August 1, 2023
While imprisoned in Auschwitz, Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia fell in love, a passion they were able to sustain throughout their horrific stay there. But they lost track of each other upon the camp's liberation. They finally met again nearly 70 years later, with Zippi revealing a secret that had assured David's survival at the camp. From former Forbes staff writer Blankfeld. Prepub Alert.
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October 15, 2023
A true tale of love amid unimaginable suffering. Former Forbes writer Blankfeld pieces together the stories of Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia. The author never met Zippi, but she interviewed David before his death in 2021. However, the author notes that Zippi never spoke of a romance with David before she died in 2018. Hence, there is an odd disconnect, as often happens among Holocaust survivors, regarding how memories are preserved, concealed, and presented. Zippi was born in 1918 in Pressburg, Slovakia (now Bratislava). In 1927, her mother died from tuberculosis, and Zippi and her brother, Sam, were sent to live with other family members. Trained as a graphic artist, one of the few women in the field, Zippi was just getting started as a professional when the Nazis came to power and race laws restricting employment were passed. Meanwhile, David, from the small Polish town of Sochaczew, studied music and opera singing in Warsaw. With Poland conquered and Czechoslovakia broken apart, the Jewish population was deported, and Zippi and David were transported to Auschwitz. Thanks to Zippi's friendship with a Nazi sympathizer who got her a job as an administrator, she was able to receive ample rations and help other women survive. David, barely 18, got preferential treatment because of his singing abilities and worked in "Canada," the warehouse that housed the pilfered clothes and possessions of the transported Jews. As Blankfeld recounts in dramatic prose, their trysts in the clothing warehouse were risky and thrilling. David promised to meet Zippi in Warsaw, though he never appeared; he had become embedded with the U.S. Army, while Zippi became a displaced person. They met again only on her deathbed. Though the author's italicized speculations about Zippi's thoughts and actions may deter some readers, the story is worthwhile. A moving and tragic account with many unresolved elements.
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November 6, 2023
Journalist Blankfeld debuts with a page-turning account of the unlikely love story between David Wisnia, a Polish Jew from the Warsaw ghetto, and Zippi Spitzer, a Jew from Slovakia, that blossomed amidst the horror of Auschwitz. The two met during a work detail in the prisoner intake area; the only woman stationed there, Spitzer—a smooth operator who had “immediately been strategic in creating connections prisoners and guards”—had talked her way into a position painting the stripes on women’s prison uniforms. She eventually became the right-hand woman to the commandants of the women’s camp, Birkenau, and, according to Blankfeld, “used her growing influence to shield unhealthy prisoners by giving them positions inside her office.” A graphic designer by trade prior to her internment, she made secret copies of rosters and camp diagrams, “hiding the copies in her office in hopes that one day they’d come in handy” for prosecuting Nazi crimes. Separated after the war, Spitzer and Wisnia both made their way to the U.S., where they began new lives. Unbeknownst to Wisnia until they met again, more than 70 years after the war, Spitzer had taken several actions to keep him alive in the camps, including removing his name from crematorium rosters. Fast-paced and novelistic, this is a moving demonstration of the ability to find love in the darkest places.