Day After Night
Anita Diamant, 2009
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780743299855
Summary
Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Old Testament in The Red Tent, Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters — young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe — in this intensely dramatic novel.
Day After Night is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for "illegal" immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp with profoundly different stories.
All of them survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to begin to hope, Shayndel, Leonie, Tedi, and Zorah find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.
This is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption, a novel that reimagines a moment in history with such stunning eloquence that we are haunted and moved by every devastating detail. Day After Night is a triumphant work of fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 27, 1951
• Where—New York, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Washington University; M.A., State University of New York, Binghamton
• Currently—lives in Newton, Massachusetts
Anita Diamant is an American author of fiction and non-fiction books. She is best known for her novel, The Red Tent, a New York Times best seller. She has also written several guides for Jewish people, including The New Jewish Wedding and Living a Jewish Life.
Early life and education
Diamant spent her early childhood in Newark, New Jersey, and moved to Denver, Colorado, when she was 12 years old. She attended the University of Colorado Boulder and transferred to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she earned a bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature in 1973. She then went on to receive a master's degree in English from State University of New York at Binghamton in 1975.
Career
Diamant began her writing career in 1975 as a freelance journalist. Her articles have been published in the Boston Globe magazine, Parenting, New England Monthly, Yankee, Self, Parents, McCalls, and Ms.
She branched out into books with the release of The New Jewish Wedding, published in 1985, and has since published seven other books about contemporary Jewish practice.
Her debut as a fiction writer came in 1997 with The Red Tent, followed by the novels, Good Harbor and The Last Days of Dogtown, an account of life in a dying Cape Ann, Massachusetts village, Dogtown, in the early 19th century. Day After Night, is a novel about four women who survived the Holocaust, and find themselves detained in a British displaced persons camp. The Boston Girl, published in 2014, is the story of a young Jewish woman growing up in early 20th century Boston.
Diamant is the founding president of Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center, a community-based ritual bath in Newton, Massachusetts.
She lives in Newton, is married, and has one daughter. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 12/9/2014.)
Book Reviews
Anita Diamant's new novel offers all the satisfactions found in her previous works The Red Tent and The Last Days of Dogtown: rich portraits of female friendship, unflinching acknowledgment of life's cruelty and resolute assertion of hope, enfolded in a strong story line developed in lucid prose. She ups the ante here, chronicling three months in the lives of Jewish refugees interned in Atlit, a British detention center for illegal immigrants to the Palestinian Mandate. Based on an actual event—the rescue of more than 200 detainees from Atlit in October 1945—Day After Night demonstrates the power of fiction to illuminate the souls of people battered by the forces of history.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post
Diamant's bestseller, The Red Tent, explored the lives of biblical women ignored by the male-centric narrative. In her compulsively readable latest, she sketches the intertwined fates of several young women refugees at Atlit, a British-run internment camp set up in Palestine after WWII. There's Tedi, a Dutch girl who hid in a barn for years before being turned in and narrowly escaping Bergen-Belsen; Leonie, a beautiful French girl whose wartime years in Paris are cloaked with shame; Shayndel, a heroine of the Polish partisan movement whose cheerful facade hides a tortured soul; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor who is filled with an understandable nihilism. The dynamic of suffering and renewed hope through friendship is the book's primary draw, but an eventual escape attempt adds a dash of suspense to the astutely imagined story of life at the camp: the wary relationship between the Palestinian Jews and the survivors, the intense flirtation between the young people that marks a return to life. Diamant opens a window into a time of sadness, confusion and optimism that has resonance for so much that's both triumphant and troubling in modern Jewish history.
