4 comments about Mother and Me: Escape from Warsaw 1939.

1. Inspirational and entertaining. Julian recaptures the voice of a little boy and tells one of the great stories of WWII.



2. Julian Padowicz's perilous escape from Warsaw is an exciting adventure, made all the more engrossing because he conveys so much about his feelings and impressions of this time in his life. The young Julian, who seems at times wise beyond his years, has a wonderfully wry outlook on the varied circumstances in which he finds himself during the course of his journey. The author enables us to understand his doubts and fears, his joys and sorrows, and above all, his great need to connect with his mother. His story is truly a poignant and heart-warming chronicle.



3. Product received promptly and in good condition. I am very happy with your service.



4. Mother And Me: Escape From Warsaw 1939 by documentary flimmaker Julian Padowicz is the true story of a Jewish child who grew up estranged from his mother to the point of hating other Jews. Virtually ignored by his mother and raised by his Catholic governess Kiki -- who taught him that God didn't love Jews because of what they did to His Son and that the only way Julian could go to heaven was to become bapitized. Julian's world transformed forever when World War II came to Warsaw. Kiki had to return to her family; his stepfather joined the Polish army; and the mother who once barely made time for him assumed responsibility for raising him. Determined to provide for her son, Julian's mother cut in food lines and later, under Soviet occupation, befriended Russian officers for extra rations of food and fuel. In the winter of 1940 as conditions for survival deteriorated, Julian's mother brought him in a daring escape to Hungary on foot, through the Carpathian mountains. Mother And Me is an unforgettable memory of blood bonds being thicker than water, and a family love that burns most fiercely when family is threatened. Highly recommended.

5 comments about Literature or Life.

1. Literature or Life by Jorge Semprun
   
   This is a great book. Like Semprun's previous book on World War II, "What a Beautiful Sunday," this one uses his experience in Nazi concentration camps to tell a quite remarkable story (and stories within stories within stories), but also as a jumping-off place for wide-ranging musing about life, and art, and the dependency of each on the other (hence the apt title).
   
   The book circles around the liberation of Buchenwald and the first few weeks afterwards, with extended forays into his experiences there, previous experiences with the French underground as a student at the Sorbonne, and with a lot of discussion of writers and philosophers along the way.
   
   He starts by addressing the question of whether an experience like being in Buchenwald can be truly and fully addressed in literature - he says yes, certainly, given enough skill and commitment by the writer. Finding readers who are capable of comprehending and believing what is written is the problem. I think we have a good writer/reader match here, because I find Semprun to be startling in his clarity, illuminating, riveting and very funny from time to time (a sense of humor and absurdity that obviously served him well, and those that leaned on him for support well, too).
   
   There is a bizarrely funny scene at the opening of the book, for example, when three British soldiers, brand new to the scene in Buchenwald walked up to him, and he was so happy to see them ("I felt more like laughing, gamboling in the woods, running from tree to tree") that he tried to engage them in what was, for him, normal conversation ("Say, I bet you fellas are noticing how quiet it is here - it's the birds! The smell of the crematory has driven them off, so the usual racket you hear in the forest just ain't happening here!") - Meanwhile these soldiers are staring at him in open-mouthed horror, as if he was a talking corpse, some kind of zombie... It takes Semprun a few minutes to figure out what the problem is here, and he decides, on reflection, that their perception is correct - that he and his comrades, the survivors, are a sort of zombie, that they hadn't really avoided death - that death and what he calls "radical evil" were so pervasive in the camp that nobody there survived in the usual sense - and he said that for the rest of his life, much of it as a younger man spent continuing to put himself in danger as a revolutionary fighter of various kinds, he felt an odd sort of invulnerability - an assumption that he would not be killed or even caught because he'd already been there, and somehow been given a pass to return to finish his business here.
   
   One of his extended side trips is a discussion of Heidegger, of whom he says, in part, "Of course, there was a certain fascination - sometimes mixed with irritation - with the philosopher's language. With that abounding obtuseness through which one has to hack one's way, cutting clearings without ever reaching a definitive clarity. A never-ending labor of intellectual decipherment that becomes absorbing through its very incompletion."
   
   It seems clear to me that Semprun used his experience with Heidegger partially as a guide in his own development as a thinker and writer, because, again - he writes with exceptional clarity, and no matter how far afield his musings range, he never loses the thread or the point of a remarkable and essential story in the process.



