5 comments about Himmler.

1. As one who reads WWII history as a hobby, I was a bit disappointed in this book. A biography it is not. This book is more of a history of the SS starring Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. After reading this biography, I still do not know what made the man tick.
   
   The introduction itself almost made me stop reading the book as it was a long-winded passage about the inquisition and how it related to the Nazis and Heinrich. Therefore, I skipped the intro and started reading the book.
   
   The first half of the book covered lots of his childhood and early history with the Nazis. The first half elaborated way too much on items I did not think were important...such as a home for women who could become impregnated by the master race, and so on. It just didn't do anything for me.
   
   The only saving grace for this book was the second half. It related entirely to the war and Himmler's involvement with the prison camps, round up and extermination of the Jews. This was riveting reading. And it is only this half of the book that saves it from being a bore.
   
   The book abruptly ends with Himmler's death. However, nothing more is ever said about the post-war lives of his wife, his mistress, and his kids by both. I think this would have added more depth to the book.
   
   Nevertheless, the book is worth one read, but I would not read it again. I didn't find anything more here than I do in other books about the SS.



2. I attempted to read this book several years ago and found it to be utter rubbish!! This book is worthy of the "National Enquirer" as opposed to a serious biography of Heinrich Himmler. Himmler is a subject worthy of a biography for his infamous career but Padfield's work is so full of inaccuracies on so many levels I tossed the book in the trash after the first few chapters it was so bad.
   A better but not nearly as lengthy biography can be found in Heinz Hoehne's "The Order of the Deaths Head." This book however is nonsense.



3. The definitive biography on Himmler. The author describes one of the most terrifying character in history in a text that is at the same time informative and objective. From his youth as a worker in a chicken farm to his death by suicide shortly after his arrest by the British, we see the development of a cold-blooded murderer...well, not so cold-blooded, since he appears to have nearly fainted when he saw for the first and only time the actions of his henchmen from the Einsatzgruppen first hand.
   Himmler's numerous speeches, whether secret or public, form the most chilling reading.
   A brilliant piece of historic literature, this book is indispensable for a clear understanding of how evil can take the improbable look of a bland, bespectacled schoolmaster. Himmler definitely embodies what has been called "the banality of evil".



4. Upfront, I have to admit that I did enjoy this thoroughly researched book. This biography has a lot of information not only on its subject (Himmler) but on Germans, Nazism in power, "the final solution", and the other leading characters of the Nazi regime, as well. Some sentences, indeed, full passages, are rather abstruse. There is a widespread use of speculation by the author regarding Himmler's motivations and actions. Mr. Padfield also engages into detailed psychoanalysis, mainly regarding Himmler, without being clear how qualified he might be on this field. Overall, this book is worth reading if you are truly interested in this historical period.



5. Peter Padfield's bio of Himmler is one of the most thoroughly researched books I've ever read. Padfield turns all his literary siege engines on the enimatic personality of the fourth and most important Reichsfuhrer-SS, attempting to crack the Himmler facade and present the world's most notorious secret policeman in all his human complexity. As much is as possible with such a cypher, he succeeds.
   
   Padfield's book is wide-ranging, covering not merely Himmler but his development of the SS Order from a 290 man bodyguard detail into a quasi-religious empire numbering in the millions. Special emphasis is placed on his relationships with top Nazi leaders, as well as his chief subordinates: Schellenberg, Wolff, Eicke, Kaltenbrunner, and most importantly Reinhard Heydrich. Padfield's aim is not merely to account for Himmler, but for the deeds of his organization. Considering the enormity of his task, he does a pretty impressive job: he's especially skilled at following cause to effect, i.e., of showing how Himmler's bureacratic decisions affected the lives of millions of people, often by ending them. He's unflinching in his depictions of concentration camps, extermination centers, slave camps, and the mass executions of the Einsatgruppen, but more importantly he does an excellent job of putting them in context. They are part, but not all, of the SS mission, and Padfield shows how the many responsibilities of the organization blended together to serve Hitler's wishes as they were percieved by the "Reichsheine."
   
   A good bit of the book is conjecture on Padfield's part -- conjecture as to what was said during certain conversations, conjecture as to what Himmler was thinking or the reasons behind his actions. Padfield deserves strong praise for pain-stakingly pointing out where he is speculating and where he is recounting the facts: a lot of authors can't seem to tell the difference between fact and opinion. On the other hand, Padfield isn't shy about trashing other historians who disagree with his opinions on the evolution of the Holocaust. He usually prefaces their opinions with the words, "Some historiuans, apparently in all seriousness, maintain..."
   
