Tell Me Another Morning: An Autobiographical Novel

By Zdena Berger

Book Overview

Three girls come of age in the Nazi concentration camps and repeatedly save each other through their ingenuity, kindness, and acts of courage

This autobiographical novel depicts the experiences of three girls coming of age in the Nazi concentration camps. Through Tania's eyes, we experience claustrophobic uncertainty, grief, terror, exhaustion, and Tania's sustaining hope, her ability to always see and experience beauty. As in The Diary of Anne Frank, Tania's youthful concerns and observations are interwoven among accounts of extremity: her brother's murder; her mother's decision to stay with her father and die in the gas chamber rather than be transported to another concentration camp; the saving friendships Tania develops; her relationships with young men who are prisoners. Tania's release from Bergen-Belsen and her return to Prague after the liberation is unforgettable and devastating: She observes people wearing normal clothes, eating ice cream, and traveling on buses between work and home. There is no judgment, only the reality of two worlds existing simultaneously. With spare prose, Zdena Berger's first-hand observations convey the deprivation and brutality in which Tania comes of age, and the friendships and hope that help her to survive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 193046410X
• ISBN13: 9781930464100
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Paris Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up

Customer Reviews

MOVING AND TENDER, SCARY BECAUSE IT IS TRUE

TELL ME ANOTHER MORNING This book was first published and released in 1961 and has since been re-released. The beautiful cover was what caught my eye, as I had never heard of this book. This is a true account of a survivor's recolletion of being in a concentration camp during World War Two. God forbid, God help us all, this actually took place such a short time ago, in the 1940's. The author tells her story in a beautiful and honest way. While never really going into the gruesome details of what happened to herself, her friends, family, and the thousands and thousands of other poor souls, this is a factual story of one girl's world ripped apart and hurled into the bowels of hell. I was actually hesitant to read this book due to the subject matter. I knew it would be unpleasant and frightening and scary, but I could not stop turning the pages! Who can forget reading THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK? I believe this book should be read in history classes in schools around the world. Zdena Berger tells her true life story in a way that reads like fiction so this does not seem like a school text book. While you KNOW what is happening to people at the camps, she gracefully and vaguely explains situations. I salute the survivors of these awful camps. While I was reading this book I could not help but imagine and think what I would do in this situation. These were real people, living their lifes as you and I are now, then suddenly being thrown into these camps. One cannot imagine. Hats off to Zdena Berger for letting us share in her awful past and for becoming the strong person she did. Read this book! Thank you!! Pam

Humanity Transcendent

This is a beautiful, beautiful book. Everyone should read it-- it is a real testament to the power of friendship and the strength of the human spirit in the midst of unthinkable horror. The prose is elegant, spare and devoid of self-pity.

Finding Hope in the Ashes of Indifference

"Tell Me Another Morning" must be read as a companion piece to "Diary of Anne Franck." Anne's story ended when her family was discovered and dispersed to concentration camps. Tania (Zdena Berger) tells the story Anne couldn't, the struggle of a young girl and two friends to survive in the camps under the most impersonal and banal evil mankind is capable of inflicting. Our dramas are populated with monsters in human form expending great energy and taking huge enjoyment in dispensing evil. We are fascinated as they revel in horror. Zdena Berger shows us the other, more chilling face of evil. Tania faced one wholly different and vastly greater, the evil of indifference of one human to the humanity of another, multiplied thousands of times. Towards the end it is shocking that the faceless guards pull a cruel joke by adding glass to the prisoners' bread, because until that point the guards seemed too indifferent to suffering to take any pleasure in causing or even noticing it. The three friends, Ilse, Eva, and Tania, grew during their trials, drawing strength and gaining character as their oppressors shrank into pitiful caricatures. Clearly none of them could have survived without the others, as each did small, selfless acts at times that helped her friends to find strength and courage to go on. Once, after charming chocolate from male prisoners, Ilse gave it all to Eva and led Tania in pretending that they were sharing it so that Eva did not know she had the only piece. "Tell Me Another Morning" is painstakingly crafted, and fills a high position on my personal list of best books. It is Zdena's only book, and her story is a classic for all times and should never again be allowed to go out of print. I will never forget the friendship and courage of Tania, Eva, and Ilse, and I encourage all to join them on their immortal quest, powered by hope, to rekindle humanity from the ashes of indifference.

Singing in the Dark Times

Zdena Berger's "Tell Me Another Morning" documents and depicts the worst of humanity-- the atrocities inflicted on innocent people in times of war. Yet her story, written in poetically charged prose, is ultimately a testament to love and compassion, and reading it is an empathy-building experience. The effect of Berger's book recalls Bertold Brecht's poem: In the dark times/ Will there also be singing?/ Yes there will be singing/ About the dark times.

Lucid and immensely moving

Beautifully written, amazingly hopeful. It accomplishes through fiction what is almost too hard to read in memoir form -- what it was like to be a teenage girl in the concentration camps. I agree with Ernest Gaines -- this really is a classic. Rare today, but true.