After losing most of their families in the Holocaust, 4 Jews in Liepaja/Latvia are hidden by a brave gentile couple (Roberts and Johanna Seduls), who build a hiding place in the cellar of an apartment building in the center of town and provide handguns and a radio for the Jews. Gradually 7 other Jews join them after hair-raising escapes. At first all are elated, but as the months go by and the Red Army fails to capture the city, relations become more and more strained by crowding, food shortages, air raids, police searches, and other almost daily scares.
Tragically, the rescuer Roberts Seduls is killed by a Soviet shell two months before the end of the war. Liberation—if that is the word—by the Red Army comes only after German capitulation on May 9, 1945.
19 Months in a Cellar by Edward Anders
Edward Anders - When Stalin brutally seized Latvia—my country—in June 1940, I was one of many Latvian patriots alarmed at this perfidious aggression. I narrowly escaped deportation to the USSR on 14 June 1941. But a few days later when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and swiftly drove the Red Army out of Latvia, I became one of 90,000 Latvian Jews who suddenly faced death. The Holocaust began at once. Jews were shot by tens, hundreds, and thousands. Only 2% survived the Nazi occupation.
~~ My father invented an audacious bluff to save his wife and sons—though not himself. My mother was to claim that she was a German foundling raised by Jewish parents. At best this bluff would last a few months, as too many people in our town (Liepāja, pop. 57,000) knew our family. Against all odds, we managed to stretch it out for nearly 2 years, followed by a few years in legal limbo when my mother and I “slipped through cracks in the Holocaust”, though my father, brother, and 24 other relatives perished. When the Red Army reentered Latvia in 1944, we fled to Germany with 100,000 others who thought that one year under Stalin was enough.
~~Not having been in ghettos or camps, I evaded the horrendous suffering of most other survivors and was able to watch events from a unique vantage point. Living and working among ordinary people, I saw their responses to the war, the Nazi occupation, and the Holocaust. I saw shades of gray where some others—and the Moscow propaganda machine—see only pitch black.
~~This book covers only my years in Europe (1926–1949), prior to my emigration to the US. Part I is my survival story. Part II is my attempt as a scientist to give a dispassionate, objective analysis of Latvian conduct during the German occupation. There I show that the ugly stereotypes about them are based on a badly distorted reading of the historical record. Most Latvians deplored the German-led Holocaust murders in which a few thousand Latvians participated. The Latvian Legion, often confused with these murder units, did not even exist at the time of these murders, being formed by conscription only in 1943 to keep the Red Army out of Latvia. It fought not for Hitler but against Stalin.
Publisher: Lulu.com
Publication date: November 19, 2011
Edition: Third Edition
Language: English
Print length: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 1304652165
ISBN-13: 9781304652164
Item Weight: 1.04 pounds
Reading age: 1 year and up
Dimensions: 5.98 x 0.8 x 9.02 inches
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