2. Jorge Semprun spent two years in a concentration camp, Buchenwald. He was a known writer before and continued to be a writer afterwards. In this reflection on his life experience he reveals himself to be first of all a true human being , the Yiddish word is 'mensch' and it applies to him though he is not Jewish. Semprun's meditation on the meaning of his writing and the meaning of his life is a moving one, and a unique one. He is an original person with a way of thinking and understanding things of his own. Who reads this book will get to know a mind and a human being of unique distinction.



3. Jorge Semprún is one of the many survivors of the Holocaust who has left his memoirs written to the later generations. But what makes him different is the fact that he did not wrote just what he saw or lived: he wanted us readers to know the feelings, the thoughts and the worries that accompanied and still accompany a Buchenwald prisoner as well. Their words are not hateful to the Germans, nor show pity or regret towards the writer himself or his former fellows. Semprún does not analyze tha causes or the consecuences of his experience, he seems more to go through them once again, but from a diferent point of view: that of the free men. From there, he tries to explain things; not in a very reasonable or settled order, but simply as they come to his mind. The structure of the book reminds that of our own memories: fragmented, realistic, or perhaps a little more distant as time goes by; uncomplete. That lack of organisation makes the book even more sincere and pure, while still keeping a beautiful prose to tell the most amazing horrors.
   A must for anyone who is interested in the Holocaust and its survivors, who are fading silently as time goes on.



4. In this elegant piece of literary philosophy, Semprun treats readers to an extraordinarily rich remembrance of two years in Buchenwald. This work is shot through with memories of his life before, during and after the war and references to many of the thinkers and writers he has known. Passages as delicate as lace adorn chapters sound as bedrock. You could do much worse than to build a set of Holocaust readings on this foundation.

   One aspect making this an especially vibrant Holocaust testimony is that Semprun is not Jewish. While he approaches the subject of Jewish suffering with sympathy, gravity and deep respect, his reminiscences are framed by a lifetime of learning and an important non-Jewish perspective. Readers taste the suffering Semprun has experienced through continuing memories and glimpse what must have driven celebrated Jewish survivors like Paul Celan, Primo Levi and Tadeusz Borowski to suicide.

   Another laudable feature is Semprun's sure knowledge that in politics, as in everything, there is such a thing as paramount Evil, to which philosophers like Heidegger contributed. Deep thinking alone does not, according to his view, constitute righteousness. Semprun elegantly examines ends and means as well as thought processes, dramatically dismissing the moral relativism common among intellectuals these days.

   Despite the difficult subject matter, I found this work highly educational--and eminently hopeful and uplifting. Alyssa A. Lappen




5. Jorge Semprun was born in Spain and while studying philosophy in Paris, he was arrested. Accused of being member of the resistance, he was sent to Buchenwald where he spent 18 months before the camp was liberated. "Literature or Life" is his account of what it meant to survive Buchenwald, from the perspective of a highly intellectual mind. It represents a desperate search for understandiing the horrors of Evil, using philosophy and literature as reasoning tools, as well as psychological justification for survival. It is literature of the "living dead!"

5 comments about The Girl in the Red Coat.

1. I almost finished this book in one sitting. It's a different way of looking at those years than what I've read before. I think we forget that even though - or especially though - when a child is so young - the impact it has. The horrible things that for Roma were ordainary. I'm not surprised by her struggles later in life, to the contrary I think it's amazing she came through as well as she did. So very different to see the Holocaust through a child's eyes. Bravo Roma! Congratulations on your book and your survival



2. This is a great book about the Holocaust and for anyone who had read many books on the topic I reccomend you add this one to your list. Roma gives a detailed look inside her childhood and although her life may not have turned out as bright as other surviors her struggle is great and inspiring.



3. Ligocka writes an unusal Holocaust memoir. She writes about her entire life and how the Holocaust affected her. The most intriquing and exciting part of the book deals with Ligocka's childhood. Many people helped Roma and her mother survive by hiding them and providing shelter for them during the war. Roma recalls childhood friends and relatives (including Roman Polanski).
   Roma's adult life was not perfect.She mad some bad choices and lived with the consequences. A very interesting life, indeed.



4. I have read hundreds of books about those who survived the holocaust but this is one book I cannot recommend. Although you get a glimpse of what life during the holocaust may have been like, you unfortunately get too many glimpses of a woman who thrives on vanity. Throughout the book, Roma time and time again stresses how pretty she was and how many men wanted to marry her. Roma is a woman who you cannot come to care about as she cares so much about herself but not in the way of her survival but instead her looks.



