cover image Tell Me Another Morning: An Autobiographical Novel

Tell Me Another Morning: An Autobiographical Novel

Zdena Berger. Paris Press, $15.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-1-930464-10-0

First published in 1961, this haunting autobiographical novel retraces Berger's experiences in Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Teenage narrator Tania's shame at having to wear the yellow star turns into a sense of solidarity with her fellow Jews in Prague. In Terezin, she contemplates losing her virginity and watches helplessly as the Nazis clean up the camp to fool Red Cross inspectors. At Auschwitz, Tania sees the crematorium where her brother's body was burned, her friend Ilse trades sex for survival, and her aging father sells his sweater to make his daughter a present of sugar cubes. When Tania and her mother are selected for slave labor at Bergen-Belsen, which could prolong their lives, her mother chooses to stay and die with her husband and Tania bids them an agonizing farewell. Berger's heart-wrenching novel is an early eyewitness account of the holocaust, and this welcome reissue deserves a wide audience, particularly in high school and college curriculums.