Jowell starts each chapter with a
passage of her own story of how the book came to fruition. It gives a depth to
the narrative, which along with the input from Blumenthal’s family, adds to the
fleshing out of Blumenthal’s personality and the crucial point that it is
mental rather than physical strength that is the key to survival in extreme
circumstances. And Blumenthal has that mental strength in spades. (Review by Margaret
von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)
Joanne Jowell was originally approached to
write a biography of Ella Blumenthal in 2017, but as she says in her author’s
note, it has been a long journey. She had many hours of interviews with her
subject and also spoke to members of Blumenthal’s family in her effort to grasp
what has been an astonishing life, and also to develop a deep insight into the
character of the woman she has written about.
Blumenthal, who is now 101 years old, lives in Cape Town where she is well known as a speaker on the Holocaust, and is also something of a media personality. But she was born, under a very different name, in Warsaw. She had a happy pre-war childhood with a large, extended orthodox Jewish family. But that changed with the coming of war. She lost 23 immediate family members during the round-ups in the Warsaw ghetto, and after the ghetto uprising the only ones left, Blumenthal, her father and her niece Roma, were taken to Majdanek concentration camp, where her father was killed in the gas chamber.
She and Roma were then moved to Auschwitz. Blumenthal now has 26 descendants, which she describes as a victory “over those who sought to destroy our people”.
Eventually, as the war neared its end, the two were taken to Germany, to Bergen-Belsen. As you would expect, the chapters dealing with the camps make hard reading, despite the ultimate survival of both women. But survive they did, eventually getting to Paris where they lived by their wits until Roma received permission to emigrate to Palestine where her father had gone before war closed in. Blumenthal finally managed to join them before meeting and marrying a South African.
Her life here makes for easier reading, and Joanne Jowell admits is also made for easier writing as the agonising earlier experiences are hard for both writer and reader. But what makes the book so interesting is the story of how Blumenthal has dealt with and assimilated her experiences. For many, many years she told no-one the whole tale, not even her husband or her children. It was only after her husband’s death that she began a career as a public speaker and educator on the Holocaust.
Many Holocaust survivors buried their past, and Jowell makes it clear that Blumenthal did so, partly to spare her loved ones – transgenerational trauma is a very real thing – and partly because she felt that those who had never experienced the concentration camps could not fully understand what she had suffered. But eventually she decided to speak out, and she still does.
Jowell starts each chapter with a passage of her own story of how the book came to fruition. It gives a depth to the narrative, which along with the input from Blumenthal’s family, adds to the fleshing out of Blumenthal’s personality and the crucial point that it is mental rather than physical strength that is the key to survival in extreme circumstances. And Blumenthal has that mental strength in spades. - Margaret von Klemperer
I am Ella is published by Kwela Books ISBN 978-0-7957-1068-1
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