5. I thought that this book was very good. It was very interesting, and kept getting better. I thought her failed marraiges, addiction to anit-depressants (I think it was), and an abortion, and more were very interesting. Not something I have ever read from a Holocaust survivor. And I have read a lot of books on the holocaust. This is definitly a book that proves that holocaust survivors are humans too, that make mistakes and aren't perfect or born with a hallow on their head.

4 comments about Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi Occupied Hungary.

1. This book has it all: drama, humor, philosophy, and history. The author is an unprepossessing, very clever, unsung hero, who makes humane, practical, difficult decisions daily and keeps his nerve under the Nazi occupation of Hungary. The number of lives he saves can never be properly tallied. You will find yourself alternately holding your breath and then cheering.



2. I lived in Budapest for several years and became fascinated by the stories of those brave souls who survived there through the trials of the last century. This recently translated memoire is one of the best. Mr. Soros is able to convey convincingly his experiences in Budapest during the last years of WWII. Like the best memoires, it offers a window into the mind and thoughts of the author in a way which rings true and resonates with the reader. For those who are interested by the human experience in this period of history, this is a must read.



3. "Life is beautiful - and full of variety and adventure. But luck must be on your side." So begins a remarkable memoir of Jewish life under the Nazis in Hungary, _Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi-Occupied Hungary_ (Arcade) by Tivadar Soros. Soros was a thoroughly remarkable man who certainly had variety and adventure in his life, and his share of luck. There are many accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust, and Soros certainly does not minimize the death and terror that he witnessed. Unlike many such accounts, however, this is a story of optimism and triumph. Soros and all his family survived.

   His memoir begins in 1944 when the Nazis occupied Germany. Soros realized that "Since we can't stand up to Hitler's fury, we must hide from it." He and his family hid, but since they had to be seen in order to take care of daily needs, they took on the aspects of Christians. This involved his forming close relationships with a series of forgers, and once he took care of his immediate family's documents, he took care of other relatives, and then friends, and clients. "If anyone asked for my help, one of my principles in life was never to say no - if only to avoid diminishing their faith in human beings." Amidst narrow escapes and harrowing close calls, Soros kept a sense of humor which frequently emerges on these pages. As a "Christian," Soros was able to obtain cigarettes when those were denied to Jews, and since he didn't smoke, he would leave them at a watchmaker's, so that people with stars could get some. He went to the watchmaker to get his watch fixed, and asked the price. "How can you ask such a thing? It's on the house," the watchmaker said, and then whispered to the woman working beside him, "This is the Christian gentleman who brings us the cigarettes, you know." Soros says, "At least the Jews got to see that there were still a few decent Christians." Much of the humor is tinged with humane sadness; according to one of his sons, Soros used to say, "It is amazing how well people can bear the suffering of others."

   This wonderful memoir has been in print before. Soros, that practical idealist, as an Esperantist wrote the original in Esperanto in 1965, three years before his death. In libraries of Esperantists the book has been an outstanding volume from the literature the planned language has produced. It is here translated by Humphrey Tonkin, a linguist whose name is familiar to all American Esperantists. It includes brief, loving memoirs by his sons, one of whom, George, has become one of the world's richest and most influential people. If there is room on your shelves for history with hope, written by a thoroughly humane and lovable man, this book is perfect.




4. This book will add another view of the Holocaust that few have seen before. When I told my wife I was reading the book, she said, "Isn't it depressing?" Naturally, any book that comes close to so much unnecessary loss of life will make the reader sad, and that is appropriate. On balance, though, this book will probably leave you feeling more optimistic than you were about what can be accomplished by well-meaning people.

   Tivadar Soros was a Jewish lawyer in Budapest when the second world war began. Hungary had been an ally of Austria, so the Nazis did not occupy the country until March 19, 1944 as they began to fear betrayal behind their retreating forces in the Soviet Union and the Balkens. The country was liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. Unfortunately, the Nazis used this ten-month period to murder as many Hungarian Jews as possible.

   But Mr. Soros also had had an unusual experience earlier. He had been a prison of war in Siberia during World War I. From that experience, he had learned that those who are prominent are in danger from totalitarianism, after seeing the prisoners' represenative shot to terrify the prisoners. Mr. Soros had been offered that "honor" just recently and had declined. He soon escaped from the prison camp, and had a most difficult time getting back to Hungary through the midst of the Russian Revolution. Where he had been idealistic and vocal before World War I, he came back determined to enjoy each day as though it might be his last. This exasperated his wife, who knew he could accomplish more.

