Embattled Selves (Cloth)

People who struggled with their Jewishness during the Nazi era--discovering, rejecting, embracing or concealing their Jewish identity as a result of persecution--are the focus of these 15 remarkable life histories culled from interviews with 280 individuals. Czech-born Hilda Dujardin could have protected her family by establishing her mother's ``Aryan'' ancestry; instead she took a stand as a Jew and was sent to a concentration camp. Romulus Berliner, born into an Orthodox Jewish household, volunteered for the Nazi SS while imprisoned in a Hungarian labor camp; he lived under a non-Jewish identity for the next three years, then informed his commanding SS officer that he was a Jew. Dvora Goldenberg, taken from her parents in Amsterdam at age four by Jewish underground members, spent the next 14 years with a family of devout Protestants in the Dutch countryside; rejecting her foster parents' values, she sought out her Jewish faith. Jacobson, a freelance writer, has produced a moving oral history that throws a floodlight on universal issues of identity, such as how one sees oneself and how a particular course of action shapes one's life. (June)