Judy Cohen

Song of the Silent Bell Judy Cohen

"You were the crown of your tree and you held your head high among your branches. Your sprouts reciprocated the care they got from you with joy. But you left us so young, dried out before it was your time, you left your sprouts to the mercy of the wind..."

"I took his notebook and gazed at it. Its cover was cracked and the pages inside yellowed with age...all I could do was stare at my father's handwriting. Some entries were written in blue or black ink... I was trying to imagine my father - such a quiet man - having a secret gift...which he had never shared with anyone..."

The poems and letters in his notebook were dated from 1940 to 1946; the years my father had spent in Palestine after escaping war-ravaged Europe. Torn from his family and uprooted from his native country, he took to writing poetry as a way of coping with the torment and emptiness that had engulfed him.

Song of the Silent Bell contains my parents' memoirs and the tragic fates of their families. My mother endured the horrors of three concentration camps and my father escaped Hungary on the Sakarya, one of the largest ships that brought illegal Jewish immigrants to Palestine at the beginning of 1940.

This book, born from an astonishing discovery, describes an intimate family portrait of a lifetime journey of courage, opportunity and love.