   The book does have weaknesses. Padfield often dismisses out of hand the accounts of certain Nazis when they disagree with his version of events, then unhestitatingly accepts them later on when they jibe. His prose bogs down on more than one occasion: he seems to have a love-affair with run-on sentences that leave the reader (this reader anyway) exhausted and confused. His choice of phrasing is sometimes poor, obscuring the meaning of his passages, and there are a number of small editing mistakes such as incorrect dates or missing letters(probably the publisher's fault and not the author's). More annoying is the strange sloppiness of detail on his description of military events. It's as if his huge effort to research every aspect of Himmler/the SS left him too weary to proof his passages on the war for easily avoidable errors. He writes, for example, that the SS Panzer Corps penetrated the Soviet lines to a depth of 100 miles at Kursk. Uh, no, Peter, it didn't. If it had, the Germans would have won the battle and maybe the war, since the Kursk Salient was only 80-odd miles wide. If this seems like nit-picking, I mention it only because it is far from the only example. In another passage he says the German Ardennes offensive was supported by the fire of 10,000 assault guns. Again, sloppiness: an assault gun is a turretless tank, not an artillery piece, and the Germans certainly did not have anything close to 10,000 guns. A quick check of any coffee-table book on that battle would give the accurate figures, but Padfield didn't bother.
   
   What Padfield left out of Himmler's military career is also interesting. He makes virtually no mention of the "North Wind" offensive launched on Strasbourg in January, 1945, which occurred under Himmler's command. Though he spends much of the latter part of the book discussing the Nazi hope of engineering a split between the various Allies, he makes no mention of how Himmler's attack nearly accomplished this, by creating a violent disagreement between the Americans and the French over whether Strasbourg should be abandoned. Similarly, he leaves out the role of Panzerbrigade 150, the SS unit equipped with American uniforms and equipment, during the Battle of the Bulge. Some of this may simply have been editing decisions, but the ommissions are notable.
   
   Another problem is opinionated psychological theorizing. Padfield does not simply aim to recount Himmler's life and doings and let the reader infer what he may from them; he constantly, and sometimes annoyingly, tries to probe Himmler's psyche, and the psyche of all the top Nazis. This is tempting and to be expected on some level -- obviously we want to understand Himmler's motivations -- but any psychological profile is speculation and inference (the so called SWAG or scientific wild-ass guess), and Pafield plays amateur psychological detective to a tiresome degree.
   
   A final complaint: the abrupt ending of the book. "Himmler" has no afterword; it stops literally at the moment of his death, and I never did find out what happened to Himmler's wife, his mistress, or his children by both.
   
   Having made these criticisms, I have to say that "Himmler" is still a very significant book. I was fascinated by the bold and often contraversial take Padfield had on major events, by his willingness to attack commonly accpeted versions of events (such as the supposedly poor relationship between Bormann and Himmler)
   by his exhaustive research on every aspect of the SS and by his insightful thoughts on Himmler's relationship to Hitler. I did not find "Himmler" an easy read, but it is an important one.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

2 comments about In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen.

1. "In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen" may be the most amazing, gripping book I've read. On many pages I was gasping or crying; my heart was pounding, my gut, churning. Oswald Rufeisen is one of the most unforgettable human beings I've ever encountered in the pages of a book. That this book is not more widely read, known, and available is unfortunate, to say the least.
   
   Had this book been fiction, not only would I have never been able to accord it willing suspension of disbelief, I would have protested its publication. The story is that outlandish.
   
   Oswald Rufeisen was born to an undistinguished couple. His mother was an old maid; an apparent arranged marriage wed her to a younger, distant cousin. The family was poor and often in debt. They lived in a provincial backwater. Their first child died in infancy. The second child, Oswald, was short, unobtrusive, and not especially handsome.
   
   Oswald's family's life changed forever, along with millions of others, on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Rufeisen family hit the road, along with other evacuees. His parents, too exhausted to go on, stopped. Oswald would discover, after the war, that his parents probably were murdered in Auschwitz.
   
   Oswald and his brother had begun their escape from Nazis in southwest Poland; they kept moving east and north, to Lwow, now in Ukraine, and then to Wilno, now in Lithuania.
   
   This region, the "kresy," was a site of deadly crossfire. As Germans advanced from the West, Soviets advanced from the East. Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians felt sometimes deadly hostility toward Poles. Nazis and Soviets did all they could to divide and conquer. Jews, of course, were targeted for complete extermination.
   
   Eventually, through a series of incredible coincidences, Oswald Rufeisen, a Jewish teenager escaping the Nazis, adrift in this terrifying ocean of conflict, became a Jewish slave laborer for Nazis, an SS interpreter, the organizer of a Ghetto revolt and escape, a forest-dwelling partisan, a Catholic monk, and then priest, and, finally, he would make aliyah to Israel, and thereby challenge the Law of Return and concepts of both Jewish identity and the nature of Christianity.
   
   The book does not depict Rufeisen as someone seeking adventure or heroism; in fact, author Tec reports he resisted publicity. Rather, fate seems to be a palpable force in his life. When he was a slave laborer, cobbling shoes for Nazis who threatened him with death were he ever to get sick and stop being productive, a Polish peasant passing in a wagon made eye contact with him. That peasant invited him onto his wagon, warned him that the Nazis were murdering all Jews, and invited him to hide out on the peasant's farm.
   
