Treshold of Pain

Author: Vera Meisels
Publishing: Speaking Words 
 
Vera Meisels’ happy childhood did not prepare her for the suffering she endured. Born to a Jewish family
in Slovakia in 1936, she and her family fled from the Nazis, but they eventually spent the rest of the war in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Her stories show a longing for the pre-war period but surprisingly also for experiences that occurred during
the war. Memories such as her stay at the children’s home in the ghetto, where she painted and acted in the ghetto’s production of the play “Firefly,” or the fatherly German soldier, who gave her milk and attention, enliven her stories to reveal the tiny sparkles of kindness that shone within the grim reality that surrounded her.

Her book describes her past from the perspective of the present, with a moving sensitivity that transforms the stories into a complex, subtle work of art--a tapestry of her experiences as a woman, mother, sculptor, and poet.