5 comments about Survival In Auschwitz.

1. I like the author. Many years ago he wrote "Christus kam nur bis Eboli"
   and that made me travel to that place in southern Italy.
   This book is even better. It informes me and at the same time it
   is interesting and I can not put it aside while reading.
   He writes about what he thinks and feels and how they react.
   This book is worth its money.



2. This book from bnpublishing contains serious multiple errors, sometimes five per page, that disrespect the author and the Holocaust and force the reader to stop and try to figure out the author's real meaning. Book is full of incorrect or missing punctuation (such as periods), words and names spelled different ways from one sentence to the next, random capitalization, run-on sentences, grammatical and spelling errors in English, French, and German. "Figfit" is not a word. Neither are "infaticable," "aroupd," or "mochery." The phrase is "flash of intuition," not "flask." The sign over every concentration camp was "Arbeit Macht Frei," not "Fret." You say, "avec moi," which means "with me," not "avec mot" which means "with word." Phrases like "there were no dark cold air had the smell" (p. 107) stop the reader dead. Very disrespectful of the author and the subject. Levi was a brilliant man with astounding powers of observation and recall for his hellish experiences. His words deserve to be preserved better than this.



3. Excellant book, I felt like I was living Mr Levi's life in the camp with him. What a wonderful story of survival.



4. A monotone, sort of scientific voice. His story is sad...but is told with very little emotion. It was hard to get into - a little harder to read due to the "scientist' type voice that I'm not used to. I found Elie Weisel's "Night" to be a much more candid look inside a survivor's haunted soul. Primo Levi is good for someone who prefers reading something about the Holocaust that is a bit more textbook vs. memoir.



5. A touching, but not mawkish or dramatic, memoir. One realizes the randomness and happenstance by which he survived, and easily accepts the moral dualism of the life of thievery and connivance, within bounds of common decency and collective group self-interest, that kept any survivor alive. Some reviews seemed to fault the book for being unemotional, but one sees how Levi's essentially scientific and objective personality became a key to his survival, and necessarily informs his voice.

5 comments about All But My Life.

1. This is one of the first Holocaust survival stories that I read. It is by far one that has stayed with me in the most detail.
   
   I'm not going to give the story away I'm just going to say you will cry and rejoyce in this story. It will touch you to core of your very being.
   
   I must read for EVERYONE!



2. I have read many of the holocaust books out there but this is the one I pass on to friends to read. Especially moving is the liberation of the prisoners at the end of the book. I wish all schools made this mandatory reading. What a way to learn history! This author is quite an incredible woman.



3. This book was gripping and I could not put it down until I finished it. It's so hard to believe the hardships so many endured for being Jewish. A must read. Beautifully written with rich detail.



4. I read this book a long time ago and just got done listening to the book on tape for the second time. It is the most powerful representation of the Holocaust I have found. Please read this book if you want to learn about the Holocaust from a gifted author and survivor.



5. Despite the horrors around her, and fellow prisoners dying and becoming mentally unbalanced every day, young Gerda Weissman managed to survive several Nazi camps from the late 1930s through the grisly end of World War II.
   
   Imagine being a teenager, wrenched away from your beloved parents, older brother and home -- and never seeing any of them ever again. It would be enough to make anyone unstable, not to mention bitter. Yet somehow, Gerda emerges from her horrifying ordeal stronger than she began. As her body heals in a hospital run by the Allies during the spring of 1945, Gerda begins a relationship with Kurt Klein -- a young soldier who urges her to tell her story.
   
   Now an elderly woman living in Arizona, Gerda Weissman Klein is able to see just how far she's come from the young Jewish girl living a priviledged life in Poland. Yet at the same time, her writing style allows readers to see clearly just how that same persona has managed to live such a rich, eventful life to the fullest all of these years.
   
   I've read many Holocaust memoirs, though I must say that Gerda's story is beautifully and distinctly told.

5 comments about Night.

