"She chose to whisper," as one reviewer noted, "and her soft whisper breaks your heart."īased almost entirely on her own experiences and those of family and friends, her stories provide a uniquely intimate and chilling picture of the everyday comings and goings of Polish Jews, trapped but nonetheless frantically trying to escape total extermination. I thought one should speak about this in a quiet voice." This "quiet voice," almost a whisper, would become the cornerstone of her style. I was afraid to touch these things with words. She had waited more than 10 years before beginning to write: "Subconsciously," she explained in an interview, "I needed distance. Her first volume of short stories was published, initially in Polish as Skawek Czasu (1983), then in English as A Scrap of Time (1987). In 1957 she immigrated to Israel, where, switching from the musical study she had begun in Poland, she became a journalist. She spent the remaining war years in hiding and on the run, with the help of false identity papers certifying that she was Aryan. Babies are snatched from their parents and shot, neighbors betray neighbors for small rewards, and whole towns are rounded up as targets of an action (a new euphemism for mass murder).įink was confined to the ghetto until 1942. It is here-as in Auschwitz-in a pastoral setting of lush green orchards, carefully tended gardens, and deep forests, that sadistic and satanic atrocities are being committed. It is here that ordinary men, women, and children-more than three million Polish Jews inhabiting the small towns and villages of Poland-are trying, with mounting despair and desperation, to deal with a terror so grimly threatening and grotesque that it strains credibility. Whereas they portray the horrors of life-and death-in the concentration camps, where bestiality was the order of the day, Fink portrays another heart of darkness located on the periphery of the Holocaust. Her style is gently and distinctively lyrical, restrained, and understated her approach to the subject of the Holocaust is markedly different from that of the other writers to whom she bears comparison. She stands alongside such powerful and established writers as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Charlotte Delbo. 25-38.* * *īorn in Zbaraż, Poland, in 1921, a survivor of what a character in one of her stories calls "the Hitler time," Ida Fink is one of the most important and powerful writers to come out of the Holocaust. "Trusting the Words: Paradoxes of Ida Fink" by Marek Wilczynski, in Modern Language Studies, 24(4), 1994, pp. 1990 as The Journey, 1992.* Critical Study: 1983 as A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, 1987 revised edition, 1995. Awards: Anne Frank prize in literature, 1985, and PEN/Bookof-the-Month Club translation prize, for Skrawek czasu Jacob Buchman memorial prize, Yad Vashem, 1995. Career: Documentary work, Yad Vashem Institute, Tel-Aviv music librarian, Goethe Institute, Tel-Aviv, 1972-83. Married: Bruno Fink in 1948 one daughter. Education: Studied music at a conservatory in Lvov, 1938-41. Those left to honor Mary's memory include her sons, David (Patty) Fink of Newton and Kenneth Fink of Arkansas her daughters, Dianne (Jack) Mills of Des Moines, Wanda (Dave) Mills of Newton, Robin (Roy) Heck of Newton, Kathleen Bechel of Newton, Donna Fink of Newton her nine grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.Nationality: Israeli (originally Polish: immigrated to Israel, 1957). Mary was preceded in death by her parents her husband, Wendell a son, Terrence Fink and grandchildren, Angela Fink, Matthew Mills and Bobby Talbot, Jr. Mary was promoted to glory on Friday, September 23, 2011, at the Skiff Medical Center in Newton. She was a devoted Salvation Army Soldier and was involved with the Golden Agers, Home League and many other groups within the Salvation Army. Mary loved her family and devoted her life to her husband, seven children and their families. On May 25, 1945, Mary was united in marriage with Wendell J. She was a graduate of the Ames Senior High School. Mary Jane Fink, the daughter of William and Elizabeth (Johnson) Dunkin, was born Jin Ida Grove, Iowa.
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