Diamant receives enthusiastic welcome at SD Jewish Book Fair

By Gerry Greber

LA JOLLA, California– Holocaust histories frequently omit the stories of what happened to survivors  from their time of  their liberation to their final destination – Israel.  This period is mostly recorded in a simple statement that “They went to Israel.”  Anita Diamant fills in some of those blanks in her latest novel Day After Night.

During her travels in Israel she and her family visited Atlit,  several kilometers south of Haifa.  Diamant said she had entered another era of history. 

After WW2 and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the occupying British, still in control of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations British Mandate, turned what were formally barracks for British soldiers into a refugee/detention area for Jewish survivors trying to get to Israel without visas or  papers of any kind. 

The survivors were housed in barracks originally built for the soldiers, and were enclosed behind barbed wire fences.  Diamant noticed the pictures on the wall of Jews peering through what were three layers of barbed wire.  It was very depressing considering that the survivors were in the same kind of environment–minus the gas chambers and crematoria–from which  they had just been liberated.  Therefore, it was still a prison.

Speaking at the San Diego Jewish Book Fair on Tuesday, Nov. 2, Diamant said she  could feel the pain and anxiety of living in this environment.  Some refugees stayed for only two months, others as long as six months. She decided to tell the story of the mental, as well as physical, survival in this environment.

Coming to a camp with barbed wire frightened some people because of there previous experience with the concentration camps.  In the novel Day After Night she tells the story of four teen age girls and how they would handle the experience.  She selected four girls because she felt that people face adversity, loss, and pain, in diverse ways, and that this format would give her the opportunity to express the feelings of different individuals. 

An important fact was that Jewish soldiers were permitted to give Hebrew lessons inside the camp, thereby relieving some of the pressure of living behind barbed wire.

Women mainly comprised the full house at the Lawrence Family JCC that heard Diamant.  Audience members not only wished to hear her discuss her latest book but also  enthusiastically acknowledged her for her previous work The Red Tent, which motivated a group San Diegans to develop plans for a community mikvah.  

Diamant will return to San Diego on January 30, 2010 to participate in a program entitled the “Mikvah Monologues,” sponsored by the non-profitWaters of Eden organization that has been moving the community mikvah project along.                                      

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Greber is a freelance writer based in Carlsbad
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