Izzys Fire: Finding Humanity In The Holocaust
by Nancy Wright Beasley
Category: History

Edna Ipson, Holocaust survivor, now 93 years old, sees her familys story of struggle and survival recorded and published. Brunswick Publishing has just released Izzys Fire: Finding Humanity in the Holocaust by Nancy Wright Beasley, which focuses mainly on the Ipson familys life in hiding in a Lithuanian farmers potato field.The book depicts how 13 members of five Jewish families survived the Holocaust through their own ingenuity and the generosity of a poor Catholic farm family. All 13 Jews ended up living in a 9x12x4 underground hole as World War II raged around them. Some lived underground for about seven months before being liberated by the Russian Army.Dr. Michael Berenbaum, project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (1988-1993) and author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, says, Izzys Fire is filled with the passion of one woman determined to do justice to the story of another woman who lived in hiding throughout the war years. The war has soul. One feels the intensity of the struggle to survive. One senses the decency of those who were ready to rescue and the evil that haunted a mother and father and their young child in the dangerous world they lived. Nancy Wright Beasley has told a powerful story with dignified restraint. She has given voice to an underreported side of the Holocaust life in hiding. Adriana Trigiani, author of the best selling Big Stone Gap trilogy, offered early praise for the book. According to Trigiani, Nancy is a passionate, dedicated writer who has written a searing story, sure to capture readers with Izzy's Fire. She proves herself to be a storyteller who uses firsthand accounts and research with equal resolve. Beasley draws from personal interviews, research and numerous memoirs, including extensive memoirs from Israel Izzy Ipson, who helped his family escape from Kovno Ghetto, one of the most notorious killing fields for Jews in Lithuania. The Ipps, as they were known then, relocated to Richmond following their liberation and later changed their name to Ipson. The story has been re-created at the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Virginia.Izzys Fire, which encompasses Virginia Standards of Learning at a variety of levels, will be taught as a pilot project in several eighth grade language arts classes in Chesterfield County public schools during the 2004-05 school term.