Motherland: Growing Up with the Holocaust

By Rita Goldberg

Like Anne Frank, Hilde Jacobsthal was born in Germany and brought up in Amsterdam, where the two families became close. Unlike Anne Frank, she survived the war, and Otto Frank was to become godfather to Rita, her first daughter. "I am the child of a woman who survived the Holocaust not by the skin of her teeth but heroically. This book tells the story of my mother's dramatic life before, during and after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. "I wrote Motherland because I wanted to understand a story which had become a kind of family myth. My mother's life could be seen as a narrative of the twentieth century; along with my father she was present and active at many of its significant moments." Rita Goldberg Hilde Jacobsthal was fifteen when the Nazis invaded Holland. After the arrest of her parents in 1943 she fled to Belgium, where she went into hiding and worked with the Resistance at night. She was liberated by the American army in 1944. In April 1945 she volunteered with a British Red Cross Unit to go to the relief of Bergen-Belsen, which had itself been liberated one week before her arrival. The horror and devastation were overwhelming, but despite her shock and grief she stayed at the camp for two years, helping with the enormous task of recovery. Sorrow and exuberance went hand in hand as the young people at Belsen found renewed life and each other. Hilde got to know Hanns Alexander (subject of the recently published Hanns and Rudolf), who was on the British War Crimes Commission, and, eventually, a Swiss doctor called Max Goldberg. Motherland is the culmination of a lifetime of reflection and a decade of research. Rita Goldberg enlarges the story she heard from her mother with historical background. She has talked with her about the minutest details of her life and pored over her papers, exploring not only her mother's life but her own. Complicated feelings are explored lightly as Rita takes the story beyond Bergen-Belsen, where paradoxically her parents met and fell in love; beyond Israel's War of Independence where they both volunteered, and on to the next chapter of their lives in the US. A deeply moving story, Motherland will become an essential text about World War II, the Holocaust and the survival of the spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Halban
• Release date: Jan 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781905559695

Reviews for Motherland

[karen59_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rita Goldberg's memorizing memoir, Motherland: Growing Up With the Holocaust is about courage in the face of horrific circumstances and heroism during one of the most cruel and barbaric times in history. It is about how the author's mother survived the Holocaust fighting with the Underground and working with the war effort and creating a life worth living afterward. But, this book is two-fold for it is also the story about how hard it is watch your mother suffer and bear losses too impossible to withstand when you are a child especially when your life is so safe and protected. How do you develop your own identity and feel worthy? How do you feel proud of yourself when you will never have to test your own mettle in the same profound way? I grew up in Brooklyn during the 50's and 60's and there were many Holocaust survivors in my neighborhood. All had excruciating stories and all had to live with its repercussions as did their children and it was hard. The largest part of Rita Goldberg's book is about her mother's childhood and time in the Underground and I was completely engrossed by the story yet my heart was really with Rita Goldberg's own journey to connect with her mother when this felt fraught and to find herself amidst the struggle for her own identity. Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this for an honest opinion.

[mhstevens · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As the child of a Holocaust survivor, I have been waiting for a book like this.But while my own story differs in so many ways from that of the typical 2nd Generation ("2G") member, I wanted to know more about the effects of being raised by a parent who had undergone such horrible trauma. Especially since my father (who committed identity theft as a refugee in England, enlisted in the RAF and flew 22 bombing missions against his own country before being shot down and spending almost 4 years as a POW, without any protection whatsoever under the Geneva Convention) never told his own family that he was born Jewish and that his own family had been decimated by the Holocaust.That the author's mother lived such a fascinating and courageous life is what gives this work meaning. That the subject's parents and other close family members were murdered, while she and her brother chose to fight the Nazis with the Underground is laudable and worthy of all the attention this story gets. The close calls and near-misses, culminating in the post-war humanitarian work with other survivors and, later, fighting for freedom in Israel, give this book both meaning and excitement.But what really makes this story of interest is the writing. Ms. Goldberg brings the story to life with such vibrancy and colour that the story flows and unfolds effortlessly. Reading this book becomes more of a pleasure with every page that is turned.My only regret is that she does not give more detail on how her mother's wartime exploits, and her parents' later efforts in Israel, have affected her own character. What does it mean to grow up in a household that lives every day with such sadness? Ms. Goldberg describes her mother as happy and funny, and yet one senses that there must be more to the story.Perhaps in another book? Please…