Nancy Wright Beasley

Izzy’s Fire: Finding Humanity in the Holocaust by Nancy Wright Beasley is an extremely intense and compelling memoir.

It is the story of five Lithuanian Jewish families who managed to escape the Kovno Ghetto during the Holocaust. What is most remarkable about Izzy’s Fire, is not the fact that the families escaped the Kovno Ghetto, but the fact that they were hidden by a Catholic family.

Nancy Wright Beasley writes with compassion, yet also with a sharpness, not withholding or color coating the information presented. The ugliness is there for all to read, but so is the inspirational relating of the events. She offers hope when bleakness surrounds the environment. That is the magnificence and beauty of her writing.… (plus d'informations)

Over Thanksgiving, I traveled to Richmond, Va. While there, I visited the Richmond Holocaust Museum. One of the exhibits there is a replica of a potato hole on a farm -- a hole in the ground where 13 Lithuanian Jews hid from the Nazis for months during WWII. Upon exiting the exhibit, I saw an older gentleman chatting with another museum patron. I recognized the gentleman from a portrait in the lobby of the museum. Turns out, he was one of the little boys who survived by hiding in that potato hole with his parents and several others so long ago. It was incredible to actually meet him and hear his story.

Izzy's Fire recounts his story. Jay Ipson (nee Jacob Ipp) was the gentleman I met at the Richmond Holocaust Museum. The book is told from the point of view of his mother. The author, Nancy Wright Beasley, used family memoirs and other resources to write the first-person account of the family's prosperous start, followed by terrible ordeals first in the Kovno Ghetto and then on the run for many, many months. The book goes on to detail the family's struggles and successes following the conclusion of the war.

The book spares no details as to the horrors this family endured during the Holocaust. But the Ipps wouldn't have made it without the help of strangers and friends. With this focus on those who aided them, it's a hopeful tale too.

This is not the type of book I normally set out to read because of the awful time that it depicts. Having met one of the main characters of the story though, I simply had to read it and I'm glad I did. I highly recommend this book (and I recommend a visit to the Richmond Holocaust Museum as well).… (plus d'informations)