   Through that unsolicited rescue, Rufeisen eventually began to pass as a German. One event followed another, and finally he became the right-hand-man of the Nazi in charge of eliminating Jews from the district. Photos of Rufeisen reveal a boy with marked Semitic features, and, in fact, people were constantly calling him out as Jewish, and yet his German was so fluent, and his manners so reflective of German culture, that even those who met him face to face would, in later years, remark, "Oh, Oswald could pass as a German because he was tall, blond, and Nordic looking." Even a visit to a public bath, where a certain giveaway feature of Jewish manhood was on full display, did not ruin his disguise.
   
   That fate seemed to play a major role in his life is not to belittle Rufeisen's heroism. Again, though very much not the stereotypical dashing or vainglorious action hero, Rufeisen's basic, common decency caused him to do heroic things, from carefully laying aside one piece of bread from his meager food ration so that he could share it with a friend, to organizing a ghetto revolt under the nose of his Nazi superior.
   
   The moral jigsaw puzzle of the SS scenes boggles the mind. At one point, Rufeisen orchestrated the killing of a retarded boy in order to save many others from death. Rufeisen speaks of the genuine respect and affection between him and his Nazi superior.
   
   After the war, Rufeisen became, not just a Christian, but a monk. This caused his Jewish friends much distress. While admitting his wartime heroism, and the excellent mind of a man who survived by his wits and was fluent in eight languages, they attributed his Christianity, alternately, to stupidity, mental illness, childishness, and other factors that reveal an unfortunate amount of prejudice.
   
   Publication of this book lead to England's first war crimes trial. 84 year old Szymon Serafinowicz who immigrated to England after the war, was exposed by the book. He was judged to be suffering from Alzheimer's and was not tried.
   
   A student of the Holocaust cannot help but notice this book's demonstration of a frequently mentioned principle: while it took only one non-Jew to denounce a Jew, it took many to support that Jew's survival. Again and again, Rufeisen was fed, sheltered, and protected by Poles, Belorussians, and others, though they know him to be Jewish, and though those who defied Nazi law faced death. In one instance, a fellow hitchhiker Rufeisen had just met stepped forward and vouched for his not being Jewish. Even a known collaborator declined to denounce Rufeisen. The man who eventually did hand Rufeisen over to Nazis was himself Jewish. Perhaps he thought this would protect him; it didn't; that man was almost immediately killed.
   
   This anecdotal evidence jibes with Gunnar S. Paulsson's 2003 book, "Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw." Paulsson, child of a Holocaust survivor and a fellow at the US Holocaust Museum, argues that approximately seventy to ninety thousand non-Jewish Warsaw residents, in one way or another, made existence possible for 28,000 Jews who lived hidden lives in non-Jewish Warsaw during Nazi occupation.



2. It is seldom that one can view the depth of a human soul written by such a talented author. The book reads like a novel but has the pull of truth. I found it difficult to put down and wanted to share the incredible experience with others. It is worth the time to find a copy of the book. But, I warn you, you will want to own the book after reading it.

5 comments about Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz.

1. "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz" by Richard Newman with Karen Kirtley is the kind of biography I enjoy most. The author provides the reader with not only a fascinating story of the Rose family but also brings to life the time in which these people lived. We see Alma' s life as a privileged young girl and woman. The many twists and turns of fate, poor judgement and unfortunate circumstances brings her to Auschwitz toward the end of WW11. Her time in the concentration camp reveals a remarkable individual existing under the most inhuman conditions. Her talent and strength of character resulted in her saving the lives of many woman who were members in the women's orchestra, of which she was the leader. An excellent, informative and ultimately powerful read.



2. Alma Rose was an incredible human being. After spending the last few evenings immersed in her biography "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz", I was touched by her ability to use her violin to transcend the evil around her.
   Alma was born into the musical elite of turn-of-the-last-century Vienna, the capital of arts and music in Europe. Her uncle was Gustav Mahler and her father, Arnold Rose, the famous concertmaster and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. She had a fabled childhood surrounded by musicians and artists.
   
   Alma studied violin from her father at an early age and later with Sevcik. She toured Europe as concertmistress of an all women's orchestra she organized, and was briefly married to violin virtuoso Vasa Prihoda.
   
   All of the fame and glamour ended however when she was captured and interned in the dreaded Auschwitz. Fearing that she was about to be eliminated she asked for her last wish to be able to play the violin. Word quickly spread that she was the Alma Rose of the Rose Quartet and before she knew it, the camp supervisor, assigned her to lead a women's orchestra. For many of the players, the orchestra was the only chance of survival. Alma took pity on people who auditioned and tried to fit them in, whether it was as accordion player, or guitarist, or if they had no playing talent, as copyist and scribe. She took her job seriously, practicing 10-12 hours a day in addition to giving "concerts". All this was under the constant stress and threat of elimination if they did not prove their worthiness to the SS in charge.
   
