5 comments about Schindler's Legacy.

1. This book of course takes off where the movie left off. It tracks down and interviews a select group of the survivors on Shindler's famous list. Many of whom of course refused to be interviewed, others would consent to do so only anonymously, and still others only after intense prodding. All led interesting, but as one would expect, unusually tormented lives. Most were successful; were in the twilight of their lives; and somehow had managed to put the experience behind them, that is as much as that could be done - meaning most of them buried the experiences deep in their subconscious, not to be disturbed except in their dreams or under extreme stress or duress.
   
   Alex Rosen's story resonated the most with me and was the most interesting of the lot. Alex is my age, and was the youngest among the survivors, and was the one depicted in the movie as the young Jewish ghetto denizen. Age-wise I can empathize with him and imagine, vicariously, what it must have been like to go through that experience at his age. His story is interesting for several other reasons as well: First he is the one in this book who tried to make sense out of the holocaust experience as an existential, if not as a theological problem -- not at all unlike the way that Elie Wiesel and Victor Frankl did in their books, but Alex takes an entirely different approach. He believes there are knowable answers too the questions many Jews posed in the aftermath of the holocaust experience: Why me? Why the Jews? And why was it so horrible? His belief, that he can find the answers to these questions is expressed best on page 23:
   
   "If we take the premise that there is a God, then everything that happens is just, because it's His game not mine. There has to be a legitimate reason by His way of looking at it, not by mine. There has to be a legitimate explanation - that we can understand through reason - why it happened the way it happened, why all those people died and I am still alive. But I don't know those answers right now. I can't tell you. It's knowable; it's not one of the mysteries of life. It's an answer that will eventually dawn on me."
   
   Second, his story is interesting because he eventually divorced his Jewish wife and married a black one, with which together they raised three children from split families, doing so in Queens New York. His primary family, of Jewish holocaust survivors, incredibly, and incongruously, never quite forgave him for committing this violation of the America's racist (and apparently Jewish) protocol? But finally, he gives an account of his experience that adds a poignant depth and meaning that again parallels that given by Frankl in his book, one that makes an outsider almost understand what the holocaust was like.
   
   As he puts it on page 26:
   
   "When the war ended, the trauma set in, because you are now among a different species of human being. You think: "So if this is life now, what the hell was that? What the hell was that all about? It's difficult for people to understand, up until that time, I was perfectly well-adjusted in all that misery. I never had a sleepless night [in the camps]. Yes, I was beaten. Yes, there was trouble. Yes, I was scared. But this was life, and you were scared when you lived. It was dangerous. It was hard. You saw ugliness. You saw women beat up. You saw people shot, killed, hanged. You saw dead bodies carried in wheelbarrows. You saw horrible things. But this was normal life."
   
   The subtext of course is that: When there appear to be no easy way out, human beings simply adjust; they adapt and find ways to live with even the worse kinds of dehumanization. They do so simply because they have been socialized to do so; and simply because it then becomes a normalized way of life for them.
   
   In this one poignant statement, Alex reveals the secret of, and the template for, repetition of the holocaust: According to this statement, it means simply that we don't really need the Nazis and their concentration camps for the holocaust to recur. It can occur almost anywhere and in any society, and at any time. It is simply a process of colonizing the mind of those targeted through tyranny, and back it up with force, and an ideology of racism or other forms of intolerance, and the world of humanity simply shuts down altogether, period.
   
   Five Stars.



2. One of the most popular films of 1993 was Steven Spielburgýs Schindlerýs List, the story of
   one manýs fight against the Nazi killing machine that we know today as the Holocaust. As the
   film closed, the audience saw many of the survivors and their families as they gathered at
   Oskar Schindlerýs grave to pay homage to this ýRighteous Gentile.ý

   Like many others in the audience, I wondered what had happened to those men and women
   after the war and the experiences that had not made the movie. Now I know. In Schindlerýs
   Legacy, Elinor Brecher has shared the fascinatingýand horribleýstories of over 40 of those
   who eventually came to live in America.

