Holocaust Memoirs of a Bergen-Belsen Survivor

Classmate of Anne Frank (Holocaust Survivor Memoirs World War II, Book 9)

By: Nanette Blitz Konig

Narrated by: Suzon Labrousse

Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

A monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit.

In these compelling, award-winning, Holocaust memoirs, Nanette Blitz Konig relates her amazing story of survival during the Second World War when she, together with her family and millions of other Jews, was imprisoned by the Nazis with a minimum chance of survival. Nanette (b. 1929) was a class mate of Anne Frank in the Jewish Lyceum of Amsterdam. They met again in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before Anne died.

During these emotional encounters, Anne Frank told her how the Frank family hid in the annex, talked about their deportation, her experience in Auschwitz, and about her plans for her diary after the war. This honest WW2 story describes the hourly battle for survival under the brutal conditions in the camp imposed by the Nazi regime.

It continues with her struggle to recover from the effects of starvation and tuberculosis after the war, and how she was gradually able to restart her life, marry, and build a family.

Nanette Blitz Konig, mother of three, grandmother of six, and great grand mother of four, lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Her Holocaust memoirs were written to speak in the name of those millions who were silenced forever.

©2018 Nanette Blitz Konig (P)2021 Nanette Blitz Konig

Heartbreaking Reality

I'm immensely grateful to Nanette Blitz Konig for writing this book. It explains how her life slipped slowly from worse to worse. I feel that her story, which completes some of Anne Frank's heartbreaking story, is something we all should know about.

It also describes what it is like to be a survivor from such conditions - the true loneliness of experiencing something that few people have gone through.

compelling

if you are interested in the factual reports of a survivor, this is another good one. my only disappointment is that she denies depression, but that is generational

Nanette’s suffering and those of her community

I didn’t like the narrator! For many reasons . Nanette didnt give details eg of how did they “ make do” with food they got, or details about how they has a semblance of cleanliness. Some of the readers pronunciations were irritatingly incorrect. I would’ve referred a more senior reader;More mature

The Courage of Living.

Nanette Blitz Konig, when I was in Germany with the British Army, I had, and took the opportunity to visit what is now a memorial garden, of Bergen Belsen. The year was 1968, and on arriving I and my mates first viewed the documents and pictures, taken by the Royal Army liberators in a building dedicated for this purpose. The caretaker of this building lived in an attached bungalow and was a lady in her sixties, confined to a wheelchair, and proved to be very knowledgeable of Bergen Belsen, as she guided us through the display. One of us commented on her knowledge, and were shocked to then be told “It is not book read knowledge, but that of my experiences as a prisoner here.” I asked, why do you stay”? “Because young man, when people like you come here, I want you to be told the truth about what Hitler, and his nazis did here, and in 44,000 other Concentration Camps, spread through Germany and all the countries he had conquered.”
Following our tour and talk with this brave lady, and proceeded on through what is now a peaceful garden covering the ground that was this place of murder by any and all methods one can imagine.
As you walk this tranquil ground you are struck by lawned, raised areas of ground, on the front of which is a large concrete plate, containing a number ranging in the hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, each representing how many were buried in these mass graves, bodies that the local Germans were forced to carry to the graves, and when they were so overcome, the army was forced, for reasons of safety, to use bulldozers to move these poor people, overcome with lice and typhus.
In England during Remembrance Day, we hear and respond to the Prayer of Remembrance, and as I and my mates stood before the Wall, Altar if you wish, I spontaneously recited that prayer:
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning. We will remember them. ( Response)
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.