   Alma maintained a musicality, and in those moments while playing music, they were transported out of their nightmare and back to the preWar Vienna, playing in a cafe. The music also affected both SS and prisoners alike, and on the Sunday concerts, prisoners strained to hear and grasp a small slice of beauty while SS overlords sat in the front row weeping with emotion. How they could love music so much and then turn around and kill mercilessly was beyond the comprehension of the survivors.
   
   Alma saved the lives of many women, and even though she perished, her bravery and dedication lives on in the stories of the survivors she helped.
   
   The author Richard Newman based the book on firsthand knowledge, primary sources such as letters and interviews with survivors, relatives, friends and contemporaries. He maintained a historical accuracy and honest portrayal of Alma's life. You will be touched while unable to grasp the enormity of the horrors that faced the people who were interned in the death camps.
   
   I read this book alongside with "Night" by Elie Wiesel who arrived at Auschwitz shortly before Alma's death. Both books are highly recommended although extremely sad, they show the resilience of the human spirit in absolutely horrible conditions.



3. Alma Rose was born to musical royalty in Vienna (the daughter of famed violinist Arnold Rose and niece of Gustav Mahler). She studied with distinction at the Vienna Conservatory and the Vienna State Academy, and consequently enjoyed a very respectable and successful musical career. In 1932 Alma formed a women's orchestra (Vienna Waltzing Girls) and toured throughout Europe. But like so many others of her class and background, she was totally caught off guard by the Nazi onslaught. Courageously assisting her family's flight from the Nazi's antisemitic pogroms, she was nonetheless caught and sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. There she took a group of terrified and untrained women and transformed them into an orchestra whose music saved them from being summarily gassed by their Nazi captors. Forty women were to survive that horrific place because of their participation in Alma's prisoner orchestra. But Alma herself was to die of illness in the camps before they were able to be liberated by the Allies. A welcome contribution to Holocaust studies, as well as a brilliantly presented biography of a gifted musician, Alma Rose: Vienna To Auschwitz is a memorial to a gifted musician and a testament to Alma's personal struggle to help as many women survive as she could. It is also a damning indictment of the Nazi horror and an effective counter to the pernicious attempts of historical revisionists to suppress both the atrocities and the courage of those dark times.



4. Richard Newman has spent many years working on this book and it paid off, there can't be a biography on hardly anyone that is better researched. And he has written it in a way that doesn't judge the person, he relates the facts but doesn't try any psychological insight. He leaves this up to the reader. A beautiful, compelling book on a woman that used a difficult position to save as many lives as possible. If ever anyone deserved a monument, it is Alma Rosé. Richard Newman`s book lays the foundation. I will publish the German version in Fall 2002.



5. My review is best expressed in a letter to the authors. While the letter speaks little of the content of the story, it does the reflections of the reader:

   I have just finished your book, Alma Rosé, Vienna to Auschwitz and felt compelled to write a word of thanks for such an excellent book. I have lived in Vienna for 23 years and in our early years I walked by the Rosé house in the Pyrkergasse each day, taking our oldest to the Volkschule. Of course, at that time, I had no idea the importance of number 23. Through your book and others of Viennese history I have gained a profound sense of history that a midwest American, growing up in the suburbs, rarely has a chance to learn.

   We have since moved from the 19th district, but each time I am in the city the enormity of life that has gone on before me deeply tugs at my soul. The stones I walk on have carried the lives of so many, each woven into a history of joy and often of utter loss and evil.

   I believe your book was one of those that has allowed me to enter into a life past. Through it I have gained new perspective that the joy and beauty I now enjoy is not without the marring of tragedy and sorrow of many who were innocent. I was also able with my family to visit Auschwitz this summer. The visit has left a lasting impact on our minds and it certainly allowed me to have even deeper sense of personal presence as I read your book. The immensity of the tragedy leaves one lost for thoughts and words. The life of Alma Rosé puts a reality to that part of history that seems unbelievable, yet was played out in the very places I have lived and walked.

   I visited the Rosé grave in Grinzing last week and noted that Alma's name is inscribed on the headstone (unfortunately, the date is 4/4/44 and not 5/4/44). In honor of her courage and for the lives she most certainly helped spare, I left a memorial candle on her grave. I did not seem fitting to leave the grave without some acknowledgement and sign of respect of her family's life.

   Again, thank you for the fine research and excellent presentation of her life. The book must also be considered a memorial not just to one life, but to many who's stories will never be told.

2 comments about My Mother's Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl.

1. This is a beautiful book where holocaust experiences are written in a simple and profound manner. It is not morbid. It is a very human story.



2. Anna Ornstein was my first psychiatry teacher in medical school, so that is my bias. When this short, powerful, articulate woman entered a lecture hall full of hypercritical American medical students like myself, what impressed me most was her courage. We were a tough audience of concrete-minded scientific reductionists, and she came with her heavily accented English and provoked us to think about feelings and the meaning of mind and emotions when we, lost and overwhelmed in a world of memorizing anatomical structures, metabolic pathways, and Nernst equations, were least ready for it.
   
