Dr. Josef’s Little Beauty (2024)
A Holocaust story as fascinating and compelling as it is terrifying and puzzling ― a book about aging and war crimes, pain and pride.
In the middle of summer, omnipresent heat radiates as a group of elderly people are remembering their youth. The story focuses on two sisters, Leokadia and Czechna, who live together in a retirement home not far from Warsaw. These are not ordinary stories they are sharing, because both of them spent time as children in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. At the center is Czechna, who at the age of 12 was saved from extermination by the notorious doctor Josef Mengele, the real-life Nazi officer and physician who was known as the “angel of death” for the experiments he conducted on prisoners, including twins and siblings.
This is a story both provocative and disturbing about the fear that lingers in victims. Was the sisters’ relationship with the executioner a desperate attempt to save their lives, or perhaps they harbor a hideous pride and sense of superiority over other prisoners? Rudzka’s extraordinary writing turns unsettling questions about memory and survival into art.
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Zielony Balonik book club notes:
Below are four reflections on the book – and a poem
I read the first two pages and then put this book away. I did not want to read more of Holocaust memories and consequences in this fashion. However, subsequently I did re-open the book. Any book translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones I would expect to be of a high literary standard.
I respect the author for taking on the challenge of writing about old age and life traumas in the setting of a retirement home. The ‘stage’ is set in the summer during which the relationships between the residents and the carers unfold as they can spend more time in the garden by the edge of woodland rather than being stuck indoors in their rooms or in the common room.
Each resident is well drawn and have had formative and creditable life experiences and significantly they have now reached older age. In the case of ‘twins’ Helena and Leokadia it was a miracle to have come out of Auschwitz and made a long life for themselves. The sharing of life experiences whilst coping with the infirmity of older age is part of the lived experience. Helena is the title of the book whose whole being was changed by Dr. Josef Mengele. Her life became a psychological struggle between captivity and freedom. She finally chose her own farewell.
We have all had some experience in our lives of different care options for the ageing amongst us and initiatives designed to preserve those memories which validate a person’s life and identity. The life stories which emerge in a fragmented way during the summer months in the garden are embellished with the poignancy of childhood memories and the joys of nature as the summer season unfolds. Or their memories emerge as sympathetic carers tend to their physical needs and sometimes vice versa when a member of staff has the ear of the resident and can pour out their own troubles.
But for me the references and descriptions of the physical frailties of the residents are excessive and gratuitous overshadowing the finer literary qualities of the book and the more interesting aspects of the relationships between the residents and with the staff. I would find myself skimming many pages when I felt subject to interminable and repetitive commentary on their physical frailties. I felt sorry for the male residents who were interminably chastised and mocked.
The arrival of the undertaker bearing the company name ‘Kiss of Eden’ added to the sense of mockery of the residents as they died, some of whom had been despatched to the ‘Waxworks Museum’ where they decayed like apples falling from a tree and rotting on the grass. Black humour can be a tonic and therapeutic in handling raw reality but only in small doses. Paragraphs describing the torment of those at the end of their lives showed no mercy. It was a relief to come across those moments and actions of tenderness respecting the dignity of the human being in the shadow of death.
Old age for those displaced from their homelands and separated form their families as a result of the Second World War has been addressed in Edinburgh and Scotland by the Scottish and Polish communities in different ways, especially when full or part time care is needed in support of the physically and mentally frail in a country where their first language is not understood and it is more difficult to share life stories and to find solace in the company of others. Many endured brutality and loss and life long separations but thankfully were able to celebrate their lives.
From an early age I have known the Polish phrase ‘Starość nie Radość’, but I prefer the wisdom and delicacy of Czesław Miłosz in his reflection on old age in his poem ‘New Province’.
Krystyna Szumelukowa
I read this book by Zyta Rudzka with a sense of trepidation and foreboding. This is due to the fact that my parents were Holocaust survivors who lost their parents in Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps. Being familiar with the figure of Josef Mengele and his ‘work’s is the stuff of nightmares.
In my opinion, Mengele’s presence pervades the whole story and book. Zyta Rudzka puts us in touch not only with the horrors of the holocaust through the main characters of Helena and Leodakia, the sisters considered twins, who were the playthings of Dr. Mengele. At this stage of their lives, in a care facility near Warsaw, they only have each other with their private and not so private memories after having many years of fulfilled lives POST-WW II despite the trauma of their childhood years. In the company of other traumatised elderly residents, they muse on their lives facing their imminent ends as their bodies and minds deteriorate helplessly while the care staff witness their sad decline.
Zyta Rudzka, a professional psychologist / doctor has a message for her audience – how the worst of life must be examined with a clear eye and if possible made peace with. An important message however difficult or sometimes impossible to come to terms with.
Miriam Vickers
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This poem by Jenny Robertson was begun in Warsaw, and later reworked. Jenny writes, “I hope this gentle picture presents a kinder view of the very old than Zita Rudzka’s book.”
Warsaw courtyard, lost for words
Women sit contentedly in the kindly sun.
This is their final home.
The many-windowed building of honeyed stone
bounds a secluded yard, cut off from town.
– that busy world is no longer even a distant hum.
The place is graced by a name: Caritas.
The women are the recipients, saggy bundles
in motley hand-me downs.
The charity is in the peace
of gnarled hands at rest on faded dress.
There is anchorage and quiet haven here, space
for small things: sulks and pettiness,
smiles and well-worn reminiscence.
One woman sits apart.
Her sleek brown head does not belong,
it seems, to the general throng.
She clutches warm, black beads.
The moorings of her memory have gone
and the rhythms of the rosary, like a childhood song
comfort her as thoughts drift placidly along.
Sometimes visitors encroach upon her enclosed space
And then she is most anxious to please.
‘Anglais? Francaise?’ And now she sees
a book-lined salon, glasses of golden tea,
and a young girl brought in
to charm her mother’s guests
with songs she learns from her French governess.
The melodies still sing, though words are lost.
Jenny Robertson