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WORK TITLE: Claiming My Place
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Degrees from University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles.
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CAREER
Teacher, text book publisher. Worked in the Los Angeles, CA school system for over forty years.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Teacher Planaria Price has worked in the Los Angeles public school system for more than forty years. With degrees in English from University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles, Price has published six textbooks with McGraw Hill and University of Michigan Press. In 2006, Price met and interviewed ninety-year-old Barbara Reichmann who survived the Nazi invasion of Poland in the 1930s. Collaborating with Barbara’s daughter Helen, Price wrote Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust, a first-person biography of Barbara’s escape and emigration to the United States.
Price conducted extensive historical and social research to tell the story of twenty-three-year-old Gucia Gomolinska in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland. In 1939 she changed her name to Danuta Barbara “Basia” Tanska, falsified papers, pretended to be Catholic, and eventually made her way to Germany. Her blond hair helped her hide in plain sight as she found work as a chambermaid. After the war, unable to return to Poland, she emigrated to America where she was disheartened to see familiar racial hatred and segregation, this time towards blacks. The final portion of the book is written by Helen, a psychotherapist and academic writer, who recounts Barbara’s private life, marriage, and death by natural causes.
Writing in School Library Journal, Magdalena Teske observed that due to the detailed memories, conversational tone, and Barbara’s determination and strength, “this book provides an engaging and informative reading experience with as much appeal as a fiction title.” A Publishers Weekly contributor explained that the book “reads like suspenseful historical fiction, telling a rarely heard side of the Jewish experience during WWII.” The contributor added that family, friendships, and romance add to the poignancy of this unique story.
“Price has boldly elected to tell the story in Basia’s own first-person, present-tense voice,” noted Booklist reviewer Michael Cart. Online at Jewish Book Council, Emily Schneider addressed the authors’ use of first-person narrative, knowing that the characters did not say these exact words. “To suggest that this book is in some sense a work of historical fiction does not compromise its essential honesty or validity. Understanding more about how Price combined Basia’s own memories with historical research and with her own literary talent would only enrich the reader’s experience of this moving work,” said Schneider. The book’s maps, photos, a glossary, and an afterword add to its authenticity. The book is a “rich exploration of a Holocaust survivor’s sheltered childhood, the atrocity that failed to destroy her, and her later life as an immigrant,” noted a writer in Kirkus Reviews.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2018, Michael Car, review of Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust, p. 40.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2018, Claiming My Place.
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 2018, review of Claiming My Place, p. 87.
School Library Journal, April 2018, Magdalena Teske, review of Claiming My Place, p. 151.
ONLINE
Jewish Book Council, https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/ (July 1, 2018), Emily Schneider, review of Claiming My Place.
Planaria Price has published six textbooks with McGraw-Hill and University of Michigan Press. She met the then-90-year-old Barbara Reichmann in 2006, interviewed her at length, and conducted extensive historical and social research in order to write Claiming My Place.
Planaria Price has degrees in English from UC Berkeley and UCLA. She has over forty years of teaching experience in the Los Angeles public school system and has published six textbooks with McGraw Hill and University of Michigan Press. In 2006 she met 90 year old Barbara Reichman and interviewed her at length. Price has done extensive historical and social research in order to write Richman's biography CLAIMING MY PLACE: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust.
Price, Planaria: CLAIMING MY PLACE
Kirkus Reviews. (Feb. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Price, Planaria CLAIMING MY PLACE Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Young Adult Informational) $17.99 3, 13 ISBN: 978-0-374-30529-1
The true story of a Jewish teenager who survived the Holocaust by passing as a Christian Pole.