Publishers Weekly
Diamant tenderly portrays four women in transition, from the killing fields of Europe to the promised land of Eretz Yisrael. In August 1945, however, they're stuck in Atlit, a British detention center for illegal immigrants to the Palestinian mandate. "Not one of the women in Barrack C is 21, but all of them are orphans," the author tells us on the first page. Zorah lost her entire family in the first concentration-camp selection. Tedi spent two years hiding in the Dutch countryside, then escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz. Shayndel, a prewar Zionist, fought with the partisans. Leonie was saved from a roundup of Parisian Jews and forced into prostitution. These memories are their constant companions, but people at Atlit avoid talking about the past: "It was all about Palestine." The underground Jewish fighting force plans to break out the detainees and lead them to the kibbutzim. Meanwhile, the camp is riddled with intrigue. The Jewish cook is sleeping with the British commander to gain information, but she also happens to love him. Leonie spots an SS tattoo under the armpit of a crazed new arrival. Shayndel spars with a swaggering Jewish soldier and wonders if all the men in Palestine are this arrogant. Zorah becomes the fierce protector of a Polish gentile who rescued her Jewish employer's son and is raising him as her own. The novel climaxes with the breakout (an actual event), but the real story here is about healing, about being able to love again and to believe in the future. Diamant quietly leads us into her characters' anguish, guilt and despair, then gently shows them coming to renewed life almost in spite of themselves. A moving epilogue traces the four protagonists' paths after leaving Atlit, reminding us that their wartime ordeals and internment were "just the beginning."A warm, intensely human reckoning with unbearable sorrow and unquenchable hope.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Shayndel “was overcome by the weight of what she had lost: mother, father, brother, friends, neighbors, comrades, lovers, landscapes.” Reflecting on her past Leonie remembers a vision in which “her own voice, [said] yes to life, as miserable as it was.” Although loss and suffering are primary forces for each character, they still have remarkable resilience. How might the thoughts of what one has lost actually keep one going? What else does the book tell us about the resilience of the human spirit?
2. What is the significance of the book’s title? How can it be interpreted in various ways?
3. How do food and celebration play an important part in the novel? How is this ironic?
4. How do both Tirzah and Bryce’s similarities and their differences influence and enhance their love for each other? How do they both show how seemingly small gestures can have a great impact?
5. As Zorah’s feelings for Esther and Jacob change, she reflects that “the world was an instrument of destruction” but that “the opposite of destruction is creation.” How does this idea reflect the novel as a whole? Diamant also writes that “‘luck’ was just another word for ‘creation,’ which was a relentless as destruction.” What does this mean?
6. All of the characters have strengths that helped them to survive the war. How do their strengths and weaknesses influence each other? How might one person’s weakness help to develop another person’s strength?
7. “Everyone in Atlit had secrets… Most people managed to keep their secrets under control, concealed behind a mask of optimism or piety or anger. But there were an unfortunate few without a strategy or system for managing the past…” How do secrets play a role in all of the women’s experiences at the camp? How have each of them been shaped by secrets?
8. Discuss the theme of identity. How does it play an important role in the characters’ lives? Consider Esther and Jacob’s story, Shayndel’s memories of her skills as a fighter in contrast to the way others at the camp view her, Leonie’s past, etc.?
9. What does Tedi’s keen sense of smell symbolize? How does her sense of smell provide insights into the other characters?
10. How do the characters find surprising common ground despite seemingly impossible circumstances? Consider the relationships between Shayndel and Nathan, Leonie and Lotte, and Zorah and Esther, among others.
11. “Leonie’s skin was unblemished. She had not hidden in a Polish sewer or shivered in a Russian barn. She had not seen her parents shot. Atlit was her first experience of barracks and barbwire. She had survived the war without suffering hunger or thirst. There had been wine and hashish and a pink satin coverlet to muffle her terrors.” Discuss this passage. What does it say about the nature of fear and horror? How would you compare Leonie’s experiences during the war with those of her friends? How can internal and external horror be equally destructive?
12. How did you feel about Lotte’s story? Did the way it ended surprise you?
13. On their last night together each of the women has a vivid dream. How would you interpret these?
14. What did you think about the epilogue? Was it satisfying?
15. How would you compare Day After Night with other World War II-era novels that you’ve read?
16. What are some of your favorite passages from the book? What were some of the most difficult parts to read?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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