   They tell, for example, of the almost random nature of their survival. Several tell of times
   when the German guards lined up their work detail and shot every fifth person. Many were
   away from home on some kind of errand when the Gestapo came and took away the rest of
   their family. We read of Celena Karp who was selected by the notorious Josef Menegle for the
   line heading to the gas chambers. For some reason, he decided to remove some from the
   doomed line. When Celena reached him the second time, she begged him, ýLet me go,ý and
   for some inexplicable reason, he did!

   In these accounts, we learn again of the horror of the concentration camps. Remember the boy
   who survived several searches by hiding in the filth of the latrine? This was no product of the
   writerýs imagination; Roman Ferber tells his own story in his own words. Others relate the
   beatings they survived, the rides in unheated and unventilated cattle cars, of the friends they
   carried to the ovens. That they survived is nothing less than a miracle.

   These arenýt just the stories of the camps, however. We learn more about the people and the
   lives they lived before the warýthe young couple who married only days before their arrest,
   the woman who had to give her new-born son to a Catholic family in order to survive herself,
   and the men and women who watched in horror as their parents and their brothers and sister
   were dragged away or shot before their eyes.

   After these experiences, what kinds of people did they turn out to be? Some have never
   forgiven the German people for what happened, while others have miraculously put the past
   behind them. And some are so traumatized that they have never been able to watch the film
   based on their experiences.

   This is a book that needs to be read!




3. Oskar Schindler, one remarkable man who outwitted Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to save more Jews from the gas chambers than most of the heroic rescuers during WWII.

   Oskar Schindler was one of only a handful who surfaced from the chaos, and generations will remember him for what he did ...

   When asked, Schindler told that his metamorphosis during the war was sparked by the shocking immensity of the Final Solution. In his own words: "I hated the brutality, the sadism, and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could, what I had to do, what my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."

   Oskar Schindler died in Frankfurt on the 9th of October, 1974, at an age of 66. From 1939 to the day he died he was such in love with his Jewish people, that he wanted to be buried in Jerusalem. His friend, a Schindler-Jew, Poldek Pfefferberg asked him shortly before he died, why he wanted to be buried here. He answered :"My children are here ....."




4. I'm stressing this to all, that this book is one of the greatest books I've ever read. It's very intense and real. Because of the way these Holocaust survivors explain their experiences at the concentration camps, it makes you feel as if you could've been there. The way that these survivors have achieved great goals in there lives after the Holocaust, is amazing. I recommend this book for everyone to read to get a better understanding of the Holocaust. This book is truely amazing.



5. I was really moved by this. It was almost as riveting as another book I read recently called Hitler's Silent Victims. I recomend this book highly.

1 comments about My Life in Three Acts.

1. Helen Hayes whose life story would be fascinating to all fans of Broadway and/or Hollywood pretty much squanders this effort by traducing a large assortment of individuals. What makes this badmouthing all the more unpleasant is the fact that most of her targets were deceased at the time of its publication and unable to present their side of the story.

   While the recurring instances of charcter assasination are the book's biggest liability, the First Lady of the American Theater also comes off as somewhat self-centered and shallow.

   Those who respect the many noble actions which typified Helen Hayes' final decades will be disappointed and likely disturbed by this autobiography that does not do her memory justice.

No comments about Coming Through.

1 comments about So Me.

1. Graham Norton gives us a truly hilarious insight into his life so far.
   
   There are amusing anecdotes throughout the book particulary about his time at Cork University. His disastrous attempts at becoming a serious actor (Father Ted excluded) through to the meteoric rise of his comedy career.
   
   Graham says that this is "a romp through a journey from living in a a cockroach-infested council flat to buying Claudia Schiffer's townhouse in Manhattan."
   
   You don't have to be a fan of Norton to enjoy this offering. All in all it is a real success story.

2 comments about Greatness to spare; the heroic sacrifices of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

1. This is one of my favorite books about the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Very few books really delve into the fate of these brave men that risked all by signing this document. It is necessary to understand all that the signers went though in support of the Declaration...some were imprisoned, some had all their lands destroyed, and some even lost family members to stand behind the document. This book should be required reading, so that others can learn the history of these men, and in doing so learn the history of the conflict, and the steps taken to end it. To read this book is to understand what drove the signers to make the desicion they did, and what helped them stay strong in the face of such horrifying possibilities.