   This perspective served him well when the Nazi occupation arrived. As in other countries, the Nazis relied on Jews to follow orders. There was a Jewish Council whose families were exempt from the deportations who helped organize others into the death camps and ghettos. Many people voluntarily wore the yellow star. Wanting to cut off the potential leaders, one of the first groups being rounded up were lawyers. This was being done in alphabetical order, so Mr. Soros had a little time to prepare. Rather than complying (as did over 600 Jewish lawyers from Budapest who were killed in the Holocaust), Mr. Soros decided to resist. He quickly justified this on the moral grounds of self-defense.

   Deprived of his livelihood and his property, Mr. Soros decided to use camouflage to protect his family (wife, two sons, and mother-in-law) by pretending to be Christians under assumed names. Although he knew nothing about how to undertake such a deception, he soon learned to acquire forged and real papers. He also shared what he learned with anyone who asked for his help. Those who were wealthy, he charged as much as he could. Everyone else, he either charged nothing or only what forged documents cost him.

   To be safest, the family continually lived apart from one another, meeting occasionally for coffee or a swim, and moved frequently. He helped them learn their "cover stories" and helped them practice how to react if braced by Nazis.

   There are many surprises in the book. Mr. Soros occasionally called on "Christians" for help who turned out to be other Jews using false papers. Some actual Christians took up wearing the yellow star, and the Nazis left them alone. While many people would not help, few turned Jews in to the Nazis. Some people would help for either profit or humanitarian reasons. You just had to keep looking until you found them. Most lost their nerve eventually and were either caught or stopped helping.

   Mr. Soros estimates that about 5 percent of all Jews in Budapest eventually obtained false papers. He also describes what happened to those who tried other ways out, like bribing Nazis such as Eichmann.

   The book is far more compelling than any spy novel I have ever read. It is also more inspiring because it shows what a committed "victim" of an evil regime can do. While other books portray Jews as being tough in concentration camps or in the Warsaw Ghetto, secretly hiding out in attics owned by friends, and being slaughtered, this one shows the side of a vigilent self-defense operating from an immediate defiance of the illegitimate authorities. This model needs to be well understood by everyone.

   Contemporary readers will also be fascinated to read about the rest of Mr. Soros's family, which includes the then 14-year-old George, who is now one of the world's richest men and famed fighter against totalitarian regimes. What an incredible family! The book also contains introductory comments by both sons, which will interest you as they recount the remarkable father they knew whom you will meet in this amazing book.

   The book was originally written in Esperanto, and was only recently translated into English for the first time.

   Everyone who wants to prevent future Holocausts must read this book!

   After you finish reading it, think about what you could do today to help someone else retain or gain their freedom and safety from injustice.

   Be prepared to save yourself . . . when all else fails! Saving someone else today increases your allies for tomorrow!

5 comments about Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII.

1. This is the most hateful and dishonest book ever written during the 20th century. Cornwell sinfully and shamelessly violates truth again and again. Cornwell shall pass into history as a sample of what sheer dishonesty and intellectual misery can achieve. May Almighty God bless again and again the blessed memory of our Holy Father Pius XII.
   p.s. for an exposure of Cornwell's lies read the book "The Myth of Hitler's Pope," by Rabbi David Dalin, available in Amazon as well.



2. This is a beautifully written and sensitively told biography of one of "God's most famous Representative on this earth," Eugenio Pacelli, otherwise known as Pope Pius XII. Pacelli is the Pope Italians referred to as the last Pope (l'ultimo papa)." No pope has been more revered nor respected, as has Pacelli; nor has any other Pope's reputation come under more quiet suspicion than his.
   
   It is a story told by a Catholic and an award-winning journalist, John Cornwell who apparently undertook this project with the hope of exonerating the famous Pope of complicity in the Nazi-generated holocaust and extermination of European Jewry. But what he uncovered, instead, only seemed to further implicate the famous Pope.
   
   In a profoundly balanced story, Cornwell does not try to demonize Parcelli; nor give him a pass, or provide excuses for the very dark side of his machinations and Papal maneuverings. He only seems to be asking of the reader the same compassion that one would leave for others caught up in the many morally confusing issues during the years of the war, and on the losing side of the grinding Nazi war machine. Much of what Parcelli did can be seen under the rubric of "self-preservation," as was true of so many others during the War.
   
   What this finely crafted biography shows is that even before he was nominated to become Pope, Pacelli, as a young Vatican lawyer, had shown himself to be a committed anti-Semite, if only passively and by omission rather than overtly and by commission. As well, he is seen to have been a power-hungry Vatican lawyer, a virtual street fighter, working behind the scenes in the corridors of the Vatican in the struggle to restore the fractured Church's power and ideology to its former position of prominence. Since the Renaissance, the Church had slowly lost the struggle for retaining its almost unchallenged influence. It was a struggle that Parcelli was tasked with to recover, a task which he eventually achieved. This victory, which culminated in his ascendancy to the papacy, a tricky and unstable restoration of Vatican power, and one that involved the un-holiest of pacts with Hitler, came at a price: the reputation of the Catholic Church for years to come.
   
