5 comments about Tilli's Story: My Thoughts Are Free.

1. An amazing book about an amazing woman's struggles in German during the Nazi rule & later Russian rule. This should be included in every library collection of WWII books. It's a different perspective than any other WWII book out there. It's from a farm girl's veiw of the war & Hitler. All a true story that will open your eyes to life & war & family love. You will not be able to put it down. Also, a great book club selection with many great discussion points. Everyone I've given this book to LOVES it & you will too.



2. This book just made me feel like I was there in all the horrors Tilli was going through. I understood her feelings about the people and conditions she endured. Her love for family members, her determination to change her life, but not her inner self. This should make it to Oprah's book list if anything does. Just a wonderful book, the first one I've ever seen spanning WWII and the two Germanies.



3. I love good thrillers, and this truly is one. The things young Tilli had to endure just to acheive something we take for granted every day. Freedom. She had such hope, such spirit. Nothing could stop her, and nothing could stop me from reading! It was a wonderful retelling of an amazing journey. One everyone could learn from.



4. This book was beautifully written...I was virtually transported in time and walked every step with Tilli thru her explicit details of the events of her childhood. Once I received the book in the mail I just could not set it down until I read it thru. She showed tremendous strength and courage as each horrible event happened. Everyone who has ever questioned our freedom in the USA should read this book and never complain about our way of life.



5. This book is absolutly wonderful! It is so interesting to get a different perspective on this time in history. Anyone who has read Anne Frank or seen/read Schindlers List needs to read this too.
   
   I would suggest this as a great cross-curriculum novel for high school/college.

1 comments about Fortress of My Youth: Memoir of a Terezín Survivor.

1. Renée was 13 years old when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia. Born of Czech-speaking Jewish parents who lived in Josefov (Josephstadt), she had been baptized as child, but of course the Nazi race laws applied to the entire family (except to a much loved non-Jewish step-grandfather). For the next three years restriction followed restriction. During that time Renée kept a diary, which has certain elements in common with Anne Franks', recording all the passionate feelings of an adolescent girl, eventually cooped up with edgy parents in their home (which they had to share with a Yiddish-speaking family from Ruthenia), rebelling against her fate, fantasizing about being in love. She did in fact have a passionate and touching, mainly epistolatory, friendship with Jarmila, a non-Jewish girl two years older than herself whom she had met on a train. For sometimes Renée and her mother ran the risk of defying the Nazi restrictions on Jews leaving their neighbourhood and visited the grandparents in nearby Mnichovo Hradiste (Münchengrätz): in their house they could temporarily put their worries to the back of their minds and even sing and play - music had always meant much to the family.
   
   More and more people were being ordered to report for deportation. The Nazis took the Ruthenian family without their two small children, aged four and 18 months, and fourteen-year old Renée took over the mothering of them. But then in December 1942 it was the turn of Renée and her family: they were deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin).
   
   We know that the Nazis presented Theresienstadt as a `model camp' to visitors from the Red Cross. Did these take in the atrociously overcrowded accommodation, with well over 50,000 inmates in buildings that had been built for one-tenth of that number, so that each inmate had less than 1.6 square meters of floor-space? Did they take in its nature as a transit camp, from which thousands of people were transported to death camps to make room for thousands of newcomers? Did they notice the filthy conditions that prevailed in most of the camp? The tormenting infestation of bedbugs and lice? The carts which wheeled away the 100 to 150 dead each day (nearly 30,000 died there)?
   
   And yet, in the midst of all this, there were remarkable affirmations of life. The Nazis left the detailed running of the camp to its inmates, and even gave permission for some children to be accommodated in separate buildings, which were run by the most wonderful men and women who made it their mission to stimulate and educate these children (often to a higher standard than they would have experienced at school), to give them as positive an attitude to life as was possible under these circumstances, to make them be as clean and tidy as possible, above all to inculcate into them a strong ethical sense, so that, for example, they would help each other and share the few small food parcels that were initially admitted from the outside.
   
