The Secret of Priest's Grotto - Review

Taylor, Peter Lane and Nicola, Christos. The Secret of Priest's Grotto. A Holocaust Survival Story. Minneapolis, MN: Kar-Ben Publishing, 2007.

This book is the true story about several Ukrainian Jewish families that survived the Holocaust through extraordinary means by hiding in caves and grottoes. This biography pays considerable attention to one family, the Stermer family, that lives mostly in Montreal and several parts of the US today. The story begins by sharing the details that led Taylor and Nicola to the discovery of the cave and the story of the survivors as well as to meeting the survivors. The rest of the book details the exploration and documentation of the cave by Taylor and Nicola while telling the entire story of the Stermer's survival as well as comparing it to the known world-record for human underground survival. Additionally, excerpts from a memoir written by one of the surviving matriarchs, Esther Stermer who was called the "hero of Priest's Grotto" (19), are woven into the text. Furthermore, this text not only portrays the families' survival in the Holocaust but shares the aftermath and longevity of such a journey with the readers.

It was difficult to fully distinguish whether or not to consider this book written by an insider or an outsider. The first author of the book, Peter Lane Taylor, is not Jewish, but the caving veteran, Christos Nicola is. Also, the family sharing their incredible story is obviously comprised of insiders. This book was well-received and honored by the Sydney Taylor Award Committee, which indicates that others, with far more experience that I, found this book to be of authentic, insider quality. Upon great reflection, I chose the authors of this text as discoverers and editors of the amazing story of the Stermer family and their fellow survivors.

This book was well constructed and exceedingly informative. However, its length and detailed scientific descriptions may be a challenge for children to initially read on their own. This book seems directed towards young adult readers than early and emerging readers. Though young readers would be overwhelmed by the amount of text, they would gain something from looking at the multitude of images present in this text. Real photographs of the Stermer family in the WWII era and modern photographs of the cave, its inhabiting artifacts, and survivors and their current families as well as photographs of camps during the war were used to provide more to the story than just the printed text. A visually literate person would be able to decipher the difference between the black and white family photographs in the beginning of the text with similar post-war photographs. Also, maps were drawn and used throughout the text to give a real sense of location for the readers.

I attempted to locate the memoir "We Fight to Survive" by Esther Stermer to aid in the details that may not have been covered in this text but was unable to find it because of its private publishing. Esther stated that she wrote the memoir so that the future generations of her family will be able to know her record of one of the darkest epochs in recent history. As this text is semi-autobiographical, there are no negative stereotypes against Jewish people. The comments made about Jewish as a whole were provided from a personal experience perspective and interpretation by insiders. However, there was one aspect of the reference to Jewish people that stood out to me. The authors repeatedly referred to the families in the caves and the survivors as "the Jews" or "Jews." I do not think that this was the wrong choice necessarily, but being an outsider, to me it seems as though a better word phrase could have been used as this could be rather offensive to some Jewish people. Furthermore, the attempt to portray the Nazi troops accurately throughout the war mixing with the personal statements of the survivors, may lead to some concern about the implications of those statements. When considering this, the bias in the writing becomes aware to the reader.

Overall, this book stands as a strong piece of diverse literature and can be used as both a mirror and a window text. The mirror would occur by any family or person that has survived such atrocity due to their own will and capabilities, especially a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. The book is also a window in numerous ways. For instance, it can be a window for the newer generations of Jewish people to into the history of their culture. Also, it is a window for anyone with no experience or knowledge of the events detailed by the text. On a different level, the text provides both the mirror and window effect by providing details about cave exploration and the desire to share those findings. The window opened up to people without caving experience to understand the depth and extremities faced by cavers. The mirror was provided in a similar instance but for cavers and authors that rarely see themselves in the extraordinary stories they unravel.