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by S. Weilbach
With an afterword by Doris Bergen
A childhood memoir about a rarely recorded world.
Singing from the Darktime is a compelling picture of a rural childhood in Germany at a time when the world was about to change. By 1937 Hitler’s power was beginning to penetrate the peaceful agricultural village in the Rhine Valley where S. Weilbach lived with her family. Without warning, her carefree life became a scene of bewildering racial abuse, followed by the violent invasion of her home, the arrest of her father, and the disappearance of her beloved grandmother. Weilbach’s story of her eventual flight and concealment reveals how children in crisis retreat into imagination, reliving past happiness.
Escaping Germany, Weilbach describes her surreal experience aboard the luxury refugee ship the St Louis, refused the right to land first by Cuba and then by the United States and Canada and finally forced to turn back to Europe, where England and other countries eventually provided some sanctuary. She recalls her experiences in London – loneliness, confusion, and an incomprehensible language but also the healing acceptance of classmates and teachers. With the approach of World War Two, the mass evacuation of her school to the countryside brings a return to village life, with surprising happiness and the hint of a better future, despite the immediate chaos of war.
Singing from the Darktime presents a voice of innocence and resilience in a cruel and frightening world. An afterword by renowned Holocaust scholar Doris Bergen provides historical context.
Publication date: March 1st, 2011.
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A former psychologist, therapist, teacher, and social activist, the now-retired S. Weilbach lives in British Columbia, where she is completing her first novel.
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Quotes from Singing from the Darktime
“The bird that sings in the mornings
Shall be devoured by the cat at night.”
“How lonely I became
Once I was shown this heedless Power
Who on some lofty throne
Stayed mute and still
When someone tore the wings off flies
Or struck a helpless beast.”
“She held a basket on one arm
With little gifts and cakes,
A gingerbread St. Niklaus
Poised ready in one hand.
But when she saw me at the door
Her hand flew to her mouth.
As if she’d done some dreadful wrong
She fled back down the steps,
And as she ran declared,
The Christchild had no gift
To give the likes of us.
I did not mind about the cake,
But these few callous words
Plunged deep into my heart.
Because I’d found her
Lovely to behold”
“With every anxious breath
Drew in the comfort
Of my parents’ bed.
And tried to think of happy ways
My scary fairytale could end.”
“I think of my pink doll,
The one that Opa bought,
With little lashes at her eyes,
The tiny skirt my Oma sewed.
I saw her plunging to the ground.
But mother would not let me stop
To bend and pick her up.”
“The St. Louis. How I came to this iron
Whippedcream ship of flight,
This weird receptacle of dancing and despair,
I never knew.
(Soothing and terrible not to know.)”
“At last a steward said
We’d soon be nearing land,
And when I asked him what it would be like
He rolled his eyes and smiled
And said there would be fishes
Lighting up the nighttime sea like lamps,
And thunderstorms to strike our ears,
And heat such as we’d never known.”
“But all at once I hear some footsteps race
Across the boards above my head
And someone yelling, “No-o-o-o!”
When I stand up to look
A sudden bright red streak
Is trickling down the glassy wall.
From every side the people run.
A woman in a purple dressing-gown
Bursts through the bulkhead door
Near where I stand.
She screams and screams.”
For review copy requests or questions:
Jacqueline Davis
Publicist
McGill-Queen’s University Press
1010 Sherbrooke, Suite 1720
Montreal, QC H3A 2R7
Tel: (514) 398-2555
Fax: (514) 398-4333
jacqueline.davis@mcgill.ca
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