1. I received this item in a timely matter in great condition! Would do business with again!



2. As an English teacher, I have my ninth graders read this memoir every year. And every year, I am moved to tears. Not only does Mr. Wiesel tell of his devastating experience of dehumanization in the Holocaust, but he tells it with such eloquence and mastery of the English language, that one would wonder if he was always a writer. This is his first book and it reads like a story written by some of the greatest writers of the literary canon. Be forewarned that his story will change your perspective on life and will most likely you move you to tears as well. If it doesn't, than as my Pastor would say, "your wood is wet."
   
   You may be asking yourself, "why would I want to read something that will just get me upset?" My answer to that is that if we don't get upset, how can we facilitate change? Ignorance leads to bliss? No way--it leads to destruction. Furthermore, antisemitism hasn't gone away. And in the midst of the violence and hatred exploding in the middle east 63 years after Hitler was defeated, there are millions of people who once again want to annihilate the Jews and are devising plans to do just that. So this memoir must be read. Mr. Wiesels' story must be heard.



3. From the moment we had began on this book in our classes it was truly an eye opener. Words cannot describe the misery that was felt in each and every word this book had within. The book itself had casted night over all of us, especially me as we listened intently on what could be known as the most heart striking tale. From the start of the camp to the death marchings in the snow, the story gives a full eye account of the horror that was seen in the Nazi war. No story ever has been written so amazingly nor dramaticly as this. Yes, it touched me darkly and it burned deeply but this story, this story is something everyone should read because no one should forget what happened so long ago. You cant go your whole life without reading this book, its something that you should not miss.
   
   I give it a rating of five stars and I hope you, the reader, can also find that too.



4. Night by Elie Wiesel is an excellent first hand account into the atrocities the Jew endured at the German prisoner and slave labor camps of World War II. This volume gives students additional connections into understanding the situations. Excellent version!!!



5. This is the true story of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. A religious Jew, Wiesel was a young boy during the German invasion. He and his family were taken captive by the Nazis and put into the concentration camps where he witnessed atrocities that destroyed his family and shattered his faith.
   
   Told simply and succintly, this first person account is haunting. Wiesel speaks with a numb detachment, sensationalizing nothing. He asks for no pity. He simply describes what he saw.
   
   It is only one person's point-of-view of perhaps the most important event in modern history, but his testimony feels as big as the Holocaust itself. That this is one of millions of stories that could be told is shocking again, even if you've seen movies or read other books on the topic. You come away from this book with a better understanding of what happened, and many unanswerable questions as to why it happened.
   
   As other reviewers have suggested, this book should be required reading for all high school students.

1 comments about The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, Day.

1. Bought this book as a gift for a friend who is a history teacher. She gave me a 3 hour personal tour through the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and commented that she had not read this book.

5 comments about The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life.

1. Tom Reiss: `The Orientalist'
   
   I am not in the habit of leaving on-line feedback about my reading, but this book, `The Orientalist', is so exceptional, so original, so brilliantly conceived and so splendidly executed, that - given the chance to leave some comments - it seems almost mean-spirited not to take up the opportunity.
   
   In fact, I've already provided some `feedback' about this book, recommending it (via email) to others. This in itself, on reflection, seems to me to be unusual behaviour. Normally I let others make their own discoveries, finding for themselves what to read that may be interesting, informative or enjoyable. In this sense, therefore, as well as others, this book, `The Orientalist', took me out of my accustomed ways of looking at things.
   
   Everyone to whom I've recommended this book has purchased it and told me how remarkable it is. One reader, in France, wrote back to say that she'd read it twice! In some ways I can understand that, as, while reading it, more than once I returned to earlier chapters to re-read certain passages, to acquaint myself again with some of the personalities and events with which the book is occupied, and with the well-crafted prose of the author.
   
   What is `The Orientalist' `about'? In some ways this is a non-fiction detective story, with the author investigating a kind of literary mystery. There is, for a start, a book, a novel, `Ali and Nino'. But who wrote it? About this, the authorship of what appears to be the pre-eminent national work of Azerbaijan, a romantic, compelling novel, there is, or has been, considerable controversy. In a sense, as in any mystery, in any detective story, there is a `crime' - in this case, the crime being the theft, from an author (now deceased), of credit for his work.
   
