This book was not what I was expecting. I received this book about a year ago, and I still cannot bring myself to finish it. I thought it was going to be written more like a memoir of the author's time during the Holocaust (I guess subconsciously comparing it to Night), but it seems more like a private journal that the author kept for personal therapeutic purposes. I am finally writing this review because this book is holding up other reviews that I have to write. I still have not finished the book, and I'm not sure if it gets any better as it proceeds. I would not recommend this book. ( )

The book is a mix of memories from Rita Kasimow Brown's childhood in Poland, spent hiding in a hole ('the Grub') underground with her family, and diary entries and conversations during the Intifada in Israel. The book is strongest in its retelling of the author's childhood. Brown's simple, direct prose describes the horrible experience of living in a pit underground, not large enough to stand up in, where feces-covered bullfrogs leap out of the area sectioned off as the toilet. Although the mixture of past and present was helpful, putting Brown's awful childhood in relief against those of her grandchildren, I found the conversations with 'Jay' to be distracting and unnecessary. Overall, the book was powerful in its story of the author's childhood, but it would have been stronger had these sections been expanded, with background about the author and her family members. I would also remove the sections with Jay, which did not seem to fit the narrative of the story.

Note: I received this book through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program. ( )

Where I got the book: acquired through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

Portrait of a Holocaust Child is a very personal memoir of a survivor. When she was a young child in 1942, Rita Kasimow Brown's family escaped from their Polish ghetto and spent nineteen months hiding in a tunnel dug beneath a farmhouse, unable to stand, living on scraps and crawling with lice.

Then they escaped. And Brown eventually moved to Israel. Where, in 2001, she processes the emotions still left over from her childhood experiences through writing about them and dialoguing with an imaginary character named Jay.

And that, really, is that. This is a very fragmentary memoir, made up as it is of the relived past, snippets of the present, and the dialogue with Jay, who talks a bit like a therapist. Which is not surprising because Brown is a therapist.

I'm left with the impression of a psyche caught in the past, unable to get free of the memories and move on to any kind of resolution. Brown's artwork, on color plates in the middle of the book, reinforces that impression: while the abstracts have an adult feel to them, the people in her paintings are childishly represented.

I found Portrait slightly annoying and somewhat disturbing. If you are studying severe, lifelong post-traumatic stress disorder, it might be interesting. If you're a Holocaust junkie, you might like it. Otherwise, I'd pass.

Rita Kasimow Brown tells her Holocaust survivor story through "present" day (2001) journal entries that not only flashback to World War II but also reflect on the September 11th attacks and the terrorist attacks in Israel that followed. Brown also includes family photographs and her own therapeutic artwork. The description of the underground pit her father dug for a family of five to protect them from being killed by Nazis and the fact that a family of five actually lived liked this for almost two years is difficult to even comprehend. The strongest image that Brown paints is when her family decides to finally escape the "grave" they were living in and successfully attempt to flee towards the Russian border. Both of Brown's siblings were not able to walk due to their body not being fully extended in a vertical position for so long. Brown herself has to crawl for the beginning of the journey until her body remembered how to walk. Understandably Brown is still struggling with her past. I did find the editing of the journal entries and/or the organization of the journal entries to be somewhat redundant in its content when Brown reflected on the "now". It's an educational story, but I felt some thoughts and emotions were over explained or explained so often in the same way or with the same word choice that it took away from the significance of her survival story. ( )

I scored an Early Reviewer's copy of Portrait of a Holocaust Child in September 2010 and received it in late October.

Rita Kasimow Brown's book is a memoir of sorts, interweaving her memories of her childhood as a Jew in Poland during the Holocaust with interludes from her adult life in the US and Israel. The book has a stream-of-consciousness flow; Brown tells her story in a disjointed way that seems to reflect the internal chaos caused by her traumatic experiences. While she and her immediate family escaped the gas chambers, they spent much of the war hiding in a grave-like cavern under a farmer's barn, cold, hungry, unwashed and frightened by their perilous situation. When they emerged, nearly everyone Brown knew as a child had been murdered: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, teachers, schoolmates and friends. Aside from her parents and siblings, only one uncle remained alive.

Brown contrasts the terror, deprivation and trauma of her own childhood with the freedom, abundance and warmth her grandchildren experience growing up in modern-day Israel. In spite of the terrorist attacks, their lives are full and relatively carefree. She doesn't seem to begrudge them their happiness, but her sadness over her own lost childhood is evident in the way she describes her grandchildren's lives.

Brown ascribes her emotional and psychological survival to her creativity and imagination; she is an artist and playwright as well as a clinical psychologist. Some of the most compelling passages describe her life-long battle with depression, a crushing lethargy that saps her energy, stifles her creativity and causes her to retreat from other people. The book is born out of this suffering; she relives some of her nightmarish experiences in order to relay her story to the world and leave a memorial for future generations.

Portrait of a Holocaust Child is well worth reading; so few survivors remain, and fewer still would be able to tell their stories as Brown does. The included full-color reproductions of some of her artwork are vivid and disturbing. I do think her editor could have worked with her to make the transitions between time periods more clear and to tighten the writing a bit; also, as an earlier reviewer points out, the text has quite a few typos. ( )