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Eric Sterling wrote: > > I have two questions: > > First, I am reading two personal narratives, one by Fania Fenelon, > entitled Playing for Time, and the other entitled Shivitti. Are these > accurate and historical, as opposed to fictional, narratives? I ask > because a few > months ago, someone on this network referred to Fenelon's narrative as > fictional and because in the other narrative, the survivor has endured > psychological treatments involving LSD. I don't know anything about Shivitti. As for Fania Fenalon's book, there is fairly negative review in the Bulletin Of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau and of the Foundation for the Commemoration of the Victims Of the Auschwitz Extermination Camp: Pro Memoria 3-4 (pp.65-67), ISSN-1233-7870. Now that we have the name of the publication out of the way, the title of the review is Truth and Fantasy by Helena Dunicz-Niwinska. The author, also a member of the Auschwitz orchestra, writes: _Reading Fania Fenalon's book one has very mixed feelings - admiration for the author's lively memory and colorful language, but also astonishment and opposition to her overgrown fantasy, her free alteration of facts and expression of improbable ill feeling towards her fellow sufferers._ I've been reading Todorov's _Facing the Extreme_. I noticed his very negative position on the orchestra's conducter Alma Rose, and thought both of Fenalon's remarks in _Playing for Time_ and the Pro Memoria article which I have only recently read. If Dunicz-Niwinska is credible, one would have to reconsider Fenalon's remarks, and any subsequent analysis based on them. Alan Jacobs http://www.bravenewweb.com/idea
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