   But in investigating this question, Tom Reiss uncovers layer after layer of lost fragments of history, and politics, and culture. The deeper he explores this question of authorship, the greater the breadth (historical, political and cultural) of the book. In the end, this is a wonderful journey that Tom Reiss takes his readers on, travelling back in time and across borders, into and out of nations and empires whose eventful lives and often dismal fortunes correspond to that of `the Orientalist' himself.
   
   For the title of the book refers not to a `type' of person, but rather to a specific individual, and, as a result, this book rescues that person - born Lev Nussimbaum, and subsequently known both as Essad Bey and as Kurban Said - from literary obscurity. It is a rescue entirely deserved. Tom Reiss was drawn into the life of Lev Nussimbaum as a result of being captivated by one of his books, Ali and Nino, and, in a somewhat comparable fashion, though at the same time a bit topsy-turvy, I was drawn to read Lev Nussimbaum's `Ali and Nino' as a result of reading Tom Reiss's `The Orientalist'.
   
   This on-line comment about `The Orientalist' is not intended to be a full-length review of the book; it is `feedback' and, at the same time, a warm invitation to experience a truly unique piece of work. Of course, one of the characters in the book is Tom Reiss himself, travelling about, meeting people, coming across manuscripts. Some of those he meets are to be found in castles, in Europe; others are down the street, if not down the hall, in New York City apartments. The logic of his book is compelling, as he discovers, and uncovers, the life that Lev and his father led - the life of refugees, fleeing from revolutionary violence, falling from a dreamy and dream-like existence in Baku to the desperate straits of exile, in `the East', through Turkestan and Persia, to Constantinople, and then on to Paris and Berlin.
   
   For me, this is an account, as well, of the devotion of two people, father and son, to one another's well-being. The father, once wealthy (on Baku oil), strives to lead his son towards peace and security; the history of the 20th century, filled with war and revolution, characterised by cruelty rather than compassion, makes these goals all too elusive. Still, in reduced and hazardous circumstances, they try to look after one another, and it is their relationship - their concern for one another - and the life-and-death predicaments in which they continue to find themselves, that provides a deeply touching motif to the work.
   
   But for the most part this is an exciting, even thrilling, fast-paced real-life thriller. In order for us to understand what is going on - and how Lev Nussimbaum is going to turn into Kurban Said - Tom Reiss has to explain the politics - the revolutions, the wars, the personalities - pivotal to the story of Lev and his father Abraham. Here is a book in which the main character, Lev Nussimbaum - born in 1905 on a train, with an oil magnate for a father and a radical revolutionary for a mother - arrives, in Baku, on the day of his birth, to a city in turmoil, a forerunner of a life shaped by politics and upheaval. In later years he will personally blame Stalin (who seems to have been a friend of his mother's and may have stayed in the family home) for much of his life's turbulence and misfortunes. In this respect a depiction of Lev Nussimbaum's life seems to me to validate the writer Arthur Koestler's observation in the first volume of his autobiography, `Arrow in the Blue', that a `secular horoscope', noting the political events on earth at the time of a person's birth and their subsequent influence over a person's life - `the constellation of earthly events' - may well provide a useful perspective on a person's subsequent fate.
   
   One consequence of reading the book - and becoming caught up in the lives of its protagonists - is to regard one's own life, at least for a time, somewhat differently. That surely is a mark of an outstanding book - to cause oneself to look at one's life in a new light. This moment occurred most dramatically when I had just finished reading about Lev, as a young boy, disobeying orders, and looking out a window, to see bodies in the street, and carts coming by, gathering up the dead - as the shooting between different revolutionary factions continued. Thinking of what I'd read, and of his plight, while walking through the streets where I live, I suddenly saw those streets, and the buildings adjacent to them, in a different way, observing their tranquility - noticing what was absent: no bodies; no gunshots; no armed men - in contrast with what was `normal' in the life of this young man, not even 100 years ago.
   
