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I
Never Saw My Face
By
Sam Goetz
Reviewed
by Professor David N. Myers, UCLA History Department
|
Dr.
Sam Goetz’s memoir, I Never Saw My Face, is a compelling account of a Jew’s passage
from the abyss of terror to the light of freedom. Those who know Sam Goetz will recognize his keen eye for
historical detail, as well as the passionate urge to give voice
to those who no longer speak.
Indeed, it is that urge that has made Sam Goetz one of
the most indefatigable, respected, and informed advocates of
Holocaust education in the United States.
Goetz commences the tale of his life journey in the
pre-war ambience of Tarnow, Poland, home to a well-established
Jewish community of some 25,000 residents with roots as far back
as the fifteenth century. The comfortable family life of the Goetz family is abruptly
shattered by the entry of German tanks into Tarnow in early
September 1939. From
that point on, Goetz’s life descends into a world of
increasing fear, brutality, and degradation—punctuated by the
deportation, and subsequent murder, of his parents and friends.
The young Goetz manages to dodge the Nazi death
machine—ghetto liquidation and concentration camps—by a
combination of sheer luck, instinct, and perseverance.
He relates his daily brush with death in a meticulous
prose devoid of sentiment or self-congratulation.
And yet, there is psychological drama in this book. When Goetz and fellow katzetniks
see the American tanks rolling toward the Ebensee concentration
camp on May 6, 1945—or when Goetz sees his own emaciated face
in a mirror for the first time in three years (from which the
book’s title is drawn), the reader is invited to share in an
intensely emotional moment.
I Never Saw My Face
does not end with liberation.
It depicts Sam Goetz’s time as a war refugee in Italy,
where he met his love and life partner, Gerti.
And it depicts his passage to the United States, where he
reunited with Gerti and made a life together with her.
Herein lies the elusive marvel of the survivor
experience. If, as
some have argued, the experience of the camps lies beyond the
comprehension of those who were not there, it is almost as
imponderable, for me at least, to grasp the survivor’s
experience after liberation—the astonishing assertion of will
to continue on after escaping the nightmare of death. Goetz hints at the keys to success in the immediate wake of
liberation—simply satisfying the basest physical needs.
Beyond that, he describes at certain points in his
narrative the need for emotional repression, particularly of
rage. At times, the
rage seems on the verge of breaking through—for instance, when
Goetz visits Germany forty years after liberation in 1995.
But for the vast majority of the time, Sam Goetz appears
to channel his traumatic adolescence in the clutches of Nazism
into a demonstrably successful adulthood—indeed, into a life
of family happiness, professional achievement, and community
leadership. This
success comes through clearly in I
Never Saw My Face. It
also has become clear to me after a decade of work and
friendship with Sam Goetz, during which time I have developed
enormous respect for his intelligence, integrity, modesty, and
resolve.
It may be asked: do we need another Shoah memoir?
Is not the literary market flooded with memoirs, diaries,
and historical monographs on the subject?
Even if that were so, we have not yet come close to
understanding, and may well never, the full dimensions of the
tragedy.
Every survivor voice deserves to be heard—not only to
recall those that were extinguished, but to provide a richer
understanding of the multi-dimensional experience of life and
death that we call the Holocaust.
We are in the particular debt of Dr. Sam Goetz, for he
has offered us such a voice—and a powerful and tersely
eloquent one at that. |
