BKMT READING GUIDES
In the Face of Evil: Based on the life of Dina Frydman Balbien
by Tema N. Merback
Paperback : 376 pages
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5 members have read this book
Introduction
Ten-year-old Dina Frydman lives a comfortable middle class life with her family in Radom, Poland in the summer of 1939, just weeks before the Nazi invasion. The love of family and friends offer no protection against the menace of the Nazi regime that begins to siphon off the worldly and spiritual goods of Radom's Jews. We witness Dina's battle to survive and understand the deadly apocalypse that transforms her from an innocent child to a teenage/adult. When her family is deported and murdered at Treblinka she finds safety at a forced labor facility where she experiences her first taste of love when she at thirteen meets Natek Korman, a passionate sixteen year old who rekindles her will to live. Forced by the Nazis to separate, the young lovers vow to find each other after the war. From work camps to death camps, Dina survives against all odds. The aftermath of six years of death and destruction presents a new obstacle, how to live? With the war over Dina travels from a German castle to a DP facility and finally a school for orphans as she struggles to reclaim her life. In 1945, she is reunited with Natek Korman only to face the most important decision of her life. She chooses to follow her dream. In the Face of Evil is a timeless story of the upheavals of war, the tenacious endurance of love and the resilience of the human spirit. It is an epic journey through the nightmare of the Holocaust-the single most defining moment in modern history, as told through the eyes of a young girl.
Excerpt
PrologueSeventy years have elapsed since the end of my childhood and the beginning of World War II. The destruction of community and family that followed the German invasion and conquering of Poland precipitated and forced me into an unnatural adulthood. The odd windfall of this calamitous event is a searing imprint of memory. Faces and voices have followed me my entire life offering up their advice and counsel, whether desired or not, shadowing each step as I steered my course through the seas of life. At times they have proven to be more real to me than yesterday’s events. Often these friendly ghosts have capriciously danced through the corridors of my dreams as real and alive as the last day that I saw them. Like the story of “Brigadoon”, the mythical community of book and song that reappeared every hundred years and for one shiny bright inexplicable moment sparkled through the mists of Scotland. So has the vanished world of Radom, Poland returned to me in dreams and at times in waking just as it was long ago. The joyous community with its various degrees of religiosity, the marketplaces and shops, the places of learning, the observance of holidays, the intellectual liveliness and of course the devotion and celebration of the Sabbath are all safely locked inside the reels of memory that play like a film in my mind, alive again. ...
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Discussion Questions
1. Why did you write the book from your mother’s perspective?2. What are the most important messages that you convey in the book?
3. Is everything in the book true even though you wrote it as a novel?
4. Why is Dina an inspiration to young people?
5. What makes your mom’s story different from other books that have been written about the Holocaust, for instance “The Diary of Anne Frank”?
6. How did your mother’s experience affect her for the balance of her life?
7. Has your mother ever revisited Radom, Poland, Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen? If so, what was her reaction?
Notes From the Author to the Bookclub
Note from the author: Through all of the losses of the Holocaust my mother would retain her humanity and the goodness that a loving family had bequeathed her. Memory was her treasure. And, so it was that she gave her memory to me. Like a skeleton her words became the bones of the story of which I would create flesh, blood and the spark of life. From this melding of two hearts, a mother & daughter, “In the Face of Evil” was born. The writing of this book has imbued me with hope and a belief in mankind. The resilience of my mother and her optimism in the face of evil is an inspiration for us all. It is also a testament of one survivor, one witness, to the memory of those that perished and an indelible imprint on the historical veracity of the Holocaust.Book Club Recommendations
Recommended to book clubs by 8 of 8 members.
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