Questions I Am Asked About the Holocaust
Translated by Alice E. Olsson
Overview
‘There are no stupid questions, nor any forbidden ones, but there are some questions that have no answer.’
Hédi Fried was nineteen when the Nazis snatched her family from their home in Eastern Europe and transported them to Auschwitz, where her parents were murdered and she and her sister were forced into hard labour until the end of the war.
Now ninety-eight, she has spent her life educating young people about the Holocaust and answering their questions about one of the darkest periods in human history. Questions like, ‘How was it to live in the camps?’, ‘Did you dream at night?’, ‘Why did Hitler hate the Jews?’, and ‘Can you forgive?’.
With sensitivity and complete candour, Fried answers these questions and more in this deeply human book that urges us never to forget and never to repeat.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Hardback
- 198mm x 129mm
- 160 pages
- 9781911617778
- GBP£12.99
- 27 January 2019
Categories
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2017 August Prize, Best Swedish Non-Fiction Book of the Year
- 2020 USBBY Outstanding International Books List
- Shortlisted for the 2020 UKLA Book Awards
Praise
‘It is the telling detail that gives her testimony its particular power … This little book, with its reminder “there are no stupid questions, nor any forbidden ones, but there are some … that have no answer”, is a moving record of one woman’s experience.’
‘This slim but powerful volume comprises answers to the questions she is most frequently asked … Fried answers with candour and thoughtfulness in a book that should be required reading for all young people.’
About the Author
Hédi Fried (1924–2022) was an author and psychologist. She was deeply committed to working for democratic values and against racism. She was born in the town of Sighet, in Romania, was transported to Auschwitz in 1944, and worked in several labour camps, eventually ending up in Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, she moved to Sweden with her sister.
Her bestselling autobiography, Fragments of a Life: the road to Auschwitz, was published in English and Swedish in the 1990s.
Translator
Alice E. Olsson is a literary translator, writer, and editor working across Swedish and English. She has served as the Cultural Affairs Adviser at the Embassy of Sweden in London and is the recipient of a fellowship as well as multiple grants from the Swedish Arts Council. She has been shortlisted for the 2020 Peirene Stevns Translation Prize and the 2023 Bernard Shaw Prize.