2. If we fail to appreciate the quality of our founding fathers and the sacrifices they made, we will not understand the greatness of their creation. The audio Greatness to Spare follows the roster of the signers of the Declaration of Independence colony by colony, telling of the risks they took when they supported this fledgling nation. Although some of the information is common knowledge to history buffs, there is still much to learn from this audio. The quality of the reader's voice is very good, a pleasant one to listen to. This tape is an excellent addition to a private library or to the colonial historian. And the price is right!

No comments about A Golfer's Life.

No comments about In and Out of the Forest (Reminiscence).

No comments about A Romany in the Country.

5 comments about Heart of America, The.

1. Don't bother with this one if you want to read about his experiences cycling. Get it if you want to reinforce your Christian faith, or be converted. Unfortunately, I was interested in the cycling angle. This book is not much more than an advertisement for Focus on the Family, the author's employer.



2. Even though I am a fan of Focus on the Family, and Mike Trout was the co-host of the broadcast when I read this book, I found it did not hold my attention. His descriptions of the places he stopped could have been enlarged, as well as the people he met and the sights he saw. He was accompanied by his son in law, and planned the coast to coast route which was not necessarily the easiest, but one which passed through Colorado, home of Focus on the Family.

   I agree that this could have been a full length magazine article instead of a book and certainly I would encourage readers to borrow it or check it out of the library. It is not a keeper in my opinion. Sorry Mike, I liked you as co-host, but as author, well, you are just so so.




3. If you are looking for a technical/tour guide type manual about crossing the country by bicycle, skip this one. If you are looking book written by an evangelical Christian bicyclist about his journey across our great country, this is the one. Mike Trout, co-host of the Focus on the Family radio program, shares his experiences as he meets other Christians while doing something many of us only dream about. The hospitality and graciousness of the people he met along the way, gave me as a reader a renewed faith in the values that made this country such a great place to live. Some readers may be turned off or offended by the continual reference to scripture through out this book. But to the true believers, it is an example of how we should do all things in our lives with reverence to God and scripture. This is a book to be enjoyed be both cyclist and non-cyclist alike. The only criticisms I can find, I wish this book had more technical information, i.e. a route map, etc. and more detail about the eastern half of the trip. But as said before, there are other books written for those purposes. Another excellent book about cross-country bike travel is Over the Hills, by David Lamb. Written by a newspaper journalist, it also chronicles the trip of a man approaching mid life and unbarring on a life-changing journey. Very similar to Trout's book, but with out the religious overtones.



4. Living life to the fullest is something we all talk about but rarley do. This book is a great testimony of a man who actually did just that. My husband and I are coming up on age 50 and have talked about doing something adventurous for the past several years. Mike's book has definitely encouraged and motivated us to step up our plans. There is so much to experience in life if we just take that first step. We have made arrangements to backpack across the entire Appalachian trail next year. I can't wait. This book is a great tribute to all of us who dare to step out of our box a little, and to the great people of this country. I highly recommend it!



5. I purchased this book with interest since I, too, have taken cross-country bike trips. And I did find that two of Trout's messages rang clear. Those being that a person does need to pursue challenges of some kind or risk being absorbed by our spectator society, and that at heart people are basically kind and good-willed. I also found that some of Trout's "people he met" stories were interesting to read, and did bring back some personal memories. I was, however, disappointed with the overall flavor of the trip and the book. Trout's concern with getting to the end in as few days as possible was a little disconcerting to me. He needed to "stop and smell the flowers" a little more. Also, his constant mention of who was paying for his nightly motel room and the frequent credit given to the Focus on the Family ministry was a little too self-serving. In addition, I would have to agree with a previous reviewer in that there was too much relianc! e on Scriptural quotes and sharing of the Focus on the Family/Christian party line. This 190-plus page book would have been a much better magazine article than a book since there were not nearly enough fresh insights or stories to fill a book. I wish that Trout would have spent more time writing about his feelings as he looked up at a New Mexico sky, or as he talked to a Kansas farmer. I encourage Trout to keep journeying and writing. Only next time, I hope that he writes a little more for himself and not for the Walmart/Focus on the Family audience.

No comments about Run Ma Run.