled his name to see what he's up to now. (I was following up on the brief note in the front of the book that he is a "well-known classical musician" in Switzerland, and had not read the previous journal entries.) Gee...I kind of wish I hadn't. I learned this is a hugely controversial book claimed to be fraudulent. I went ahead and read it anyway, knowing that many people say it's not real, just to get a feel for the story itself, not to make a judgement on its veracity. And, indeed, it's fragmentary and cryptic. The horror...the horror.

So now, for me, it joins the ranks of other disputed memoirs -- Mutant Message Down Under, Dave Pelzer, and Little Tree, among others. To some extent, all memoirs are subjective and suspect. Events are always filtered. What a person witnesses is always very much about what's going on within the witness, as much as it is with the external events. I'm wondering to what extent the claim that this is fraudulent interacts with the unfortunate holocaust denial argument. And what happened to the Jewish Quarterly Award for Nonfiction once the claim of fabricationgained authority? (I will check that out.)

This book reminded me of another, admittedly fictional, book I read about the camps from a child's perspective, which I greatly...not "enjoyed," but admired: Ian McMillan's "Village of a Million Spirits: a novel of the Treblinka Uprising." http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/129086/?title=*treblinka*&author=&category=&isbn=&bcid=&status=0&screenname=&limit=1&=Wait.../book_-Village-of-a-Million-Spirits:-A-Novel-of-the-Treblinka-Uprising-Ian-MacMillan At any rate, this is off to the next in line.

Received today and looking forward to the read. I've got a few other ring books to read first but as I'm last on the ring for this one I hope it doesn't matter if I take a while?!?

An apt name for the book, as the recollections are really rather fragmental, sometimes leaving questions that I would have so loved to find answered... It is a quick read that gives much to think about! Even having read and watched a lot of footage on the topic of the holocaust it still stuns me how mindlessly cruel people can be... And as this book makes it clear - not only the perpetrators of that great evil, but in a way - different but no less - also those who "washed their hands clean of it"... As in the case of this boy, there seems to have been no support for a completely traumatised child past giving him a nice home and good food. No understanding, no talking, just a taboo that didn't take away the fears and uncertainties and let the suffering continue when it could have ended and healing begun... What a truly sad story!

RELEASE NOTES:
I know it was picked up then but can't remember who has it and unfortunately, they didn't journal it...