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Holocaust · Literature

From an Italian Holocaust survivor, a Kafkaesque nightmare of imprisonment under fascism

Summarizing Julia M. Klein in Forward · Published Friday, April 4, 2025
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JL;DR SUMMARY Maria Eisenstein's memoir, "Internee Number 6," presents a haunting account of life in an Italian internment camp during the Fascist regime. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Identity  Holocaust  Memoir  Trauma  Fascism  Survival  Italy  Kafkaesque  Internment Camp  Maria Eisenstein 

Places mentioned

Lanciano, Chieti, Italy
"The Italian internment camp of Maria Eisensteins 1944 memoir isnt the hellscape of Auschwitz-Birkenau or Bergen-Belsen. In this former villa, no one is gassed or beaten to death or starved. The days can be stomached, Eisenstein writes. I never have time to get bored. But Lanciano is a prison nonetheless, a place of Kafkaesque confinement and petty privations for foreign Jews and others targeted by Mussolinis regime."
Naples, Italy
"we're told that it is based on both scattered notes Eisenstein made at the camp during the summer of 1940 and on writing in Naples and Rome four years later."
Rome, Italy
"we're told that it is based on both scattered notes Eisenstein made at the camp during the summer of 1940 and on writing in Naples and Rome four years later."
Abruzzo, Pescara, Italy
"The book ends abruptly but Eisensteins own ordeals, Capogreco tells us, continued, including further confinement, life under surveillance and flight across the mountains of Abruzzo."
Germany
"after Germanys years of economic misery, Hitler gave us back a spiritual identity, a political identity."
California, United States
"The historian details his efforts to track down Eisenstein, who was born in Vienna to Polish Jewish parents and eventually emigrated to California."
Vienna, Austria
"The historian details his efforts to track down Eisenstein, who was born in Vienna to Polish Jewish parents and eventually emigrated to California."
Poland
"The historian details his efforts to track down Eisenstein, who was born in Vienna to Polish Jewish parents and eventually emigrated to California."

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Retrieved 2025-04-05 05:31:05 UTC
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