   As I learned more about the work of Prof. Ornstein and her equally impressive husband, I came to understand why she wasn't the least bit intimidated by our sophomoric arrogance (we were often merciless to lecturers).
   
   The kindness and attentiveness of this short giant of a teacher, therapist, and theoretician, was equally as present, and most visually reflected in her strikingly bright, beautiful eyes that look like they miss nothing. (Yes, you detect the student's crush here.) What she and her husband have taught this poor student, as well as many good ones during their estimable careers, is the complexity and healing power of empathy. To have survived the holocaust and devoted a career to the study and teaching of empathy! Can there be a more powerful triumph?! Yet here is another; this wonderful little book.
   
   This book is a gift of deeply personal remembrances. They are at the same time universal in their emotional power, because of Dr. Ornstein's ability to use words to bring her experience very near to the reader. She integrates in simple, eloquent prose the texture and emotions of the experiences. The imagery is as powerful as film, no, more so.
   
   I cried my way through many of these memories. Though they were not my own, they were brought so close by Prof. Ornstein's words it felt as though they were. The tragedy that befell the Ornstein's and so many others, lost and surviving, uplifts and enriches as much is it hurts and warns. She has achieved her goal; those lost will not be totally lost because she has helped us to remember.
   
   The illustrations are works of art, beautiful, powerful as well, and are a complement to the word pictures which nonetheless stand on there own.
   
   Readers of this beautiful book will not forget these painful and beautiful pictures, seen through Anna Ornstein's eyes.

3 comments about The Long Voyage (Tusk Ivories).

1. Jorge Semprun was born in Spain but has lived most of his life in France. At a young age he joined the communist party and while active at the French resistance was captured by the Nazis. "The Long Voyage" is an autobiographical narrative, concentrating on the author's experience while being transported in a train to Buchenwald. Contrary to most Holocaust literature, this book is not a compilation of horrors and atrocities, but a stream-of consciousness description of a journey to the unknown, when time has ceased to exist, when "past," "present," and "future" all have lost meaning. This is what makes Semprun's narrative so interesting. It is not the logical sequence of events that dictates the narrative, but the mind's attempt to understand and, at the same time, escape reality.



2. I read this book because I was, and still am, interested in what happened during the Holocaust. I was hoping that I would find a lot of new and interesting things in this book, but I was disappointed. The book focuses on the tiresome journey to the camp, instead of what happens at the camp. The plot is also panoramic, and not episodic, so it is hard to understand which happens first, later, or at the present. The author uses really long sentences that is hard to understand, and extremely repetitive. However, the repetition functions wonderfully as an emphasis to what the author is feeling, or trying to express. Overall, not a bad read. Just takes a lot of time and patience to really absorb the novel.



3. This is a wonderful and moving novel about a French Resistance fighter of Spanish origin who is captured by the Nazis and sent to Buchenwald. It is brilliantly written, and I would recommend it to anyone intested in good writing, the Holocaust or the human spirit.

5 comments about The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir.

1. The only reason I put this book down was to reflect. This story is so important - I will do as another reviewer suggests - "This book is to be read and passed down to our children to read.
   Very powerful.
   A suspensful read on a horrific truth.



2. The 23rd Psalm is a story that has been imprinted upon my soul, that will remain there as long as I live. I share in the sentiments of Pat's review; I was both compelled to stay in its pages by day and visited with its images at night in my sleep, somehow sharing in this man's plight.
   
   Thank you Mr. Salton for allowing others, for allowing me, into the most private and intimate and horrific memories of your life. I esteem you, and those like you, with the utmost honor. May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you my friend.



3. It must have taken the author a great deal of inner strength and pain to come to terms with these horrible happenings and be able to put them down on paper to share with all those that read this book. It was amazing that one so young would be quick enough to call on survival skills at the right moment. Though some, of course, was luck, this author displayed a natural instinct to survive throughout his nightmare.



4. The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir is the chilling personal testimony and memoir of the daily life of George Lucius Salton, a Jewish man who survived the living hell of a Nazi concentration camp. An intense, gripping tale of hatred and power used as a brutal club to perpetrate atrocity, and the author's witness and narration of the unspeakable, The 23rd Psalm is an welcome and invaluable contribution to the growing library of Holocaust Studies. Providing powerful refutations of anti-semitic revisionist historians, these personal and eye-witness accounts are all the more significant in view of the holocaust generation now reaching an age where they are rapidly passing from among us.



5. This is an incredible accounting of the atrocities of WWII. I was unable to put the book down. It is extremely well written.

5 comments about The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir.

1. I purchased this book for a history class. Great price and a good read. Good source of first-hand experiences at concentration camps. Differs a bit from the usual horrid details in other books, but explains some of the lighter sides, if I may, concerning the relationships between captives and captors.