   Tom Reiss's `The Orientalist' is a magnificent achievement, a stunning, brilliantly researched and absorbingly written publication. This on-line comment, already far too long, can only hint at the extraordinary array of topics traversed in the narrative. Indeed, I can scarcely recall a book any way like it, so wide-ranging, fascinating, original and informative - and, as noted, quite moving as well. The book is an adventure and it will lead readers to discover places, people, events, incidents and lives they scarcely could have dreamed existed. And it may also lead some readers to find their way to `Ali and Nino', a lovely jewel of a novel, dream-like and wonderful; and for making that journey possible Tom Reiss is also warmly to be thanked.
   
   



2. I read this book for my Book Club.
   I read The Orientalist last summer ('07) and now the book seems to fade into obscurity.
   I don't remember a whole lot, but I do remember not really coming to care a whole lot about Kurban Said.
   Very forgetable to me although there is a bit of history that is interesting.



3. I was a bit dissapointed in this book. I had read Ali and Nino and, of course, the reviews for this book. I was prepared for adventure in the form of a historical novel. I wonder if the reviewers cited in the front and back of the book only read the introduction, which gives away the story, including the 'ending.' The rest of the book provides historical context to the story told in the introduction. There are relatively long (20-30 pages?) digressions on the history of (for example) the Ottoman Empire, German culture during the rise of the Nazis, etc. Very interesting and worthwhile stuff to be sure and I am very glad that I read this book. However, readers need to be prepared for this type of text. The read was quite a bit slower than I expected. The 'story' in my opinion, is much more interesting than the book itself. The 'story' here, includes the efforts of the author, which were certainly inspiring.



4. I wanted to read this autobiography for two reasons: 1)I very much enjoyed the novel, 'Ali and Nino' by Essad Bey; and 2) I am fascinated with the history of the Caucuses and Central Asia.
   
   Tom Reiss thoroughly explores Bey's life from his childhood in Azerbaijan during the most turbulent times of the early 20th century, but Mr. Reiss goes beyond that, and depicts the times and events. The accounts of Russian history and the Bolshevik revolution are fascinating. Later on, when Bey lives in Berlin, the book tends to slow a bit. Overall, 'The Orientalist' is a fascinating account of European history during the rise of Bolshevism and fascism.Taxi to Tashkent: Two Years with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan



5. The book feels a bit like watching 'Pop up video'. The tale is of a man trying to shed his identity in a world that hates who he is. The story is interspersed with a secret history of the early 20th century. About half the book has little to do with the central character. Its more a history of the time in which he lives.
   What's appealing about the book is that there is a lot of history that I had no clue about. Jewish Orientalist history, about Stalin, Germany etc but the story about Leo Nussimbaum feels to me flawed. I don't understand why he deceided to be a writer. I don't understand what made him tick. He makes all sorts of strange decisions that the author cannot unravel.
   An intersting book in bits but doesn't hold together as a biography.

No comments about Rena's Promise.

5 comments about Things We Couldn't Say.

1. I bought this book at the American Book Center in The Hague, Netherlands, a few years ago. As I knew many of the places mentioned in the book, it took on an even deeper meaning for me. I love this book, and I list Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma as heroes. Definitely 5+ stars!



2. The true story of true Christians, and Dutch patriots, Diet Eman and Hein Sietsma, and their courageous risk of everything to resist Nazi tyranny and hide thousands of Dutch Jews.
   True Christians always love the Jewish people and Israel, and true nationalists are opposed to both Communism and Nazism, both the antithesis of national self-determination.
   Diet recounts her own life, and experiences and what she saw and heard, as well as her deep faith in G-D, that guided her in all she did and thought.
   Diet recounts her experiences in Scheveningen prison, where she describes how Jewish families, who were caught in hiding, were hauled into the prison, mothers, fathers and children: 'On the nights the guards brought Jews in, we always heard the children crying all through that place. It was bad enough for us to have to suffer through a place, like Scheveningen, but it was terrible to hear those poor innocent children crying.'
   It is up to true Christians and righteous gentiles to stand by the State of Israel today, in the struggle for her survival and that of her children, against the monstrous Islamic-extreme leftist hate machine.



3. Excellent book. The book is fast paced, exciting and touching.
   
   The risks and sacrifices that the author and her fiance went through for their beliefs and for unkwown people amazed and inspired me. Highly recommended.