   As part of the `model camp' image, the Nazis permitted the inmates to stage concerts, choral works in the beginning, then instrumental music on instruments that had been confiscated. Famous musicians among the inmates insisted on the highest standards from ensembles who rehearsed after ten hours of hard labour in the fields or workshops and whose composition was constantly changing as the result of deportations. Renée herself took part in performances of Smetana's The Bartered Bride (with its opening chorus Let's rejoice, let's be merry) and The Kiss, and Verdi's Requiem.
   
   So there were exhilarating experiences in Theresienstadt (and I was reminded of the title of another such memoir - A Garden of Eden in Hell - see my Amazon review). They included intense personal, often sexual, attachments between these adolescents, only too often violently ending when one of them was selected for further deportation. Renée herself experienced this: there was passionate love between her and a young man called Milan, who would leave Theresienstadt on the same transport as her father.
   
   Renée's father and Milan were on one of the last transports out of Theresienstadt. She and her mother were due to go on one soon after, but by a miracle they were spared. And then there were no more transports. Only a few people, mostly women, were left in Theresienstadt to cope as best they could that winter until the Russians arrived to liberate the camp in May 1945.
   
   It was a desolate return home - so many people had perished: her father and her beloved grandparents among them. Jarmila had been arrested, but released because she was dying of tuberculosis: Renée managed to see her on the day she died. Milan had survived the death march from his concentration camp, but did not marry Renée. When the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia he had emigrated to Chile
   
   Renée's mother had managed to re-establish the family business, which was lost for the second time when it was taken over by the State. Renée herself went to university. She had accidentally left a letter from Milan in a library book, in which Milan had made flippant remarks about the East and about his `capitalist' activities in Chile, which nearly cost her the right to sit her final examination. But the letter remained on her police files and would cause more problems in later years. She still lives in Prague - but she certainly could not have published the last chapter of her book if the Communists were still in power there.
   
   A most memorable addition to the memoirs of Holocaust survivors.

1 comments about Narrow Escapes: A Boy's Holocaust Memories and Their Legacy.

1. if I was to describe "Narrow Escapes". In fact, I believe that the pain and sorrow that Holocaust survivor Dr. Samuel P. Oliner faced as he tried to escape from the horrible claws of Adolph Hitler during the Second World War, could never be described. The horrors that he faced are too great for words. The most piercing fact in this book is that the war stories in it are not the stories of a man but the ones of a SMALL CHILD who was forced to become a man much faster than lighting and in the most afflictive situations.

   This book is a must read because we all must know the truth about the history of the human race. I strongly believe that every one of us is responsible for what happens today and must keep in mind the future of next generations. Dr. Oliner says, "knowledge of the past may somehow avert similar future...those who remember the past will do all they can to prevent its recurrence."

   This book broke my heart way before the Germans came to Zyndranova, the little village near Czecholovakia, when Little Oliner's mother got sick and he was only six-years old. It was at this time that he began to make sense of his world. After his mother's death he exclaims, "My mother is dead. But that is only for a short time, isn't it?" And like if his mother's death was nothing, his father takes him away from his love ones, into another village, in the house of male strangers. It was there, all alone, that he held a job at the age of seven while he went to school. Could you imagine your own child in this situation? Although Oliner doesn't mention in his book, I believe that these agonizing situations were only preparing him for what was to come when the Nazis arrived. These situations were his training ground to face the monster that would take over the land and his people. But the hardships of times and the warmth of his family brought the best out of him. And his fight has not ended yet.

   The rest of the story is for you to read in suspense but mostly in deep grief. As I read the book, I often felt glad that the child who was facing all the hardships of the Holocaust was not my sixteen year old son. In fact, I thought about my son the entire book. But the sad part is that although he was not my son, he was the son of another woman. In a war, my child or the child of another woman or man is the same. It brings pain. Being forty years old I have learn that it is a thousand times better to die in the face of injustice that to live in silence before it.

