THE CHOICE: Poland, 1939–1945

When the Nazis marched into Mielec, Poland, Eber was a 10-year-old dreaming of romance and happy endings. Her world was punctured by the burning of the butcher shop filled with Jewish men. In this moving memoir, Eber, a scholar of East Asian studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describes her life during WWII and after, and while she presents considerable historical information, her story focuses on war's cruel ability to manipulate human emotions, and the devastating mark it leaves on the human psyche. While Eber's title seems to refer to her decision to escape and leave her family during the war against her father's wishes, her book chronicles the many choices in her lifelong journey of self-discovery: the decision to live though the Germans wanted her dead; to leave her newly reunited family following the war to pursue her dreams; to be proud of her Jewishness; to return to Poland at the age of 50 and come to terms with the fear and guilt that had shadowed her life. Eber describes how, living in California after the war, she attempted to conceal from others her "anxieties, compulsive behavior, strange phobias, fears and nightmares." Eber's book is a penetrating psychological analysis of how she learned to cope with the destructive forces that engulfed her young life. (Aug. 3)