Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust

Reviewed by: Sarah Cropley - Scarborough Public Library, Scarborough, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: August 7, 2018

Review

Claiming My Place is a historical novel that tells a first person story of Barbara Reichmann, a Jewish woman who was born Gucia Gomolinska in the 1920s. To avoid being forced into a ghetto and suffer the same fate as the people she saw around her, Reichmann changed her name and got falsified papers that declared her to be a gentile. Price writes Reichmann's story from the first person, tracing the rise in antisemitism and Nazi occupation in Poland, as well as the tale of her eventual escape. Barbara Reichmann’s daughter, Helen Reichman West, concludes the tale with some of her mother’s experiences throughout the remainder of her life, a note that explains what happened to each of the family members described, and a glossary. Claiming My Place tells an important and often missed story about some of the experiences of Jewish people in the Holocaust. However, Price claims to have taken some liberties with the stories in order to make it read better, but neglects to give any indication what is taken directly from Reichmann’s stories and what is a product of the author. A great tale of bravery in the face of great evil, but shelve it with the fiction.

Overall Book Score: good