   In the end, Cornwell concludes that although Pacelli engaged in the most callous of moral indiscretions and bureaucratic treachery, the Pope was not personally evil, but became morally flawed in his blind personal ambition and blind dedication to the pursuit of Church ideology and its quest to restore its former power base. For this, it is difficult not to agree with the author's major conclusion: that the famous Pope at the very least, should not be granted sainthood.
   
   The book is nothing if not a cautionary tale about how even the most morally pristine of institutions are still subject to corruption --especially when racism, personal ambition and institutional ideology and power are involved -- which unfortunately is most of the time. Equally, it is also a cautionary tale about how blind ambition even in the service of one of the most religious, most righteous and self-righteous and most moral of causes, can lead well-meaning people down a path to unmitigated evil, even when they themselves may not personally be evil. One must doubt if the Catholic Church, which recently has also been involved in a pedophilia scandal, can ever recover from this two-fisted wallop. At the very least these two moral lapses, a generation a part, will leave an enduring black mark on that much-respected and revered religion.
   
   Four Stars



3. John Cornwell's book is eminently readable and well suits the non- academic in the pursuit of historical perspective. Eugenio Pacelli is characterised in the book as a man somewhat divorced from the pervading reality of his time. A man seeking to retain, and enforce, a rigid hierarchical view of the world at a time when the world in general was 'moving on'.
   
   I would recommend John's book to anyone curious about the inner workings of the Vatican and seeking some understanding the church today.



4. A debate of how much the Pope Pius XII did to stop Hitler will continue regarding the historical decisions and paperwork. But a troubling piece of evidence is the great number of memorials in German Catholic Churches regarding the parish members who were killed in the service of Hitler's military services. In some there were more than 50 dead Catholic men being memorialized. This does not include the many who were wounded or who escaped any injuries, but served for Nazi aims.
   
   In the 200 to 300 AD period Catholic Christians stood up to oppressive acts of various governments. Many died while supporting the values and message of the Gospel. There was no similar Church-wide effort to fight for Gospel principles against the Hitler insanity. If there had been perhaps fewer Catholics would have been killed in this latter-day tragedy. I think it would have been better for those Catholic men to die as Christian martyrs rather than as tools of Hitler's regime.
   
   Speaking out strongly against Hitler would have also given the Catholic Church a position of meaningfulness in present day Europe. Instead the Church is fighting a huge tide of secularization in western europe.



5. A relatively easy read. The chronology is rather loose and jumps around more than I cared for. Certain positive issues and programs sponsored by the Vatican are ignored. Also, some negative situations addressed seems to be a more grabbing at straws to shore the argument, not much meat to them. Other determining factors were well covered. It could have been a little more balanced in my opinion. Not my favorite read on the issue.

5 comments about Diary of a Man in Despair: A Masterpiece about the Comprehension of Evil (Duck Editions).

1. I have read this book twice, once in the original edition and then this edition. It is a fabulous book.
   As to the Reck's aristocratic prejudice, this is something he is quite clear about, but he is a democrat as well -- hence he praises the opposition for being just that. Also, the individuals who really bear the brunt of his wrath are the Generals, the Junkers and the Kaiser before him who forsook their aristocratic upbringing, and sold out Germany long before Hitler took power, and then flirted with him as a novelty.
   
   It is hard to understand Reck's viewpoint without at least visiting or living in Germany and especially Bavaria -- which is a bit seperatist. Also, note his praise of the Munich uprising -- a communist uprising -- where people were still treated with diginity.
   
   His anger is with the sort of lowering of standards, the rise of the masses spurred on by hate, and constantly bombarded with propaganda. It is truly a remarkable book and one that has tremendous relevance for these times.



2. It's hard to believe this isn't a work of fiction. This guy is filled with hate and rage and loathing as he watches the German-speaking people descend into madness. Incredible writing, powerful ideas. Get it.