2. "The Dentist of Auschwitz" is a spellbinding novel about a man that lived through the holocaust of World War II. The trials and tribulations of Benjamin Jacobs as he survives through labor and concentration camps will move you. Had it not been for the author's dental instruments that he brought with him, he would most likely not be alive today. Be thankful that he is alive and can tell accounts of his intriguing survival because this book is a very interesting and trivial tale. It is a very well written novel that I could not put down. I would recommend this novel to anyone and everyone.



3. I couldn't put this book down. Benjamin's story needs to be made into a movie: are you listening S. Spielberg? This is a remarkable book of unbelievable odds of survival. Ben escaped death so many times, but, the ending of this book is the most tragic episode of his story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a perspective and gratitude adjustment; when you read about the suffering of Jews and the fortitude of the survivors, you come to realize how petty and spoiled people can be in their own minds. Each time I read about a survivor, I feel a renewed sense of the gratitude I have for my life. My mother is also a survivor of Auschwitz, but each survivor's story is unique. Read and realize gratitude.



4. I found out about this book after reading another book that the author co-wrote. It is called The 100-Year Secret and it deals with a portion of the material that is contained in The Dentist of Auschwitz. The author spent almost five years in various camps, riding in closed railroad cars in summer, open railroad cars in winter, on death marches in the dead of winter, and on "hell ships," that were mistakingly attacked by the RAF and he, along with his brother still outlived the Nazi monsters that created this world for them. How Jacobs managed to survive his voyage through "man's inhumanity to man" is at the heart of this amazing story of survival. I promise you will not be able to put this book down.



5. I started reading this book and could not hardly put it down. I think I read it in 3 days. Benjamin Jacobs was sent to a concentration camp along with the rest of his family. Benjamin and his father ended up at Auschwitz. Had it not been for Benjamin's dental training and given a little bit of preference over the other inmates, the pure hell he was put through would have surely ended in death. The love story between him and Zosia is touching. Unbelievable how anyone could survive just a nightmare. This is truly the part of history most of us would like to rewrite. Great book.

3 comments about Shanghai Legacy.

1. Author Cuba takes a little-known chapter in Jewish history and writes a very worthy novel. The device is a diary; Maya finds the diary of her mysterious mother Hannah after Hannah dies. Now some of the mystery of Hannah's life unfolds for Maya, and she learns of her mother's struggles, bravery and difficulties while she examines her own life through new eyes. Hannah escaped Germany and went to Shanghai and ultimately ended up in America. The story of her flight and her struggles is the backdrop for the novel, and as the mystery of Hannah unfolds, Maya learns a lot about her own life and her own attitudes.
   
   The diary is the most fascinating part of the book--the refugees in China mourn the loss of their comfortable life in German and they live in squalor in Japanese-occupied China. Shanghai is dirty and cold. Diseases are rampant, yet the Jewish refugees hear stories of Treblinka and realize that though life is hard, it is far more horrible in Germany. And the survivor guilt sets in, for the victims of the Holocaust, for those left behind when Hannah goes to America.
   
   This is a very good novel; the interleaving of Maya's life is typical of novels today that twine two lives together and show their relationship and contrasts. But for me, the diary was so poignant and real, it almost overshadowed Maya's story. However, alone it is almost too much to read and together with Maya's tale, you can almost walk her part and with her, begin to untangle the lives that affected you from the past, lives with struggles that we can hardly know.
   
   A terrific book. Recommended.



2. Cuba does a sensitive job depicting the complicated life of Hannah, a German Jewish teenager in World War II era Shanghai. This gripping page turner is as exciting in its flash-forward story of her adult daughter years later in Manhattan as it is of the highly perilous years of Hannah's youth in China. I only regret that I cannot read it again for the first time.



3. "Your mother," she repeats, dipping her nurse's cap toward Hannah's room again, "she is like a melon that will never ripen, Miss Silver," is what the nurse tells the dying woman's daughter, Maya.
   
   That unripened melon, Maya soon discovers is her mother's diary dating back to 1938, when approximately twenty thousand European Jews escaped Nazi Germany to Shanghai and created a unique ghetto. Why Shanghai? It was the only city in the world that accepted foreigners without any entry requirements.
   
   Marion Cuba's debut novel, Shanghai Legacy, draws her central character, Maya, into the private thoughts and secrets of her mother Hanna, whom she never fully knew, and whose childhood had been lost amidst the life-changing hardships she had endured while a refugee in Shanghai.
   
   Maya is hungry to explore an era that was never spoken about in their household and of which she was ignorant. Moreover, Maya realizes, objects such as diaries, hold meaning, as they reveal an individual's aspirations and dreams, as well as their eventual relationships with family members.
   
   All of this becomes vividly possible by the discovery of Hannah's German diary recounting her teen-age experiences in Shanghai. The diary is translated to Maya by an antique dealer Sam Ascher, whom she hires to appraise her later mother's furniture. Sam is a former attorney, who has taken over his father's business, and as Maya subsequently learns, is a child of Holocaust survivors.
   
