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Original poster

"its me david" - i need help

41 replies

withagoat · 07/03/2011 13:57

where and WHEN was the conc camp he was escaping for - turkey?
and at one point he says he wants books dated pre 1917 so "they " havent read them

?Russia

hayulp

OP posts:
PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:53

Is David Jewish? I though he wasn't but was in some way connected, perhaps having Jewish relatives or mentors.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:30

book

book about the Bulgarian Jews in WW2

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:27

oh I see so he has escaped from a communist labour camp? I wondered because Bulgaria did not really have those kind of Nazi concentration camps to my (admittedly limited) knowledge. I know they had labour camps to which Jewish men were sent - but the history of Bulgaria's resistance to anti-semitism in WW2 is quite well-known.

Maybe there were concentration camps there I don't know, I thought there were not.

PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:24

I always thought it was somewhere in southern Yugoslavia.

I think the writer has been very careful to make it a non-Nazi prison camp. It's more like a Communist labour camp.

The first place David heads to, IIRC, is the port of Salonika, which is not all that far from the northern border with the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia started becoming a unified country after the 1st World War, and became a repressive quasi-Communist regime after the 2nd WW. (Again, IIRC!).

This timescale fits fairly neatly with the story.

That's my theory, anyway.

nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:19

no, i know.
Grin

was just adding to the debate. Grin

iskra · 07/03/2011 14:15

Yes - the title in the thread title is wrong Smile

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:13

thanks, was googling the wrong title. Read it a long time ago and couldn't remember that much detail

iskra · 07/03/2011 14:09

nickeprincess, yes however concentration camps didn't really exist like that before the death of Victoria (apart from the camps used by the British for the Boers in South Africa), & there is a clear Communist aspect.

Here's the Wiki page - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_David - it's not very good.

If you google it various book reviews etc come up for it though. Nothing particularly illuminating.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:06

Interesting. Can you link to the wiki page you read? I tried but couldn't find it on there for some reason (just out of interest...)

nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:06

but then. iskra - it could have been set before 1908. (or whatever year Victoria died - i can't remember Shock )

iskra · 07/03/2011 14:05

Also according to the internet it's set after 1953 (because there is a reference to there being a queen in England).

However, & parts of the internet agree with me, I actually think it's not set anywhere or any place - it's a generalised tale if you like.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:03

Bulgaria?

Wouldn't have thought of that tbh

iskra · 07/03/2011 14:03

according to Wikipedia he is escaping from a camp in Bulgaria.

ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:02

I didn't think there was any clue to it in the book that I picked up on at least

iskra · 07/03/2011 14:01

I love that book, & I have always wondered the same thing.

nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 13:59

i thought the point was that you didn't ever find out where he started and what year it was?
Confused