In the Mouth of the Wolf

Rating:
Summary: Association of Jewish Librarian's Best Book Award
Review: Caught in the Nazi trap in her native Poland, Rose Zar's father urged her to save herself by hiding "in the mouth of the wolf" -- within the enemy herself. She survived as a housekeeper for an SS commandant. Rose Zar's story won the Association of Jewish Librarian's Best Book Award. A captivating tale for young adults.

Rating:
Summary: A woman of valor
Review: I had the great pleasure of knowing Rose Zar. She was a remarkable woman who lived a fascinating life. She and her husband accomplished many things in their lives, and this book detailing her early experiences in Poland during the war gives you a glimpse of the astounding capacity for the human spirit to not only survive, but to thrive. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in inspirational stories of human survival. It is a lasting tribute to a woman of valor.

Rating:
Summary: Wearing a mask
Review: Rose Zar's memoir In the Mouth of the Wolf offers a very intense, personal account of a young girl's experience as a Jewish person during the Holocaust. Unlike many memoirs, Rose, or Ruzska, details more than just hiding from German authority. She attempts and succeeds at "passing" as a Polish gentile. Because Ruzska "passes," succeeds, and survives to tell her story, it makes her memoir both unique and enthralling. I read the story of Ruzska in less than two days. Being around the same age as her, I found the memoir touching and obviously disturbing. Ruzska had to abandon her childhood, her family, and her home in an Austrian ghetto in order to survive the brutal persecution of the Jewish population. Zar does an amazing job of recapturing the moment, making the reader feel as though she is Ruzska, facing the constant suspicion of Germans, fighting to free her father and friends from the ghetto, and surviving only on her own sense of willpower and perseverence. Though Ruzska is able to survive by passing as a Pole, she is forced to wear a mask- she must change her name, alter her behavior, and directly endure the hatred of the Jewish. Though she is fortunate to have survived, she also leaves the reader understanding the impact of this heart-wrenching, life-changing experience of living through the period of the Nazi regime.

Rating:
Summary: Wearing a mask
Review: Rose Zar's memoir In the Mouth of the Wolf offers a very intense, personal account of a young girl's experience as a Jewish person during the Holocaust. Unlike many memoirs, Rose, or Ruzska, details more than just hiding from German authority. She attempts and succeeds at "passing" as a Polish gentile. Because Ruzska "passes," succeeds, and survives to tell her story, it makes her memoir both unique and enthralling. I read the story of Ruzska in less than two days. Being around the same age as her, I found the memoir touching and obviously disturbing. Ruzska had to abandon her childhood, her family, and her home in an Austrian ghetto in order to survive the brutal persecution of the Jewish population. Zar does an amazing job of recapturing the moment, making the reader feel as though she is Ruzska, facing the constant suspicion of Germans, fighting to free her father and friends from the ghetto, and surviving only on her own sense of willpower and perseverence. Though Ruzska is able to survive by passing as a Pole, she is forced to wear a mask- she must change her name, alter her behavior, and directly endure the hatred of the Jewish. Though she is fortunate to have survived, she also leaves the reader understanding the impact of this heart-wrenching, life-changing experience of living through the period of the Nazi regime.

Rating:
Summary: The story of an Indiana teacher's haunting Shoah childhood
Review: The genocide of six million Jewish citizens from various European countries is an incomprehensible number and the collaboration or passivity of a majority of their neighbors and community leaders, who aided in their murder and other crimes against humanity, is a history too monstrous to imagine then or now. However the witness of survivors like Rose Zar and the testaments left behind like those of Anne Frank and others makes it clear to the rest of us, what really did happen and for us, to be constantly on call, so to speak, to respond to brutality, because the unthinkable is possible.

Rose Zar's autobiography came to me soon after its original publication in 1983, and by the way of one of her former religious school students from Sinai Temple in South Bend, Indiana, who was a roommate of mine at the time in the American Southwest. I had heard of Rose prior to the arrival of this important book because of the fond vignettes shared by my roommate and of his circle of childhood friends who had grown up together in South Bend and who all had been her students. They were a small group of American born children and like most Jewish kids from Indiana; they had all gone away to college and with their diplomas had wandered across the state line to more cosmopolitian places. Of that small group one is a famous Beverly Hills jeweler, whose important gems adorn our favorite stars on Oscar night. My roommate was absorbed in his medical residency, when "In the Mouth of the Wolf" arrived from Indiana, and so I read the biography and each evening gave my friend a debriefing of the chapters read thereto by his former teacher.

Having known Holocaust survivors most of my life, or since I was able to acknowledge their history, I hadn't been able to comprehend their horrors. Rose made that horror palatable when portraying the night she hid in the bushes while a search patrol probed the foliage. Recalling childhood games of hide-and-seek and the heart pounding sensation when about to be discovered hinted at the horror of Rose's ordeal when her mission to remain hidden wasn't a game, but meant her survival. There were many poignant illustrations that made this tome a landmark in my personal library's shoah collection. This is a biography that I had shared with my late maternal Grandmother's retirement neighbors in Sun City, Arizona, both concentration camp survivors, who I had known all my life, but whose individual biographies including the horrors they each had suffered, I shall never know. Having read Mrs. Zar's telling story, and hearing their praises of her eloquence and motion picture recommendations, I bravely asked when they might write their own stories. Perhaps their answer was all I needed to know. They hadn't fared, as luckily as had Rose, who had indeed remained hidden in the mouth of the wolf. Israel, who had lost a young son and a previous wife, answered my query: "You have to believe what you write, and I still can not believe what happened!"

This is not only the story of a young European woman who survived the Holocaust, but that of a lady who became an educator in Indiana, and who has become a voice in the annuals of Hoosier Jewry and the 200 years of Jewish life that has existed in our state since the old Northwest period. She is one of many survivors, who found refuge in America and lives about the towns and cities of Indiana and across the land, but unlike some has a mission to teach and to tell of the genocide that befell the once thriving Jewries of Europe not so many years ago. A story that the too often isolationist heartland should know, and a tome that should be added to the 'Indiana Room' collections of all our state's community libraries. I donated a copy to my town's public collection as well as to my congregational library.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and incredibly intriguing
Review: This book really caught the attention of my heart and soul to the very bottom. I don't think I could have pssoibly put it down, the book really talked to me and I could feel everything that Ms. Rose Zar went through, each tingling feeling. She wrote this book so entirely incredible with each word filterig through your very mind. I cannot tell you enough how much this book has meant to me. I cried, I laughed, and thought hardly in every well-written chapter. Every human being on this earth, should have the pleasure of reading this book!

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: This book was wonderful. My...sister brought it home for a book report. I was astonished that I finished it in under three hours. I couldn't put it down. I will also admit I cried in joy at the ending. As much as I appreciate the hardships and grief associated with the Holocaust, I liked hearing about someone who made it and found an amazing and courageous happiness even within her plight.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've ever read
Review: This book was wonderful. My...sister brought it home for a book report. I was astonished that I finished it in under three hours. I couldn't put it down. I will also admit I cried in joy at the ending. As much as I appreciate the hardships and grief associated with the Holocaust, I liked hearing about someone who made it and found an amazing and courageous happiness even within her plight.