Malka Owsiany Recounts... - by Mark Turkow

Book Synopsis

First published in Yiddish in 1946 and translated into Spanish in 2001, this is the first time that Malka Owsiany's story is available in English. Malka describes the horrors of the Holocaust but also the richness of Polish Jewish life and communities. We also learn about Malka rebuilding her life and marrying a fellow survivor, Meir. Meir and Malka built a family as well as an enduring legacy of strength and dedication to the Jewish community and Yiddish culture.

Review Quotes

"At just fourteen years old, Malka Owsiany was cast into a world of hunger, humiliation, forced labor, and crushing solitude. Her adolescence unfolded in forests, nazi factories, and concentration camps.

Among the very first Holocaust testimonies to appear after the war, her voice was urgent and indispensable. First published in Yiddish in 1946, this memoir was part of Mark Turkov's landmark series of 175 narratives--enduring traces of the Jewish life and culture the Nazis sought to obliterate.

Malka remembers and bears witness. Fragmentary yet fiercely alive, her story still speaks to us today, demanding that we confront the unimaginable and refuse to forget."

--Abraham Lichtenbaum, Director Emeritus, IWO Argentina.

"Malka Owsiany Recounts, in Sandra Chiritescu's fine translation, is a most welcome addition to the body of Holocaust narratives available in English. Soon after arriving in Argentina in late 1945, the twenty-year-old Malka's conversations with the Yiddish writer and Jewish community leader Mark Turkow led to the publication of one of the very first books devoted to an individual survivor's struggles during the Holocaust. When Malka Owsiany Recounts first came out in Yiddish, just eleven months had passed since her liberation from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This was the inaugural volume of the landmark series Dos Poylishe Yidntum, commemorating the glorious legacy of Polish Jewry. In this edition, Malka Owsiany's account is fleshed out and carried forward through Malena Chinski's preface, epilogues by Malka's daughter Rosa Nirenberg and her grandson Tomás Hachard, and in family photographs taken before and after the Holocaust."

--Zachary M. Baker, Palo Alto, California (Stanford University Libraries, Emeritus)

"Sandra Chiritescu's translation of Malka Owsiany Recounts has finally made this moving testimony available to an English readership. As one of the first works of Holocaust literature to be published as such, Mark Turkow's documentation of Malka Owsiany's story has significant literary and historical merits. It is a document that reveals much about how a Jewish diaspora encountered the young Malka not only as a Holocaust survivor but also as a surrogate for those sisters, daughters, and cousins they could not save. Expanded with ample photographs, family letters, and the 'story behind the story' of this translation, the new edition offers important new avenues for research and teaching. I look forward to assigning this text in my courses."

--Rachelle Grossman, Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

Sandra Chiritescu is a PhD candidate in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University. She is writing her dissertation on Yiddish and second-wave feminism. She is a Yiddish teacher at the Worker's Circle and has translated Yiddish children's stories for the volume In the Land of Happy Tears (Penguin Random House, 2018)

Marc Turkow (1904-1983) was a journalist and writer born in Warsaw, Poland, who settled in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1930. He wrote in both Yiddish and Spanish. Turkow made an impact leading HIAS--an organization that implements Jewish values to support refugees. Turkow also served as a representative of the World Jewish Congress for Latin America. He published dozens of booklets on distinguished Jewish intellectuals and spiritual leaders. The Documentation and Information Center on Argentinean Jewry was named after him.

Sources: Encyclopedia Judaica, HIAS