Memories of My Life in a Polish Village, 1930-1949

“Deeply moving.”—Elie Wiesel, author of Night

“Toby Fluek’s Memories of My Life in a Polish Village is a beautiful book. Its luminous art and water-clear prose form a world of exquisite images that in the end create a tone poem evocative of a vanished world—a poem that is not a dirge but a gentle celebration of hardships overcome and the triumph of the spirit over unspeakable horror.”—Chaim Potok, New York Times‒bestselling author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev

“Toby Fluek’s brightly remembering palette restores, for our marveling eyes, the nearly thousand-year-old life of the village Jews of Eastern Europe—God-imbued, profound in its simplicity—at the very hour of its murderous destruction by Nazi terror. Her living yet memory-wounded paintings are too vivid—hence too tragically dyed in loss—to be reduced to nostalgia: they are a plain record of the innocence that was annihilated forever by Europe’s great storm of hatred.”—Cynthia Ozick, New York Times‒bestselling author of Heir to the Glimmering World and The Shawl

“Fluek’s realistic, richly detailed paintings could be called ‘folk Vermeer.’”—New York Magazine

“Wrenchingly beautiful . . . a moving memoir . . . Fluek literally ‘pictures’ her childhood in both art and words—a warm Jewish family life that included farm chores, holiday observance, and good relations with fellow villagers both Jewish and Catholic. She then describes with great restraint the devastation of her world by World War II. The individual vignettes, such as "Walking Between Bullets" and "German Prisoners of War," are devastating in the use of spare prose and detailed art. She takes the remains of her family through the Russian occupation, the horrors left by the Nazis in Poland, to a happy ending in America.”—Library Journal

“Charming yet unsentimental . . . Fluek's quiet dignity as a chronicler is fortifying. . . . Her tranquility of palette and word, though never denying the sufferings of the past, is distinctly restorative.”—Publishers Weekly

“A remarkable memoir . . . Fluek moves with powerful simplicity through the details of Jewish pre-war life, her struggle to survive the Nazi occupation, and her eventual emigration. . . . A powerful work.”—Booklist

“Fluek offers readers a window into her peaceful existence in Poland before it was shattered by World War II. Her village, family, neighbors, and friends are brought to life in her simple, yet moving, style. Her life is painstakingly depicted through images of Jewish customs and holidays, beginning in the early 1930s when she was a child, through the Nazi occupation, her escape, the loss of her family, and finally safety in the United States. The story's appeal is its simplicity and straightforward, clear descriptions, told without a great deal of emotion. Yet readers will be moved by Fluek's account of her life and the struggles of that time.”—School Library Journal