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Combining two heavy short stories titled "The Shawl" and "Rosa," Cynthia Ozick’s work has a grim jolting bleakness that can immediately take ahold of you and not let you go.

The first story-"The Shawl"-details in clear graphic prose the horrors of a Nazi death camp as experienced by Rosa, her baby daughter Magda and her niece Stella. The story starts off with torturous marching, starvation, fatigue and the expression of dark thoughts as held by both Rosa and Stella as well as the unabating cold weather that unmercifully batters the three prisoners. The cord that unites the three characters during the story and in the follow-up story titled “Rosa” is the shawl, the worn and tattered article of clothing that baby Magda was enfolded with and also suckled on in order to get some minute degree of moisture in her mouth as well as sustenance; the three are a Jewish trinity of suffering, and the latter half of “The Shawl” can make any reader turn their head in utter disbelief at the disturbing acuteness of Cynthia Ozick’s literary command.

“Rosa” makes up the second part of the novella, and it is the longest of the two stories. While many decades have passed since Rosa’s traumatic encampment, the lingering memories of her Nazi war experience still haunt her, although that suffering now occurs on the opposite side of the Atlantic, more specifically New York and then Florida. Fully entrenched in the American way of life, Rosa’s niece-Stella-has moved forward from her past and absorbed herself in intellectual pursuits and a cosmopolitan lifestyle but at a budget, fleeing the Polish roots of her past; while she is not the focus of Ozick’s keen eye, Stella’s voice plays a pivotal role in how Rosa behaves and conducts herself, for Stella almost always has a blasé approach towards Rosa’s suffering and inability to let go. While Stella has found her methodology for contending with the difficulties of the past, she is always hoisting or hurling her insights and mechanisms for dealing as well as complaints towards Rosa. Her attitude is almost like, Aren’t you over this yet? Life has to move forward. However, that is easier said than done for Rosa who clings to the ghosts of the past, her homeland, her people and her daughter. Her history is her armor as well as her identity. She is the witness for the Jewish people. And her unceasing testimony is loss and pain.

After going on a rampage and destroying her shop in New York, she moves to Florida, a state where the heat and sunshine is like a furnace of a different sort; there, she is connected with retired immigrants who are old and decrepit and who live simply and vicariously through their grandchildren. There, she meanders about, broken amongst broken people, but her past-like a rotten meal-is her sustenance. So too is the shawl with Magda’s essence, her spirit, embedded into it. She is inward and fights against being drawn out. But there are those who want to know her personally as well as professionally. And as that she so, she is somewhat forced to become a split person on behalf of others-those who want to merge the old and the new and the past and the present-for her; she only knows of the past and does not care for the present, for it is immoral, shameless and clueless. Her battle, one I would assume with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), is an ongoing one. The Holocaust will never be over for Rosa.

The Shawl was an incredible read: bold, unflinching, concise and cutting. When you’ve lost everything in your life, as Rosa has, it does give you the entitlement to not mince words, even though that directness is peppered with longing, pain, meditation, philosophizing, heartache and mental instability. This work can read as someone’s memoir rather than a work of literary fiction, a work most deserving of its two-first prize O. Henry Awards for the years 1981 and 1984.

"The Shawl" by Cynthia Ozick is a short story and short novella in one. Both stories center around Rosa Lublin, a Holocaust survivor, during her time in the camp and her life later in America. These two stories are beautifully written, haunting in their images and questions, and will surely leave their mark upon readers.

In the first short story, "The Shawl," readers meet Rosa Lublin, her baby daughter Magda, and her niece Stella after they are already in a concentration camp. Perhaps one of the most eloquent elements of this piece is that Ozick never has to mention the names or events, but can evoke the terror and the time with her details. One knows this is Holocaust fiction without having to be told it is. Rosa clings to her baby, hides her in fact in her shawl, a shawl which nourishes her daughter when she cannot. She dreads the day when Magda will grow and can walk, for surely she will be discovered, as one day she is. Rosa imagines Stella to be jealous of Magda and perhaps even blames her for the horrific death that befalls her daughter when she is found out, a death that is not overly described but poignant nonetheless.

In "Rosa" readers are reacquainted with Rosa Lublin, thirty years later, as she lives the life of a seeming mad woman in Florida. Stella lives in New York and supports her aunt, but she has been able to move on with her life while Rosa cannot. Rosa lives for the past, writing letters to Magda as she pretends that her daughter survived the camps, is married and happy. She dodges inquiries from researchers who want to examine her "survivor" mentality and her travails. To her, the past is all too present and she cannot seem to move forward, even when a fellow Jew is clearly interested in her. The langauge of "Rosa" is sparse and quasi-philosophic, as Rosa asks questions that cannot readily be answered.

"The Shawl" is a beautifully written account of the Holocaust and its aftermath. It is a quick-paced read, for readers will want to know what happens to Magda and what has become of Rosa later in life. Rosa and her wanderings come to vivid life under Ozick's poetic prose, and readers will surely want to know more when her story is done.

The Shawl (1989) by Cynthia Ozick was originally published as two separate pieces in The New Yorker; the short story "The Shawl" (1980) and the novella "Rosa" (1983). "The Shawl" is a harrowing tale about Rosa who conceals her fifteen month old daughter, Magna, under a shawl in order to hide her from the soldiers on their way to and in a concentration camp to save Magna's life. The magical shawl provides nourishment and pacification for the infant when Rosa can no longer provide either. Rosa's niece Stella, a fourteen year old girl, has made the journey with them. One cold day, Stella is unable to bear the cold and takes the shawl from Magna. Ultimately, this leads to Magna's discovery and horrific murder as a soldier tosses Magna into an electric fence right in front of Rosa's eyes. In order not to be killed, Rosa "took Magna's shawl and filled her own mouth with it, stuffed it in and stuffed it in, until she was swallowing up the wolf's screech and tasting the cinnamon and almond depth of Magna's saliva; and Rosa drank Magna's shawl until it dried" (Ozick 10).

"Rosa" takes places approximately thirty-five years later when Rosa has moved to Florida after destroying her shop. The ghost of Magna now lives inside Rosa and the shawl, haunting her forever. In an interview with prior Chairman Dana Gioia at the National Endowment for the Arts, Ozick states, "The Shawl began with a line, one sentence in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. This one sentence told of a real event, about a baby being thrown against an electrified fence. And that stayed with me and stayed with me..." (neabigread.org).