Gucia Gomolinska was raised in a loving family in a Jewish neighborhood of Piotrkow Trybunalski, in central Poland. When the Nazis came, blonde Gucia, then in her 20s, was able to escape the ghetto before its liquidation by changing her name to Barbara and obtaining false papers identifying her as Polish. Post-war, she reunited with the few miraculously surviving members of her family, married, and had a daughter. Upon realizing that they couldn't return to Poland--surviving Polish Jews were sometimes massacred in pogroms--the young family settled in the United States with help from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Told in the first person, this biography was based on interviews with both Barbara and her daughter, Helen. Loving depictions of pre-war Piotrkow are filled with realistic touches that make its lost past palpable: teachers Barbara adored or disliked, interactions between the myriad youth groups, her early interest in politics, and her questions about religion. In an afterword by Helen we learn of Barbara's disgust in witnessing racial hatred in the form of segregation after her arrival in the United States.
A rich exploration of a Holocaust survivor's sheltered childhood, the atrocity that failed to destroy her, and her later life as an immigrant. (photographs, afterword, glossary) (Biography. 12-15)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Price, Planaria: CLAIMING MY PLACE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527248149/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e4b5130b. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527248149
Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Michael Cart
Booklist. 114.11 (Feb. 1, 2018): p40.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust. By Planaria Price and Helen Reichmann West. Mar. 2018. 272p. Farrar, $17.99 (97803743052911. 940.53. Gr. 8-11.
Holocaust stories are perennial for a reason, and the latest iteration is this account of the remarkable survival of a Polish Jew named Gucia Gomolinska. Born in a small town, she led a largely uneventful life until September 1, 1939, when she was 23 and the Germans invaded Poland. Overnight, her world was turned upside down, as her family became exposed to rabid anti-Semitism. It soon became obvious to Gucia that inaction would mean death, so she changed her name to Danuta Barbara (Basia) Tanska and, thanks to her ash-blonde hair and fair complexion, was able to assume a new life as a Polish Gentile, actually traveling to Germany, where she found work as a chambermaid, hiding from the authorities in plain sight. The fascinating story continues to Basia's marriage and emigration to the U.S. after the war. Price has boldly elected to tell the story in Basia's own first-person, present-tense voice. The result is a dramatic, suspensefol account of survival in extremis, told in collaboration with Basia's American daughter.--Michael Cart
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cart, Michael. "Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p. 40. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771882/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e3be2a4c. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527771882
Claiming My Place: A True Story of Defiance, Deception and Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Publishers Weekly. 265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p87.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Claiming My Place: A True Story of Defiance, Deception and Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Planaria Price, with Helen Reichmann West. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $17.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-374-30529-1
Price's rendering of West's mother's early life reads like suspenseful historical fiction, telling a rarely heard side of the Jewish experience during WWII. Barbara Reichmann, born Sura Gitla "Gucia" Gomolinska in 1916, described to Rice, in sensory detail, her prewar Jewish childhood in a town in central Poland, followed by the tense war years living in Poland, Germany, and Switzerland as a Polish-Catholic girl named Basia. Reichman's education, fluency in Polish, and fair hair and coloring allowed her to pass as a non-Jew while many of her friends and family suffered through or died during the Holocaust. Writing from an engrossing first-person perspective, Price makes Gucia/Basia a fully dimensional character, tracing her development from taking her heritage and faith for granted to becoming a leader in the youth Zionist movement at age 13. She left the organization at 18, realized that she might survive the war by hiding her identity. Family, friendships, and romance give poignancy to this unique coming-of-age story, which is further enhanced by maps, photos, a glossary, and an afterword. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Claiming My Place: A True Story of Defiance, Deception and Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 87. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839869/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fafb2dd7. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839869
PRICE, Planaria with Helen Reichmann West. Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Magdalena Teske
School Library Journal. 64.4 (Apr. 2018): p151+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
PRICE, Planaria with Helen Reichmann West. Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust. 272p. glossary. maps, photos. Farrar. Mar. 2018. Tr $17.99. ISBN 9780374305291.
