Burned Child Seeks Fir

A bestseller in Sweden and Germany, this is a lacerating, beautifully translated memoir of the author's adolescence during the Holocaust. Edvardson, now an Israeli journalist, was born out of wedlock in Berlin; the child of a Jewish father, she was raised in the Catholic faith of her half-Jewish mother. As sanctions against those with Jewish blood increased, the 14-year-old girl bravely chose to sign a statement acknowledging her Jewish background, and, shortly thereafter, was transported to Theresienstadt and later to Auschwitz. There she worked for the infamous Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele, who wielded the power of life and death over arriving inmates. Edvardson's recollections unfold in haunting vignettes that alternate between her life in Berlin and her experiences in the camps. She conveys not only the horrors of Nazi Germany but also her feelings of being a family outcast. Interwoven with Edvardson's memories are the poetry and myths that sustained her throughout her ordeal. After the war she found asylum in Sweden, where she began her long struggle to come to terms with her past and free the emotions repressed during the war. (July)