The Seamstress

This well-told memoir by the late Bernstein deserves a prominent place in the archive of Holocaust survival stories. Born into a large Jewish Romanian family, Bernstein (1918-83), known then as Seren, left her mountain village at the age of 13 to attend gymnasium in Bucharest. Her independent spirit drove her to leave the anti-Semitic school and become an apprentice to a dressmaker rather than return home. Seren became a well-paid seamstress and assisted her family financially until WWII broke out, when she was sent to a Hungarian labor camp. In 1944, she was transported with her sister and two friends to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Although one of her friends died, Seren and the other two survived. She vividly recounts SS beatings, frostbite and the starvation she dealt with by stealing vegetables and trading them for the bread that the three shared. After liberation, Seren married another Holocaust survivor and emigrated to Canada, and later to the U.S. In a moving afterword her daughter describes her mother's strong personality. Photos. (Oct.)