Our November Local Spotlight book talk features Greenwich resident, author and Holocaust survivor Judith Alter Kallman. Her compelling memoir, A Candle in the Heart: Memoir of a Child Survivor, is the story of a young child from Slovakia, who survived with only some of her siblings and has but dim memories of her parents and the beauty of a privileged, pious childhood. Judith takes us on a journey from her native town through temporary havens and momentary respites into Hungary, before the German invasion of March 1944 and the final year of the Holocaust in German-occupied Budapest in a race between survival and death. Along the way we meet Jews who saved Jews, people who embraced a young child as their own, and others who turned their backs, so paralyzed by the dangers of their own situation that they could not care about an orphaned girl. The richness of the story is enhanced by the extensive description of the aftermath of the Holocaust; the kindness of Jews in England and in the early years in the State of Israel, where Jewish children were raised and rehabilitated in villages which healed the body and nourished the soul.
A Candle in the Heart
Event Details
Speaker Biography
Judith Alter Kallman
Judith Mannheimer Alter Kallman was born in Piestany, Czechoslovakia, the youngest of six children. Rescued and hidden by both Jews and Christians, she spent the final year of the Holocaust in German-occupied Budapest, in a race between survival and death. Judith arrived in America in 1956, having lived the post-war years in Europe, England and Israel. In order to give meaning to her painful past, she was determined to write A Candle in the Heart, her highly-praised memoir, to help young people understand the importance of stopping hate and speaking out against evil.
The National Jewish Book Council, The San Diego Jewish World, and other publications have given her book rave reviews. It has been showcased by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, as well as in teacher training workshops and in libraries across America, Israel and Europe.
Judith, with her late husband, Irwin, has lived in Greenwich for over 20 years, and has been actively involved in the local Jewish community, as well as in New York City’s NYU Langone Medical Center, major cultural institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