3. The title is a calumny. As his translator, Paul Rubens, points out, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen was a prophet - not in the vulgar sense of one who predicts future events, but a prophet after the fashion of Jeremiah, William Blake and Dostoyevsky: one who comments on the present from the perspective of the Most High. As such, even when his own death is imminent, Reck most certainly does not despair. Like the three individuals mentioned above, he is angered, disgusted, saddened and horrified by what he sees around him; his journal is filled with images of Calvary, the plague, and the Apocalypse; yet he continually strives to see his own and his country's ordeal as a time of suffering and repentance which must be endured to make way for a new and better world. None of which is to say that his thinking is "mystical" in the sense of being vague or escapist; indeed, the immense value of Reck's diary, both as literature and as a historical document, lies in its brilliant combination of sharp observation and lucid analysis. Although he makes the all-too-common error of lumping in the plotters of 20 July 1944 with the many opportunists who tried to dissociate themselves from the regime as defeat began to loom, Reck's analytical passages offer as clear and concrete a picture of the corruption underlying Hitler's Germany as any historian I have encountered. Telling details of life in the Third Reich - the omnipresent thuggery and tale-bearing, the forced barracks-gymnasium atmosphere, the all-pervasive lies and propaganda - spring out of every page through tartly written anecdotes and vignettes. The peculiar detestability of the Nazi functionaries - frustrated schoolteachers and jumped-up mailmen posing as masters of the world - is described and analysed with perception and admirable loathing. This elderly, conservative, royalist aristocrat - a member of a class who, because they did not support the Weimar Republic, are too often labelled supporters of the Nazis - displays a courage, intelligence, breadth of culture and (I cannot emphasise it enough) a faith which makes his journal as moving a human document as the more famous diary of Anne Frank.



4. It is true that Reck has a sense of class superiority to the Nazi's but that does not obscure his central point--he knew they were monsters--and he died for that. Counts for something you know. The invective is superb and more over Reck recognizes real resistance like the Scholl's (were they aristocrat?) and damns the generals assisanation plot as a an opportunistic move. Furthermore The Nazis crimes were pandemic--the annhilhation of the Jews, but also gypsies--and if one is making measurements which seems to me silly--the obliteration of 20,0000 soviet citizens. By the other reviewers logic if the destruction of the Jews is the question by which Germans will be judged, then Stalin becomes a heroe for saving the bulk of Soviet Jewry --sending them behind the Ural mountains--I don't think I want to go that route. It also explains why Israel refuses to make Dietrich Bonhoeffer a "rightious gentile" which is a scandal.
   No The Nazis were monsters such total monsters that any costly resistance derserves honor. This is the best anti-Nazi book theis Jew has ever read.



5. If, like me, you view the nazi era as a reaction against modernity, this is a book that will cause severe cognitive dissonance.It's Written by a member of the old Prussian aristocracy whose biggest problem with the nazis appears to be their populism. It's laden with classist terms like "canaille" and "mass-man" to the extent that he almost appears to blame german workers for their own alienation which led to the development of nazism. This is not the only dubious historical claim: he seems to believe that ndudstrailisationwas responsble fro the two world wars and not the other way around. Nevertheless, there are enough fascinating insights to make the book worthy of your attention, and it's worth bearing in mind that he wasn't writing with the same sense of historical distanciation that we have. Just remember, the worst thing about the nazis wasn't that they were boorish illiterate charlatans but that they killed 6 million jews and almost brought an end to western civilisation.

5 comments about The Survivor Of The Holocaust.

1. What a man! He is a real fighter and hero. At least people can see the truth about the Germans now, and can also admire such a hero whose hand of G-d made him a survivor.
   This book is wonderful, it deserves to be the best book about the Holocaust. Very moving, well written, and a real story.



2. I read this first as a child and have recently re-read it. It is as intense as it was when I discovered it at 13. This one IMHO is THE holocaust memoir and I say this as a big fan of Anne Frank's Diary. I wish I could say never again, but Rwanda made it clear that this stage in history is not an aberration. Silence doesn't exist. Revisionism is easier than truth and unless truth is passed on there will be no alternative.



3. The Survivor of the Holocaust, by Jack Eisner, is not just a story of camp survival, although the book does deal with Mr. Eisner's time in various camps. More importantly, it is the story of one man's attempt to fight back, to make a difference, during a time when the life of a Jew was worth less than that of an animal. In that, Mr. Eisner succeeded. Although, as one review of this book stated, some of the events may, and I emphasis the word may, have been embellished with time, I find little fault with this based upon the fact that it was written well after the events occurred. Additionally, the subject matter is so horrific that it is only natural that, with time, some of his experiences might have taken on a different light. In my opinion, this in no way detracts from the quality or importance of the story. We owe it to Jack Eisner and all of the others like him to read his story. I recommend this book.
   