Gr 7 Up--During her childhood in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland, Gucia Gomolinska had access to a good education, and she actively participated in a Zionist youth group. All of that changed in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. After losing her mother to typhoid and seeing many family members, friends, and neighbors murdered by German soldiers, Gomolinska realized that her survival depended upon hiding her identity. Under the name Danuta Barbara Tanska, Basia for short, she moved away and found work in Polish and German towns that were safer because they were supposedly Judenrein, "cleansed of Jews." Told in a present tense, first-person narrative, this true story was written based on extensive interviews with Basia. The account describes how she survived the war and also tells the stories of family and friends, such as Heniek, her longtime boyfriend, and Sabina, her companion and roommate. Basia's determination and strength of character is skillfully emphasized. An episode from her early childhood hints at this for readers (she refused to wait a year to start school after her father forgot to register her). VERDICT Thanks to the detailed memories and the conversational tone, this book provides an engaging and informative reading experience with as much appeal as a fiction title. Recommended for most YA nonfiction collections.--Magdalena Teske, West Chicago Public Library District
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Teske, Magdalena. "PRICE, Planaria with Helen Reichmann West. Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust." School Library Journal, Apr. 2018, p. 151+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533409162/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=de6ff92a. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533409162
Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2018
272 Pages $17.99
ISBN: 978-0374305291
Review by Emily Schneider
Each Holocaust survivor’s story is unique and cries out to be told. Some have been lost, others submerged in collective histories. In Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust, Gucia Gomolinska/Basia Tanska, a Jewish woman who survived by passing as Aryan, has found a vehicle for her tale of loss and survival. Despite some ambiguity about how author Planaria Price has recreated Basia’s past, the book is a searing personal account full of unforgettable details, as well as broader questions about the ultimate meaning of her experience.
The daughter of an affluent family in Piotrków, Poland, Price (in first person, from Gucia’s perspective) begins the book by describing her privileged childhood and ends as a grateful immigrant to America, having survived the war with a false identity card, which enabled her to work as a Polish Christian in Germany. Each chapter is a dated entry in which Gucia, later Basia, chronicles her friendships, romantic relationships, and family life—until the German invasion abruptly destroys this world. By the time her ghetto is facing annihilation, she is desperate to be considered an “essential worker,” whose life may be spared because of her utility to the Nazis. Such insights into her radically altered existence link the book’s events into a cohesive account.
Even after liberation, Basia feels unable to return to her old identity, deciding that Gucia’s life is finished, while Basia’s has enabled her to be “strong and adult.” Young adult readers may especially relate to this process of maturing and coming to terms with the past. Equally important are Basia’s diverse portraits of Poles—some as courageous saviors of their Jewish friends, and others as only too eager to betray Jews to the Germans. Given the recent passage of a law in Poland which virtually criminalizes any suggestion that Poles participated in the Nazis’ reign of terror, these passages are crucial evidence of the truth. The final section of the book is a personal reflection by Basia’s daughter, Helen Reichmann West, which provides additional, sensitive insights into her mother’s life as a wife and mother in her adopted home.
One question which remains to be addressed is Price’s approach to telling Basia’s story. In the introduction, the author writes about meeting Basia’s daughter Helen, and volunteering to undertake the ambitious project of writing about her mother’s life while “keeping her voice and portrayals authentic and the story accurate.” She also states that “some of the dialogue or a few details necessary for the narrative flow have been invented.” Yet, the book has no footnotes and doesn’t mention any written records that Price consulted—only Basia’s conversations with Price; they met when Basia was ninety years old.
Understanding that memory is imperfect and inaccuracies are inevitable, several passages in the book seem to be anachronisms—such as frequent use of the phrase tikkun olam as a modern reference to social action instead of its traditional, legal meaning. Similarly, it seems likely that a scene in which Basia and a friend discuss rumors that the Nazis were persecuting homosexuals and people with disabilities was included in order to educate modern readers. To suggest that this book is in some sense a work of historical fiction does not compromise its essential honesty or validity. Understanding more about how Price combined Basia’s own memories with historical research and with her own literary talent would only enrich the reader’s experience of this moving work.
Claiming My Place is recommended for readers 14 and older. It offers an excellent opportunity to discuss the ways in which we reconstruct and remember the past.