From the vantage point of her life as the matriarch of a large and loving family, Judith Kallman returns to her war-torn childhood in the Holocaust, sharing her memories, and filling them in with her adult knowledge. She was only four years old when she saw her parents for the last time. By then, her privileged, comfortable life had already started its rapid descent, and the few memories she has of those early years have had to last a lifetime. “My children claim that the survivor in me has always been trying to reach the child I once was,” Kallman says in her acknowledgment.

What makes A Candle in the Heart more than a memoir to be appreciated only by Kallman’s family is the vivid description of the people, places and times that shaped her life. She paints a beautiful portrait of her birthplace, Piestany in Slovakia (borders changed back and forth for a while), with its town square and the spa, famous for its rejuvenating mineral baths.  Born into a well-to-do family, the youngest of six children, she was too young to understand the events she writes about but fills in with research to keep the narrative accurate.  She recalls with total clarity the time her family was being hidden in a barn as their protectors had to entertain soldiers so they wouldn’t be suspected of hiding Jews.  Desperate to relieve herself, Kallman goes out at night to the dark outhouse – where she falls into the latrine.  Her will to live gives her the strength to somehow climb out. And when she finally senses that the soldiers have gone, she runs back to the barn where her mother embraces her, filth and all, and gives her the strength to go on.

Kallman, two brothers and a sister were at school when soldiers stormed into her home and took her parents and two other siblings away.  The surviving siblings became fugitives, moved from place to place by the “underground Working Group,” a collaboration of secular and religious Jews working together to save lives.  Eventually winding up in a sanitarium, she recovers and is placed on a kindertransport to England where a foster family gives her stability and a somewhat normal life.

Some Holocaust memoirs lose their interest after the protagonist is rescued.  We are happy for the survivor’s escape, but the rest of the story doesn’t always make for good reading.  Kallman’s life, and thus her narrative, continues to surprise and engage us.  She leaves England for Israel, living first in a Mizrachi children’s village (now AMIT) and then in Tel Aviv.  There she meets the man who will become her husband and moves to New York.  Again, her life takes an unexpected turn when she is left a young widow with small children. Kallman describes a life focused on family until she realizes her children are growing up and she misses companionship.  A friend introduces her to Irwin Kallman and she begins yet another new chapter.

In a disturbing scene at the conclusion of the book, Kallman tells us about being in a Swiss hotel with her husband and meeting a woman who sought her out because she looked American. The woman implies that she knows of ominous tidings for America but no one will listen; she says she has had relationships with powerful men in the Middle East and will trade information for safe passage to America. Kallman takes the woman’s card and leaves to catch a plane to New York.  The date is September 11, 2001.  Kallman’s plane is forced to return to return to Switzerland.  Back in New York, she tries to bring the woman’s plea to contacts who might help.  Although the FBI meets with her, and she gives them the woman’s papers, she never learns anything more about the woman or her story. The episode, however, is a stark reminder that peace is never permanent and in every generation, someone is trying to kill us.

Every Holocaust survivor has a miraculous story.  Kallman tells hers with sadness, faith and a tranquility that comes from giving her children and grandchildren the love that was so brutally stolen from her childhood.  The candle in her heart now burns in theirs.

By Bracha Schwartz