   One of the leaders of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto said " We must fight them (the Germans) as a symbol for posterity to show that even in the face of certain death, with hardly any weapons, a handful of Jews had the guts to stand up to the mighty German Army."



4. At the end, the author wrote, "Everyone who had a chance to read the manuscript in progress expressed disbelief that all these experiences could have happened to one person and yet he survived." This is how I felt reading this book. His will to live and his resourcefulness were amazing. What guts he had, for example, to plot and to rescue his mother from the Nazi hospital! He came so close to being killed by the Nazis so many times and managed to escape so many times. It's hard to imagine that there really are people in the world with such courage. I didn't want to read another WWII book, but I picked this one up (my wife had bought it)while waiting for my next book to arrive, and once I started it I couldn't put it down. If you can stand to hear the horrible realities, read this book.



5. I read this book this past year, my sophmore year in High School. This book told pieces of the hell Mr. Eisner had to go through and how he managed to survive. I was told by my teacher (and several other students in my class) that this was a "hard read" and it would take a little while to finish. I, however, was so entranced by Jack's words that I had to keep on going and finished it in over a course of a day. Not only did I get to read Jack Eisner's book, but I got to meet him in person when, not only did he come to the university (where I attended his first speech), but at my High School, where I again attended his speech and even got to shake this man's hand. To actually get to meet him was something all together and made the book even more wonderful. Soon everyone who lived during that time, who actually fought or survived the horrors of that world, will be gone, but through Jack's book, and other's like his, we will never forget. That is one thing that Jack said, we must never forget. I guarantee anyone can like this book ... it shows you a first hand prospective of how things actually went on in the Ghetto and the camps, although it just barely skims the surface of some of the things that happened.

5 comments about An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies).

1. Here's the story: gay Jew (really a half-Jew under Nazi racial law) survives Holocaust in Berlin, despite spending lots of time risking his life by helping ferry other Jews to safety in Switzerland. I didn't find this book as enthralling as I had hoped; either the writing style or the translation left something to be desired. In particular, the last half of the book read like a laundry list of lovers and rescued friends. (Unlike another reviewer, I actually liked the pre-Holocaust half of the book better).
   
   Having said that, I still learned something from this book; I got a real sense of the differences between "full Jews" and persons of mixed blood. Full Jews typically got deported to concentration camps, no ifs, ands or buts. But if the experience of Beck and his family is any guide, half-Jews stood a pretty good chance of survival if they kept their noses clean. Because Beck's mother was born Christian (though she converted to Judaism) his parents were never deported (despite numerous close calls), and Beck got in trouble with the Gestapo only because of his rescue activities.
   
   Another interesting fact: throughout the book, Beck mentions various hunchbacks he ran into. What is it about early 20th-century Germany that produced so many hunchbacks?



2. Beck, Gad. "An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Germany, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
   
   Triumph of Will
   
   Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
   
   We all have a great deal of trouble understanding the Holocaust and what it did to so many people. We have been slowly getting the stories of the Nazi persecution if gays and if one was both gay and Jewish, he had real troubles. Gad Beck was a man like that but he survived and was able to tell his story as he does so eloquently in "An Underground Life". Even though his book begins slowly, it picks up pace quickly and as you read your mouth falls open to see stories about man's inhumanity to man. When the Nazis began their reign of terror he was living underground and was sought by the Gestapo. Beck was an organizer and helped many who lived illegally by finding them shelter and food as well as providing a listening ear and support in any way that he could. The fact that he was gay was secondary to the fact that he was Jewish.
   In this memoir Beck brings to life both the cruelty to the Jews but the cruelty to the gays as well. This is a shocking and horrifying account as he writes about a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Germany. It is an erotic tale but also shows how love should be considered. This was probably the first time in the modern age that the gay spirit managed to triumph over intolerance and bigotry--even against the greatest crime ever against humanity.
   The fact that Beck survived in itself is miraculous but even more amazing is that he was able to write about what he endured. When Robert Plant published "The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals" in 1986, the door was opened to a new aspect of the Holocaust. Several personal accounts followed, but few have been published that talk about the Nazi treatment of gays ad I imagine that this is because so few survived and those that did could not think about what they had endured. This makes this book that much more valuable.
   Beck's own story is unique in that he was born of a mixed marriage in 1923 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother thereby not Jewish according to strict Orthodox law. Nonetheless, the Nazis did not care--if he had a drop of Jewish blood, as far as they were concerned, he was Jewish. As the Nazi party rose to power and began their housing relocation plan, forced labor and transport to death camps, Beck organized a resistance movement to hide others and to smuggle food and drugs to them, He even once wore a Nazi uniform to rescue a doomed gay man from the camps. He does not in any way disguise his sexuality and he gives details of his own sexual liaisons. He gives us an amazing picture of the horror of Nazi rule. He was one of the fortunate gay men whom his parents loved and accepted his sexuality and was very lucky that the Christian side of his family felt the same. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he was forced to attend a Jewish school to reinforce his identity and to be visible to the ruling party and he immersed himself in Judaism and embraced the idea of the Zionist movement. He also embraced a great many men and he hides nothing about his sex life (except for actual sexual descriptions) as well as writes openly about his secret political activities. He rose in power in the Zionist movement and became a central character in working to establish a Jewish homeland. He survived the Nazis by living illegally in Berlin. Because of that he was able to write this wonderful memoir.
   This is a book that holds you from the beginning to the end, so much so that you want a sequel. He embraced his gayness at the same time that he embraced his Jewish--at a time when it meant death to be either. There are stories of betrayals and back stabbings and secret meetings and the memoir reads like a combination thriller/spy novel. That he survived s incredible and even more incredible is that he endured all that he did.



