ZOSIA GOLDBERG
as told to
HILTON OBENZINGER

  RUNNING THROUGH FIRE:
How I Survived the Holocaust

with an introduction by PAUL AUSTER

       
 

RUNNING THROUGH FIRE
Jewish & Holocaust Studies/Memoir
208 pages
Paper, $15.95
1-56279-128-1
US & Canada

  The NEA Heritage & Preservation Series continues with Zosia Goldberg's heroic and startling tale of surviving the Nazi Genocide

"Du solst starben zwischem goyem!"
A fellow Jew within the Warsaw Ghetto, offended by Zosia Goldberg's Polish of no Yiddish accent, spat at her in Yiddish: "May you die amongst the goyem!" Zosia took this "curse" instead as a message from God. Her dramatic tale begins with her escaping the Warsaw Ghetto through the sewer, whereafter she survived the Holocaust posing as a Gentile.

Zosia did not die amongst the goyem, and yet along her dangerous journey she should have died on numerous occasions. She was a "débrouillarde," someone who could run through fire without getting burned. Hers is a story of resistance at every turn, of continual attempts at sabotage, of perpetually escaping and defeating the enemy. Her account is filled with unique energy and a wonder at the strangeness of human behavior. For not only did she suffer bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, she also encountered the unexpected sympathies of Nazis, and was at many times aided by her very tormentors. This is not just a story of the Holocaust, but of a woman struggling to make sense of human folly and depravity.

"Running Through Fire is a book filled with unspeakable horrors — but it is told without a shred of self-pity. Zosia Goldberg never complains, never bemoans her lot. She battles and endures, and in this raw, unvarnished tale of human suffering, she has given us a manual of hope."
— from the introduction by PAUL AUSTER

"At the urging of her nephew Obenzinger, an American Book Award–winning poet, Goldberg recounts a Holocaust story as suspenseful as any novel.... Along with other accounts of deep personal heroism during the Nazi era (such as Lucie Aubrac's Outwitting the Gestapo), this work shows how a strong, resourceful woman (with a lot of luck) overcame the grisly odds."
— LIBRARY JOURNAL

"... Immediate and relentless ... Goldberg's extraordinary story is made all the more powerful by her matter-of-fact delivery.... From beginning to end, one horror is layered atop another with none of the opportunities for narrative buffers that a written memoir permits.... The unique, unforgettable power that it imparts to her story, and to all stories of survival, is particularly important now that the public is said to tire of hearing yet another Holocaust tale."
— San Francisco Chronicle

For more Mercury House books on the Holocaust, click HERE.

ALSO IN THIS SERIES: * IN FEW WORDS / EN POCAS PALABRAS:
A Compendium of Latino Folk Wit & Wisdom
by JOSÉ ANTONIO BURCIAGA.

* THE WIG
by CHARLES WRIGHT
“One of the most underrated novels written by a black person in this century” (from the introduction by ISHMAEL REED).

       
 

  After surviving WW II, ZOSIA GOLDBERG came to the United States, married, then moved to Caracas, Venezuela, to operate a garment business. She returned to America after her husband's death and currently resides in Florida. She has one son.

       
 

  HILTON OBENZINGER is a poet, novelist, and critic, and a recipient of the American Book Award. He is the author of New York on Fire, a history of the fires of New York in verse; This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem; The Day of the Exquisite Poet Is Kaput; and Bright Lights! Big City! He teaches American literature and honors writing at Stanford University. Come visit his website: www.obenzinger.com.

Mercury House also published Hilton Obenzinger's CANNIBAL ELIOT AND THE LOST HISTORIES OF SAN FRANCISCO.

       
 

  PAUL AUSTER's work has been translated into thirty languages. Following The Book of Illusions, which was a national bestseller, his newest novel, Oracle Night, was published in December 2003. Celebrated for works such as The New York Trilogy and Timbuktu, he is also the author of three screenplays (including Smoke), and the editor of the NPR National Story Project anthology, I Thought My Father Was God. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  The Holocaust image depicted on the cover portrays the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943. Photo Credit: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives.

Cover design by Scott di Girolamo.
Paul Auster photo credit: Arturo Patten.