Upon The Head Of The Goat: A Childhood In Hungary 1939-1944 (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
I hate to label this as young adult nonfiction because so many people have a prejudice against any book labeled for children or young adults and so miss out on some wonderful and fine literature.This autobiography begins in 1939 when a little Jewish Hungarian girl Aranka Davidovitch, known to all as Piri, is 9 years old and visiting her grandmother Babi on her small farm across the border near the town of Komjaty in the Ukraine. Trouble erupts between Hungary and the Ukraine and the border is sealed. It is a year before Piri is taken home by her parents back to Beregszasz, Hungary after her mother has yet another baby. At this time, Adolph Hitler is on the move and Hungary is taken over by the Nazis. Babi refuses to go to Hungary and leave her little house and land. She comments that her daughter- Piri's mother- is foolish to be having yet another baby (she has daughters who are grown and married with their own kids or else in college or working)during a war. Some of the family has fled to the USA and Babi urged the family to send Piri and her sisters there too and even tried to fund it but Piri's mother resists until it is too late.Being back in Hungary is hard. Piri's dad has been dragged into the Hungarian military and ill treated because he is from the Ukraine originally and he is a Jew. He is sent off to the Russian front where he becomes a prisoner. The family owned a business and a Christian man was left to run it (It got to where Jews couldn't run businesses and serve Christians) who became a real SOB and refused to give Piri's mother much of the money. She had a hard time providing for the family and many of the hardships left me in tears. How can you feed your children when you have curfews, can't go to the store or even go out until an hour when everything is purchased, or go in stores owned by Christians even if you do have ration coupons? Piri's mother tried hard to keep her family together and encouraged and she was very clever. I never would have thought up some of the amazing things this determined mom did. I had to cheer her with everything she tried and she did manage, even if barely.I wondered if I could stand reading this knowing as I went in that the only survivors of the war would be Piri and one sister Iboya. I knew going in that Babi, Piri's mom and dad and sisters and brothers (including that war baby girl Joli) would die. I knew that Piri and her family would be sent along with the Jews in their area to Auschwitz in a cattle car. They were told it was a work camp. How did little Joli die? At that camp, Nazis often tossed little toddlers and babies into the air and either bayoneted them as they fell or shot them just for fun but many also were suffocated to death in panic and agony in the gas ovens. I have nightmares about it sometimes though I am not Jewish and was born long after the war in the USA. I ache for those who were there to suffer. Children like Joli haunt me. How could we let it happen? Why did we wait until we were attacked? At any rate, this also uplifted and inspired me. Courageous Babi, resourceful Mom, and those sweet sisters who did all they had to do and faced all they had to face without complaint and who even helped hide Jews who piled in from other areas- this is my definition of hero. I recommend this to everyone of all ages. The book actually ends when they are shoved on to the cattle car and we do not have to see their suffering and death at Auschwitz. The book is an inspiring story of the lives of this family, their courage, their love for one another, and how they made lemonade when life gave them lemons.
I was so moved by this account of the Holocaust that I found it difficult to sleep the night I finished it. Why had I not heard of this book until now when I’m reading it as part of my Newbery Honor and Award books project? The Diary of Anne Frank gets attention on high school reading lists, and rightly so. But this book should be taught as well. “Looking at them, drawn together by the same ancient tradition, I began to understand the meaning of the expression I had often heard grownups use, “You can graft the branch of a cherry tree onto a peach tree, but it will still bear cherries.”…they could giggle or grow sad together without uttering a word.”Rise, on failing to save her granddaughter: “…if we were given a preview of life’s moments of crisis, a chance to think instead of having to act in haste, we would not have to go through life blaming ourselves for not having acted properly. That is the big difference between life and the theater. Rehearsals.”One of the ghetto occupants, explaining the book’s title and what it is to be a scapegoat: “Very bad to be a Jew during depressions. We make such perfect scapegoats…because we are a minority, well conditioned to persecution. Sometimes I think that this is our purpose.” …”That sounds very unfair,” Judy commented. “Especially since we are supposed to be the chosen people.” To be chosen is a big responsibility,” said Mr. Schuster. “Sometimes God uses us in very strange ways.”… “In the Bible, when Aaron’s sons died, God told Moses to go to Aaron and tell him to lay the sins of the Jews on the head of a sacrificial goat and to send the goat out into the wilderness to carry off all the sins of Israel.”…”But these are not our sins,” I said, “they are the Germans’. Why should we have to carry them?” “The Germans are twisting God’s words and sending us to carry their sins into the wilderness.”
What do You think about Upon The Head Of The Goat: A Childhood In Hungary 1939-1944 (2003)?
A heartbreaking autobiographical Holocaust narrative about the childhood of the author, Aranka Siegal, and her family in Hungary as they slowly became consumed by World War II and the anti-Semitism of nearby Germany and its military. As someone who is a quarter Hungarian, I was fascinated and found heroine Piri's story compelling yet at times hard to follow. A list of characters and a map would have been helpful - I am so ignorant of geography I did not understand that Piri's grandmother Babi's farm in Komjaty was in the Ukraine.
—CLM
Another fine Holocaust remembering by Aranka Siegal, who, with two sister,were sole family survivors of Hungarian ghettoization and eventual deportation to Auschwitz. A cdlleague recommended this 1981 Newberry Award winner.Siegal is "Piri" (her Yiddish name) and her sister is "Iboya." The book is a memoir reminiscent in some ways of "The Diary of Anne Frank" in terms of its narrative viewpoint. Piri is thirteen when the hard persecution came to Hungary. There is much she doesn't understand and much she learns hard and fast.Readers learn about her extended family, including her beloved grandmother Babi, their lives and work and travails and joy.As the cattle cars arrive to take them to Auschwitz, Piri finally understands the story of Moses telling Aaron (after the death of Aaron's sons) to lay the sins of the Jews on the head of a goat and send it into the wilderness. Piri realizes that the sins are those of perpetrators, not Jews or any other victims despite the former being "scapegoats."
—Susan Emmet
This was more like 4.5 stars for me. It took me a ways into the book before I realized (I'm not sure why I didn't before) that this was written by the actual surviver Piri. I have read stories similiar to this one in ways (Anne Frank, The Hiding Place), but this one touched more on the actual family circumstances before getting to a ghetto or concentration camp. The story is of a young girl, Aranka (piri) and living in Hungary during WW 11 as a Jew. I did enjoy Piri, but truly more amazing was h
—Alisa