3. Here is a memoire of life in Berlin during the Nazi regime from the perspective of a gay Jew. Gad Beck was an organizer and friend to many who lived illegally during that period, finding shelter and food and providing friendship and support. That he was openly gay was not important during that period - there were more important thiongs to worry about.
   
   I found this book at the bookstore of National Haulocost Museum in Washington DC on a recent visit. It fits in perfectly with that museum, in that it fleshes out the life in hiding. If you have an interest in the struggle for human rights and length to which people will go to survive, this is an excellent read.
   
   One fact that is underemphasized in the book is Beck's youth during this period. By the end of the war he was in his younger 20s. Yet he had accomplished so much and had the strength of one much older. Bravo!



4. Gad Beck brought to life not only the cruelty to the jews but also the cruelty of the gay and lesbian people of the Nazi Era. I had to do a research paper for a Holocaust in Literature class I took my junior year in high school...and I was entralled the whole time I read this book. It shocked me, it horrified me...and I loved it.



5. Beck gives us a glimpse of a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Berlin. It is not only erotic but holds up a light by which all aspects of love should be measured. Once again, the Gay Spirit has triumphed over bigotry, intolerance, and in this case even the holocaust.

No comments about Things We Couldn't Say: A dramatic account of Christian resistance in Holland during WWII.

5 comments about I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors.

1. I received my order in a few days and it was in perfect condition. Very reliable seller.



2. All I can say is that I hated the book. The author was so intent to find out all the sordid details of her parent's life during the Holocaust that she never got to know them for who they were. The book is boring and the drawings are silly and juvenile.



3. this book is both illuminating and moving, I have already lent my copy to two other people. An important new voice on the Holocaust and it's survivors and descendants.



4. I too am a child of Holocaust survivors. I read this book (picked up by surprise in a bookstore) in one several hour reading. It is touching, moving, eloquent, great art, and deeply personal. Life and death, of all sorts. Happiness and sadness, of all sorts. I'm deeply appreciative for the author's letting the world in on her (my) life.
   David



5. The Holocaust occurred over six decades ago, and the survivors of this episode are aging and dying. In fact, calling the Holocaust an "episode" seems to be trivializing one of the darkest periods in human history. I apologize for any such characterization. The Holocaust was a monstrosity, an aberration, a blot on the record of humanity. Millions died.
   
   Yet some lived. And these survivors had a life, children, a home.
   
   This book, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, is author Bernice Eisenstein's recollections of growing up in a family that had both mother and father with tattooed arms. Even as a youngster, Eisenstein grappled with the knowledge of her parent's past, the stigma of being defined by this past, and the responsibility of maintaining memories without adding more pain to the world.
   
   I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is not a first person account of experiences during WWII as you can read in Night, by Elie Wiesel, although some of her parent's stories are recounted. However, Eisenstein's experiences and memories are also real. She hungered to understand what her parents experienced. She cried harder than her parents when she watched films about the Holocaust. The Holocaust has shaped members of a succeeding generation.
   
   She exists because of the Holocaust, with her parents finding each other at liberation, and shaping her through their language, actions, and social life.
   
   The book has illustrations throughout... haunting depictions not of life in concentration camps, but how a child (and later a young woman) came to view her heritage.
   
   We all come from some place. Eisenstein comes from a place darker than we should ever have to see. I hope this book is picked as one to discuss in high schools and colleges.
   
   Never forget.