Auschwitz Survivor Searches for Answers in New Book

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 30 — As a prisoner in Auschwitz,
Frances Fabri said she came close to understanding human motives and
behavior. In Crickets Would Sing, Fabri’s stories unveil a unique view of
the Holocaust as seen by the victim, bystander, and perpetrator. Relevant
to genocide wherever and whenever it happens, these 12 short stories offer
clues to “How could this happen?”

Fabri was 14 when she and her parents were deported to Auschwitz. Her
father disappeared. She and her mother lived through unbelievable horrors
in four more camps before American soldiers freed them in 1945. Crickets
Would Sing (Plum Branch Press) is available online including at
http://www.newharbinger.com.
Crickets Would Sing explores Fabri’s experience from others’ perspectives:

– The Hungarian peasant dressed in her Sunday black damask, Bible in hand
who witnesses the removal of the village doctor just as Fabri’s father
had been removed.
– The Commandant who numbs himself with liquor before selecting people to
die.
– The young woman who is proud of her career as a foreman in a labor
camp.
– The prisoner who offers her life for a crazy person, the only one who
realized she was chosen to die.
These stories resonate wherever there is denial and people doing their
jobs and keeping their shutters closed as others are persecuted. In
classrooms, book groups, and the reader’s mind, Crickets Would Sing stirs
up timeless and timely questions about actions and ethics.
In 1956, Fabri, her husband, and mother crossed snow-covered mountains
to reach freedom again, this time from Soviet control. They immigrated to
New York. In the 1970s Fabri settled in San Francisco where she founded the
Holocaust Center of Northern California. She was one of the first in the
U.S. to compile oral histories of Holocaust survivors. Fabri died in
January 2006.
According to Rosa Shand, author of The Gravity of Sunlight and winner
of the Katherine Ann Porter Prize, “This Holocaust story — told as it is
through a variety of voices — could never be captured in a memoir or a
factual report…it draws us into the moments of transcendence and
self-sacrifice…in whatever place…or time…”
Crickets Would Sing is available in bookstores and at 1.800.748.6273.

SOURCE Matthew McKay, New Harbinger Publications, Inc.