“In the Boxcar”. - An excerpt from Chava Rosenfarb’s novel Letters to Abrasha translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler.

Chava Rosenfarb on The Reading Life


A Consise Biography-From The Jewish Women’s Encyclopedia

From Tablet Magazine. The Text of “In the Boxcar”

This excerpt from Chava Rosenfarb’s novel Letters to Abrasha is translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler.

As of now, as far as I can find, the full work from which “In the Boxcar” was taken has not yet been translated into English. It reads perfectly as an independent work, a Short Story..  As I read this account of transportation to Auschwitz I could not help but imagine my beloved Irene 

 Nemirovsky being shipped from Paris to be murdered.

In my prior posts on Chava Rosenfarb, whose image I have now placed in my sidebar, you will find other links to websites on her.  Tablet Magazine, must Reading for anyone into Jewish culture including new translations of Yiddish Literature, has several articles by Rosenfarb as well as three of her most famous poems.

“In the Boxcar” captures the terror, horror and filth involved in the transportation of people to concentration camps in railroad boxes cars.  Most did not understand where they were being sent. We see what it might have felt like to arrive at the landing dock where men and women were separated.  

Prisoners were divided into those to be kept for slave labor and those to go at once to be killed. The prisoners had been allowed to bring two suitcases, they were told to leave them behind, that they would get them back later.  Children under ten, including babies were sent to be killed.

A very valuable memoir by Goldie Morgentaler, daughter and translator, from The Globe and Mail.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/my-famous-father-swam-in-praise-my-mother-toiled-in-silence/article18193720/

Mel u