Hiding in the Spotlight: Memoir as It Should Be
Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy’s Story of Survival 1941-1946
By Greg Dawson
Pegasus Books
278 pages; $25
Wending my way past booths for the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, for Revolution Book Store, and for self-published seers and advisors promising inner and world peace, I was drawn to one booth at the Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival last fall by a large map featuring the Ukraine.
Here in Dixie, where “immigrant” means someone from Buffalo or Cleveland, or in my neighborhood, Africa, I have scant reminders of my childhood in Rochester, New York, where my best friend’s name was the common Ukrainian one, Luba. It was as close as I could get at my public school to my native Slovenia, then part of communist Yugoslavia.
I chatted with the woman, who told me the book was about her life in the Ukraine as a Jew who escaped the Nazi purge. It was written by her son.
Oh no, I thought, someone else who feels his family story is unique, yet who probably writes it down as if every reader brought to it the interest cousin Bob has.
But my skepticism waned as I chatted with the author and his mother. At a minimum, I thought that the $25.00 payment would serve a good cause.
That was on Saturday evening. I finished the book early Monday morning.
I grew up knowing people like Zhanna, the subject of the book, who have never wanted to go back to their places of birth because memories of brutality remain. But we are fortunate that her eldest son, Greg Dawson, did, for he has written a book that combines memoir and history into a narrative that is as spellbinding as a novel.
It is a story that needs to be preserved, especially as the teenage refugees of World War II enter their eighties, their experiences ignored by the multiculturalists who dominate education and publishing.
Hiding in the Spotlight is the story of victims of ideological brothers, Stalin and Hitler, who shared a worldwide vision grandiose in ambition.
But this is something that the reader herself draws out of the story, for Dawson never hammers an ideological point, thereby superbly demonstrating that first commandment of the writer: “show, don’t tell.”
Dawson’s mother, a musical prodigy, like millions of others, simply found herself at age 14 a victim of the forces of history and mad ideologues.
If I wrote a book, I would be fortunate to have you write the review. You speak of a place and time that I know little about. I had never heard a name ending with a “ski” until I went to Chicago in my late teens. Standing in the train station and listening to the loudspeaker call the names of people to take phone calls or meet friends or go to customer service, I felt like a world traveler. In this an other articles, you have shown how neglected my education has been. Thank you.
I have added the book to my read list.
I hope you have had the opportunity to read the “Minister and the Massacres” before it was banned by the British.
Another book in the same vein is “The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival” by Mona Golabek
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Willesden-Lane-Kindertransport-Survival/dp/product-description/0446690279
Mona’s mother Lisa was a 14 year old child prodigy who fled Vienna on the Kindertransport train to England. Lisa lost her family (both parents perished in Auschwitz) but went on to become a concert pianist, as did Mona herself.
I saw Mona perform last summer, she intersperses musical pieces with poetry and the story of her mother’s life, and it was incredibly moving. Not a dry eye in the house.
I do not know that I can take another sad story about
the destructive actions of the Hitler and Stalin era.
As a child in NYC in the early 1950′s I had Polish
neighbors who’s children I went to school with. At times
I would play at their home. On weekends Polish immigrants
would visit and the crying would sometimes become to
much to bear. Many of these people were concentration
camp survivors. Once a woman grabed my arm and in her
eyes she absorbed me thinking I was a relative, I looked
at her grip and saw the tatoo on her arm. The look she
gave me stays in my memory as and understanding marker
of pure pain. I could say nothing to her but hoped that
my return look was one of kindness if not love to
offer a moment of respite from what appeared
in her eyes, enormous wells of pain with sadness that
brakes the heart, crushing the soul.
Thanks for the recommendations everyone. I will put them on my blog. They need to be read by the kids and adults.
I am awed at your writing of anything. Your articles are captivating. This book review proves you can distill even the finest wine into a most pallatable drink. Live long and well!