   Interwoven into the narrative is Maya's discovery of herself and her cold and difficult relationship with her husband, Harold, who is a prominent ophthalmologist, and very much wrapped up in himself and his profession. Maya challenges Harold's repressive hold over her when she decides to keep her mother's home that she has inherited. This leads to her frequent stays in the house, while it is being renovated. However, it also causes some guilt feelings, as she questions herself playing house alone and not even thinking of Harold, as well as her life in Chappaqua.
   
   There is a good story here; unfortunately, it is jumbled up in the roots of a much longer tale that needs to be told. How much richer would it have been if there was more detailed exploration of just how much Hanna's life affected that of her daughter's. Nonetheless, the author shows a great deal of promise and the novel certainly deserves a read.
   
   
   Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures
   
   
   
   
   
   

5 comments about Playing for Time.

1. This is the story of a French singer who spent 2± years in a Nazi concentration camp. Saved because of her musical abilities, FF spent her internment as a member of an all-women's orchestra which played for the camp's leaders. It is a strange tale, not especially well or clearly written--essentailly stuff for a holocaust junkey. Compared to Martin Goldsmith's The Unestinquishable Symphony, this book is definitely second tier.



2. The story has been known for many years, but this book puts in focus, by a survivor, the insanity of a lesser known action then the case at Auschwitz. A well told personal experience by someone willing to put down for history something that needed to be said. No matter how many years I've studied, and the many survivors I've known who have shared fragments, this clear telling in print for generations to come is a treasure.



3. This is an absolutely incredible book. An already powerful story it is taken to a new level by the constant reminder that this is first hand experience.

   It is perfect for nearly anyone, the musician will relate to the music, the historian to the accuracy and the avid reader will simply latch on and be unable to let go.

   It brought tears to my eyes.




4. Playing for Time, a grade-A book by Fania Fenelon, is a document not only about the Holocaust, but one that goes deeper: it shows how music brought redemption of spirit in the Hell of Hells. When Fania and her friend are brought to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, she is recognized by a girl in the camp's orchestra as a Parisian caberet singer. She is accepted in to the orchestra, where she is forced to sing the opera Madame Butterfly for the SS. Fania does not let the hardships of the camp take over her spirit, though. She uses music as a weapon, and, as an orchestrator as well as singer for the group, she orchestrates marches by Jews and anti-Nazis right under the noses of her captors, who never catch on. Fania's love of music allows her to survive Auschwitz, and when she is sent with the rest of the "Orchestra Girls" to Bergen-Belsen near the end of the war, her passion for life pulls her through a severe case of typhus. One day she learns that the Nazis are going to shoot the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen at 3:00 that afternoon. The English arrive at the camp at 11:00 that same morning. Fania just barely survived the war, and afterwards she returned to Paris and started again as a caberet singer. She died of cancer in her hometown in 1983. Playing for Time teaches us many things. It teaches us that the human spirit cannot be killed. It teaches us that good always wins over evil. And it teaches us that if you have a love, stick to it. One day it might just save your life.



5. I read this book a number of years ago. It left an indelible mark. It is the story of women survivors in a concentration camp. They literally "played for time," with musical instruments. The movie "Life is Beautiful" brought this book to mind this week. That is why I looked it up. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about courage in the face of adversity. The remarkable will to survive demonstrated by the women portrayed in this book is inspiring and unforgettable.

5 comments about Anne Frank: The Biography.

1. I think this is a great book because it gives you history about Germany and the Nazi's. Yes, yes most of us have heard all about it. But this book had vivid images of unhumane things that were done to these human beings. I think this is a book that helps you realize that even now a days we have problems with our society. I think it's a book that shows you the tolerance people had in that time. Lastly I must confess that I have never cried by reading a book. However, when I finished readying this book I was sobing. It's a book that really touched me. I would definitly recomment it!



2. Anne Frank is the most interesting book I ever read. She has interesting life with her family and friends. And it talk about her diaries and letters, including the five missing pages were found in 1998. Melissa Muller is a good writer. This is a great book to read! Beware!! in this book, it talk about who betray the eight jews in the secret annex in 1944, were never been prove who were the actual person who betray them. Read the book "The Hidden of Otto Frank" and it has a theory that someone who betray them.
   The Emmy Award winning mini-series "Anne Frank" is the best mini-series I ever seen.



3. I recently went to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam which prompted me to reread the diary. When I was in my local bookstore I came across this book and bought it. I am glad i did.
   
   This book, while not telling me anything I hadn't really heard before somewhere in all the history books, manages to portray the living conditions of Jews before WII broke out in a simplistic manner. This biog gives a superb timeline as such, of the events preceding the Franks going into hiding.
   
   I also went to Dachau while in Germany, which affected me more than I thought it would, while reading about Anne's time in the camp. I knew before going to Europe and before reading Melissa Mullers book about the conditions the Nazi victims were kept in, but again this book pulled it all together. It may have been that I've been to a camp since reading anything on the subject or it may just have been the incredibly well detailed portrayal of it in this book (I suspect it may be both) but it was all brought home to me hard. As well as being detailed this became personal. In the epilogue Miep Gies writes she doesn't like to hear Anne Frank being labelled the face of the 6 million, but that is inevitable and I don't feel that it lessens the importance of any other victims.
   