4. The account of the author and her experiences fighting the German occupation of Holland during WWII is harrowing. It is hard to imagine that any human being can display so mush courage at such a young age.



5. I have read more than 75 books of this genre depicting this period of history. "What would I have done under the same circumstances?" That is the question I am always asking of myself whilst reading these stories. This is the story of a group of people with the courage of their convictions...Diet's story is inspiring and touching. It illustrates perfectly that the power of prayer is undeniable and when 'all one can do is pray' one has done everything.

No comments about Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork.

5 comments about The Forger: An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin.

1. Holocaust memoirs are big business and range from the highly erudite, acute and sentient observations of a "favored Jew" (Victor Klemperer), the exquisitely dangerous role of an active resister (Jan Valtin) to the inane (this book) with everything in between. As the book's subtitle suggests, this is an "extraordinary story of survival in wartime Berlin".
   
   Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this memoir is the author's total lack of perspective and oblivious unconcern about his life. He has the slightly sociopathic character of a petty criminal operating in a democracy, wherein the worst possible outcome would be a few years in jail (where he could further perfect his methods). In this case, however, the undoubted outcome of his apprehension would be a grizzly death in the hands of the Gestapo: document forgery would certainly command the specific attention of the SD and it's most expert "interrogators". In comparison, not even a "train to the East" would be frightening. A few sessions in the Gestapo dungeon broke just about every man and that, most assuredly, is what the author would have faced. This fate would have been explicitly known by him (as proof see, for example, Eric Johnson's seminal work on the role of the Gestapo in maintaining domestic security before and during the War), yet the author suggests that he is (or was) blithely (and foolishly) unconcerned. Frankly, only a complete fool would caper about as he did, even allowing for the theory that the best place to hide is "out in the open". I suspect the author's recollections have been massaged for the sake of improved sales.
   
   The book is a "quick read" and the reader's interest is maintained, despite the pre-ordained good outcome (to wit, he escapes and lives happily ever after and writes this book!). I was reminded of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories (flirting with danger and invested with much drama and decadence), but those adventures took place in the (relative) safety of the Weimar Republic.
   
   Perhaps the author's duplicity, which allowed him to prosper and even enjoy capering about amidst the dire perils for Jews in wartime Germany persists in this book: he hints that, maybe, with a little "luck and pluck" (a la Horatio Alger) everyone could have avoided The East.



2. The writing style is very choppy, doesn't flow. The story is very good, though!



3. The Forger is a story that has been written many times over. The "Last Jews In Berlin," by Leonard Gross, comes to mind, although being presented in the first person increases its poignancy. Schonhaus' characterization of himself is quite credible, and it must be assumed that the original German version must read well. Unfortunately, the English translation is not as good as it could be. Finally, Cioma's crossing the Suisse border was rendered as being much too easy. The reader gets the impression that the author was in a hurry to complete the story.



4. I was VERY disappointed in this book. One has to read half of the book before finding any information on his experience as a forger of documents. There is too much information on his female conquests, one of whom was a German officer's wife. Those exploits added nothing to the story, were unnecessary and detracted from the main theme. It's a shame he had to use half of the book for this sort of thing before getting to the main gist.



5. This is the breathtaking--literally breath taking--true story of the author's years living as an undocumented Jew in Berlin during the Nazi madness. Spared initially by his skilled-labor designation for work in a war factory, soon even that was not enough to save him from the order that he be evacuated to the East, code for the concentration camps. Already he had seen his parents, grandmother, and aunt and uncle off on the train. Thus, it is time for him to go underground.
   
   Underground, however, for Schonhaus does not mean invisibility. Indeed, he is the most visible invisible person imaginable, eating in restaurants packed with high-ranking Nazis, for example, on the theory that such would be the last place to look for a Jew. Theory is fine on paper, but in real life it takes either a madman or a fool. The author is a bit of both and lucky beyond reason.
   
