Shadows of Survival: A Child's Memoir of the Warsaw Ghetto - Paperback

by Kristine Rosenthal Keese (Author)

After sixty years, Kristine Keese is finally able to share the memories of her years spent in the Warsaw Ghetto as a small child. She owes her survival, and that of her young uncle, to the striking resourcefulness of her mother. The story emerges as vividly as if it happened yesterday, full of details that only a child would notice. Although the the events of the Warsaw Ghetto and the fate of its victims has been described many times, Keese's story is exceptional, as it is told through the eyes of, not a victim, but a child engaged with her daily reality focused on survival.

Author Biography

Kristine Keese, born to a middle class Jewish family in Poland, was incarcerated as an eight year old child in the Warsaw Ghetto. After the war the family emigrated to New York. Kristine earned a BA in philosophy from Cornell University and an EdD from Harvard School of Education. She worked as a social science researcher and an educator, most recently in the Sociology Department of Brandeis University. She resigned from academia to live and work on her husband's fishing boat. They fished commercially along the coast of Florida, spent a year in Haiti and later fished in Alaska where she also worked as an educational evaluator for Native American education. She and her husband later owned and operated an organic cranberry bog in Massachusetts. Kristine Keese passed away at the age of 82 in October 2016.