Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

By Lawrence N. Powell

Book Overview

This powerful work tells the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, the Holocaust survivor who transformed the horrors of her childhood into a passionate mission to defeat the political menace of reputed neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. The first book to connect the prewar and wartime experiences of Jewish survivors to the lives they subsequently made for themselves in the United States, Troubled Memory is also a dramatic testament to how the experiences of survivors as new Americans spurred their willingness to bear witness. Perhaps the only family to survive the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto as a group, the Skoreckis evaded deportation to Treblinka, by posing as Aryans and ultimately made their way to New Orleans, where they became part of a vibrant Jewish community. Lawrence Powell traces the family's dramatic odyssey and explores the events that eventually triggered Anne Skorecki Levy's brave decision to honor the suffering of the past by confronting the recurring specter of racist hatred. Breaking decades of silence, she played a direct role in the unmasking and defeat of Duke during his 1991 campaign for the governorship of Louisiana.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807825042
• ISBN13: 9780807825044
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 616 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Klansman and the little old Holocaust survivor

Troubled Memory is the story of the Skorecki family, which survived the Hoocaust by escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto and going into hiding, intertwined with an accessible history of the Warsaw Ghetto. But is is also the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, 45 years later and transplanted to Louisiana, deciding that she doesn't want Klansman and Holocaust denier David Duke to become the governor of her state. On all three counts - as a tale of survival during the Holocaust, a history of that time and place and the story of little Anne Levy's dogged pursuit of the bigshot politician during his election campaign - the book reads like a taut thriller, a real page-turner from beginning to end. In its linking of the Holocaust in Poland with the troubled racial history of the American South, Troubled Memory is reminiscent of Styron's Sophie's Choice - except that this is fact, not fiction. It's a compelling, genre-busting book that is not quite like anything you've read, and it leaves you both feeling good and with much to think about.

A Synthesis of the Holocaust

I am a student at Tulane University and have taken a seminar with Dr. Powell on the Holocaust. This book is the last book that he included on the syllabus for the course, and I understand fully how and why he wrote this book. At first I was a bit leery of his inclusion of his own work in the course, but the work is a great synthesis of traditional Holocaust study and how it pertains to American (particularly Southern) culture today. The first half of the book largely provides a survey through a personal account of the sociopolitical landscape of World War II-era Eastern Europe: the reasons that the Holocaust occurred, bystanders, perpetrators and victims psychological profiles, as well as giving a very readable human interest story of the narrative of this one particular family. The second half picks up where most Holocaust narratives leave off: the post-war years, the family's emigration to America and the challenges that they faced in New Orleans as Holocaust Survivors, and finally, Anne Levy's battle against David Duke and the formation of the Louisiana Coalition against Nazism and Racism. The first half of the book is essential for understanding her drive in the second half of the book, and Dr. Powell does an excellent job in connecting traditional and new scholarship on just how frighteningly close Louisiana came to David Duke's authority and how important it is to be aware of the ideals that the Louisiana Coalition and Anne Levy espouse.This book is written in a highly readable manner: the diction is not overly dense nor confusing and the personal story allows non-scholars to enjoy the material as much as a student of history or politics would. It is very obvious that Dr. Powell put an immense amount of personal effort and dedication into this account, and his contribution to the historical documentation of the Holocaust and its impact on contemporary society is a testimony to his skill as a historian.

A Voice of Righteous Rage

This story chronicles the survival of small Jewish girls who were hidden in an armoire by their desperate parents in the closing days of the Warsaw ghetto. It easily matches the personal resonance and innocent terror of the far more famous Anne Frank Story.Even after their final liberation as perhaps the only intact nuclear family to survive that infamous ghetto, the Skorecki family was due one more date with history. Survival, it turns out, was the story within the story. Little Anne Skorecki Levi, the little girl who survived by staying silent inside that armoire struck a blow five decades later for Jewish survival by speaking out against Louisiana's Neo-Nazi gubernatorial candidate David Duke, and helping to engineer his electoral defeat.This account of Anne's travel along the arc from victim to victor is an inspiration and a reminder that each of us can and must preserve our collective memory, however troubling.

a wonderful mix of memory and history

Lawrence Powell set out to write a book about the David Duke phenomenon, about how a KKK leader and Nazi could sit in the Louisiana legislature and run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. But work on the book took him in another direction after he interviewed Anne Levy, a Holocaust survivor who confronted Duke in the state capital. Captivated by Levy's story, Powell has produced a terrifying, poignant and finally a triumphant book about the Holoaust as witnessed through the life of one of its survisors, Anne Levy.Troubled Memory is a beautifully written and tender account of a personal story that stands as an intimate history of Hitler's final solution. Powell's prose will carry you into the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos and into the vegetable bin where 6-year-old Anne and her sister hid from the SS. This is a book that makes the Holocaust relevant to every reader. It will fill you with horror and wonder, and it will move you to tears.

A Unforgettable Story

By the bearest of margins the Skorecki family survived Nazi Poland. This was due to the heroism and resourcefulness of the parents. They were the only one or one of the few families that survived the Warsaw ghetto intact and stayed together throughout the war passing on the Christian side. This is a thrilling and frightening story. It is backed up by solid research. Author Larry Powell went to great lengths to mine the existing archives of each scrap of information bearing on the narrative. He embedded the Skorecki's odyssey in a warp of historical facts and contemporaneous documents. The reader will learn a great deal of detailed information about the Holocaust from this book.David Duke's anti-semitism sparked Anne Skorecki Levy's present day journey into her past. The story of Duke's politics of hate frames this Holocaust account. The relevance of Powell's book is as present as this morning's headlines.