   Trained as a graphic artist, Schonhaus is asked one day whether he can copy a Nazi stamp on some papers. He can, and soon he is working with anti-Nazi non-Jews and forging all manner of documents. Fully aware of what fate awaits him (and his colleagues) if he is caught, he carries on with almost youthful bravado. Indeed, it is this insouciance that is at the heart of his numerous heart-pounding near disasters and his brilliant bluffs that allow him to escape over and over again.
   
   Written decades after he lived the adventure, The Forger is a series of vignettes that concludes with Schonhaus's several-day bicycle ride in broad daylight down highways and through checkpoints--miles and miles and miles--from Berlin to Switzerland. He crossed that border in 1943 and still lives in that country. Steve McQueen could not have done it better, even with the motorcycle.

5 comments about The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945.

1. One of those amazing stories that makes you realize just how much the human spirit can take, and still survive. And just how inhumane we humans can be towards each other. Once you start reading, you won't be able to put this down.



2. Szpilman reveals the tragedy of Jewish life in Warsaw under the German occupation from 1939-1946. Szpilman's autobiographical work was first published in postwar Poland in 1946 but then quickly removed from circulation by Polish authorities. An accomplished pianist before the war, Szpilman played for Polish Radio during the siege of Warsaw and later within the Jewish ghetto to provide food for his parents and siblings. With the systematic liquidation of Jewish life in Warsaw and separation from his family, Szpilman's life took a series of surprising twists. As the reader views life in the ghetto through the eyes of a survivor, his escape from the ghetto before the Jewish up-rising and his ultimate survival consistently depended upon a timely combination of luck and sympathetic acquaintances B including a German army officer.
   
   Included with Szpilman's memoirs are excerpts from Captain Wilm Hosenfeld's diaries and Wolf Biermann's own brief commentary. Hosenfeld's equating of National Socialism with Stalinist Communist and Biermann's emphasis on Szpilman's willingness to break with his past detracts from the overall quality of this work. Nevertheless, this work is well written and will retain the reader's attention to the end.



3. I could not put down this book, and read it in two sittings. Wladyslaw Szpilman, the famed pianist and composer, describes his harrowing account of life under Nazi terror. As a Polish Jew, Szpilman was considered by the Nazis to be entirely subhuman, and it is a miracle he survived the persistent and random acts of violence that surrounded him. He was nearly sent to a death camp along with his five family members, and somehow was pulled off the Birkenau-bound train to a grim prospect of survival. The images in this book are harrowing, such as the depiction of the shattered skulls of little girls, victims of the Nazis' "preferred" method of killing children by picking them up by their legs and swinging them into a brick wall. Imagine the horror....Szpilman's account is so matter-of-fact at times that you wonder how he survived. The fact that he did is a testament of human endurance, but also the ways of fate. There were occasions when he survived simply by the luck of the draw in a Godless universe.



4. Why do I consider a first person account detailing the horrors of the Holocaust to be uplifting? The events described by the author are harrowing and nearly unbelieveable to the degree that I was astonished that the man, in the end, survives. Perhaps that is why I am so uplifted by this story. He survived. He defied evil by daring to live. He also dared to pick up the pieces of his shattered life and continue to live. He does this without any fanfare or obvious heroism. I think that is what makes this particular telling of the Holocaust so remarkable. The author writes it in such an unremarkable fashion that it forces you to sit up and take notice. By simply stating that the caramel was his 'family's last meal together' makes you pause to reflect on such an event. Beautifully written. Highly reccommended.
   
   As a side note, Roman Polanski's adaptation of this book is truely brilliant. Adrien Brody's portrayal of Szpilman is awe inspiring and heart wrenching to watch. Both men do the book and Szpilman's memory justice.



5. I don't have too much to add to the other reviewers; having seen the movie I had a pretty good idea what to expect.
   
   Probably the most interesting thing about the book version is the diary of a German officer who helped save Spilman. The officer's diary (from 1942-44) shows that he was aware of the Nazi extermination camps by mid-1942; he explained that most Jews were "so weak from starvation and misery that they couldn't offer any resistance." By December 1943, he knew that Germany would lose the war, but suggests that Germans would not revolt because "no one would risk his life by standing up to the Gestapo."