   This is a superb biography and I recommend it be read in conjunction with Anne franks Diary. I also recommend visiting the Anne Frank House should you ever have the opportunity to be in Amsterdam



4. From the years of 1939 to 1945 mankind endured the darkest period of evil and brutality that has gone unparalleled in the modern (and ancient) era. One wicked man's irrational, murderous hatred and insatiable lust for power, combined with the cruel, sociopathic personalities of cowardly henchmen such as Hoess, Himmmler, Goering, and Eichmann, to name a mere few, swept the continent of Europe into total devastation and near destruction, destroying dreams and cancelling the futures of the soldiers who fought for both sides, those who were simple bystanders in bombing raids, and others who simply had the misfortune to be considered "undesirable" and who perished in inhumane, intolerable conditions in horrendous concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Neuengamme. The dreadfulness of their pain and the senseless of their deaths cannot be imagined, described, forgiven, or forgotten.

   One of the millions who was murdered during the Holocaust was Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who lived in hiding with her older sister Margot, their parents Otto and Edith, Hermann and Auguste Van Pels, their son Peter, and Dr Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist, in Amsterdam, Holland, in the secret annexe of the office building which still stands at 263 Prinsengracht. As a literary work and historical document, Anne's diary is perhaps one of the most important volumes to emerge from the twentieth century. However, when reading it, one must remember that it was written by an ordinary teenage girl who was forced to exist under extraordinary and wearisome conditions that would have strained the patience of the Lord himself. Neither Anne nor her co-habitants saw anyone but each other and their benefactors day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out. Hence I feel that the above situation must be considered when reflecting on her often harsh views of her fellow annexe dwellers.

   Melissa Muller's book is a great companion to the diary but should not be read instead of it - to do this would be severely shortchanging to oneself. It provides a rounder, fuller narrative of the times, places, and people in Anne's life and of those that decided her fate. From the rise of the Nazi's and their use of bullying tactics as their tyranny and terrorism begins, to Anne's formative years, and a broader, wider, more objective description of the Frank's life in hiding. Particularly heartrending are the chapters in which Melissa Muller describes 4 August 1944, the day the annexe dwellers were arrested, betrayed, like Judas betrayed Jesus, for a symbolic twelve pieces of silver, and previously little known details of Anne's life in the death camps Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen as she bravely fought, and bravely lost, the battle for survival. The tears will fall as the words are read, as they will fall as we share the moment that Otto Frank learns of the terrible fate of his daughters. To lose a beloved spouse is bad enough, but to lose your child, to lose both your children, is an unfathomable and unimaginable grief that never fades even with the passage of many years. And Otto Frank was only one of many parents during the war whose children would never come home..............

   Yes, this is a great biography of Anne Frank, the Jewish teenager who became world famous because of her diary, who became world famous because she expired in a concentration camp. But Anne is not merely ashes or dust - her soul lives on. And what of her diary? Her diary, the contents of which she guarded so fiercely, has become a gift to millions.




5. This is one of the most poignant biographies that I have ever read. As with most teenagers in the late 60's and in the 70's, Anne's diary was required reading in our highschool. I remember reading it, but not paying the attention I should have, because as a teenager, her story seemed to be a part of a world that no longer existed. Teenagers cannot appreciate the reality of that time, and though I grew up during the angst of the civil rights era and the Vietnamese War, it was not until some other life happenings occurred that I can now appreciate her story. This includes becoming a mother and an activist for disability rights, and seeing for myself in small and distant ways, man's inhumanity to man.

   Muller did an exquisite job in the biography. She avoided speculation, which seems to be a problem for writers of biographies. Anne's story cannot be fully appreciated without more knowledge of her family and the people who protected them. As Anne and her father lived without bitterness for their fate, so too did Melissa Muller write with patience and understanding far beyond the abilities of most of us.

   The book is eloquent in its simple praise for the goodness of people who made the right choices during that conflict between good and evil. I hope that reading of the courage of Miep Gies and her husband, and the others in the business formerly owned by Otto Frank, will inspire all of its readers to stand up for what is right whatever situation we may find ourselves in.

   My heart still aches for the waste of human potential. And yet, Anne fulfilled so much of that potential and continues to inspire long after her life was over. Much of my heartache was felt for her parents, who in their desire to be with their children, left it until too late to get their children to safety. I understand their choices, and I know they must have lived with the knowledge that they put their children at great risk and berated themselves.

   My admiration for the people in Holland and other occupied countries who helped those singled out for destruction on the basis of race and prejudice is immense. I continue to be surprised at how much was done by people who were not perfect, and at their own risk. This is a near perfect biography, in writing and in intelligence. I wish there were more like this out there...
   Karen Sadler
   University of Pittsburgh