It is not too bad

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Lily Brett 's autobiographical novel Alles Halb so bad (Original title: Things could be worse ) tells the story of a family of Polish Jews who emigrated to Melbourne. The author was born in 1946 in a camp in Germany, grew up in Melbourne and now lives as a freelance writer with her husband, the painter David Rankin , in New York.

abstract

The novel is about the story of the Bensky family and their children. The married couple Josl and Renia Bensky emigrated to Melbourne after the Second World War, where they and a small group of Jewish friends tried to solve the most diverse problems that followed after physical emigration. Lily Brett uses the story of her own family to describe a fate that many Jewish families suffered in 1938 and after the Second World War.

Summary

Josl and Renia Besky grow up in Łódź , Poland . Shortly after their marriage, they have to move to a Jewish ghetto, and finally the two of them are deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp , where they have to endure the Nazis' terror for a year and a half, separated from each other. They found each other again after the war and in 1946 their daughter Lola was born in a camp for displaced persons. The family emigrated to Melbourne in 1948, where they struggled to build an existence again. They find a group of Jewish friends with whom they go out a lot and who, having experienced similar experiences, understand them and make it easier for them to get used to a foreign city and culture.

Lola has an insoluble weight problem, something Renia is constantly offended by. Lola tries all kinds of diets, cures and finally analysis. She drops out of school, has unpopular friends with her parents and, at 19, works as a journalist for a successful rock magazine. The horror experienced by her parents weighs on Lola without her ever finding out much about it from her parents. Both have difficulty forgetting or processing what they have experienced, and Lola also struggles to get along with her family and find her own way.

Characters

  • Renia Bensky - a Polish Jew and Auschwitz survivor
  • Josl Bensky - her husband
  • Lola Bensky - her daughter; Protagonist
  • Garth - her husband
  • Married couple Ganz; - Friends of the Benskys
  • Married couple Small; - Friends of the Benskys
  • The Pekelman couple; - Friends of the Benskys
  • Married couple Berman; - Friends of the Benskys

literature

  • Lily Brett: It's not that bad . Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Vienna 2002 ISBN 3-216-30447-7