2 comments about Rumkowski and the Orphans of Lodz.

1. This book is an easy and short read. My professor assighned this book to read and Im glad he did. The author does an excellent job of telling the reader her story of torment, abuse, and neglect at the hands of the Nazis and their puppet Rumkowski.



2. A good description of the terrible conditions in the Lodz Ghetto. But, most importantly, a view of Rumkowski that I have never read before. A difficult man in a very difficult time. Only God can judge.

1 comments about The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocust.

1. The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived The Holocaust is an unabridged audiobook detailing the true story of an intelligent Jewish law student who was forced into a slave labor camp during the genocidal horrors of World War II. To survive, Edith hahn Beer had to adopt the identity of a Christian friend and hide. A Nazi Party member fell in love with Edith and helped her remain concealed throughout the war. Edith's story is now documented in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. A profound and unforgettable true story, The Nazi Officer's Wife is deftly narrated by Barbara Rosenblat. 6 cassettes, approximately 9 hours.

4 comments about With Bound Hands: A Jesuit in Nazi Germany : The Life and Selected Prison Letters of Alfred Delp.

1. While one cannot help but sympathize with Father Alfred Delp SJ, the story drags in that it relies on Father Delp's sad and pensive letters from prison. As a new naive priest, he was lured into "dangerous" company by his Jesuit superior Roesch who then went into hiding leaving Father Delp to be hung out to dry.. Not as interesting a story as it sounds.. Tragic though.



2. Reading books by and about those who spent time in Nazi Germany is always difficult and sometimes discouraging, yet often they end up dispelling the evil they recount by the triumph of the human spirit against it. This book should be a Holocaust classic right up there with Elie Wiesel's Night or Etty Hillsum's An Interrupted Life and Letter from Westerbork. However, our main character has more in common with Etty then Elie, for Elie was rescued in the dying days of the war, and both Etty and Alfred Delp, our hero, did not make it out.
   This is the story of a young man studying to be a Jesuit Priest, a man who pushes the boundaries in his own order and ruffles some feathers outside of it as well. He is a man who has faith and is certain of the things he believes in. He is also certain that Hitler will fail and from early in the war is part of a group that is trying to create a plan for the rebuilding of Germany after the war. This group that he joined was called the Kreisau friends. In an early letter Delp wrote about the resistance: "Whoever doesn't have the courage to make history is doomed to become its object. We have to take action." P.48. Throughout the war Delp had many roles: parish priest, teacher at a boys' school, active resistance friend and community leader.
   Delp was arrested for a murder plot on Hitler, a plot about which he did not actually have any knowledge. He believed to nearly the end that he would be acquitted in his trial. In December of 1944 he wrote: "Today was a good day. Even though in the end we're chained and locked up, the heart of the day is the mass. We pray and trust and are not in the least bit modest about what we expect from God." P.107. Yet as time wore on, he would despair. But his faith in God would stand firm.
   This book is an amazing testimony of the power of the intellect and of steadfast faith, in very troubled times.



3. So often tragedy appears to be a failure or defeat in life when in fact it is a beginning of something worthwhile and beautiful. The imprisonment and execution of Alfred Delp, as revealed in his letters and the author’s commentaries in this book exemplify that truth. The reader may find it hard and even tedious to become embroiled in the desperate struggle to hold on to life by a man whose faith in eternity is never questioned. But this microcosm of the lives and suffering shared by millions under the Nazi regime is an example of the eventual futility of evil and should cause us to appreciate more deeply the freedom purchased for us today by those lives. The book is the beautiful fruit grown from the seed of one man’s death. It should be read.



4. With Bound Hands: A Jesuit In Nazi Germany by Mary Frances Coady presents the life and selected letters of Fr. Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest, youth leader, intellectual, and a dedicated resister to the Nazi regime who was taken prisoner and eventually executed by the Nazis. Father Delp's smuggled writings and prayers to friends and family mark a man transformed by the crucible of suffering, and provide a sober view of the depths of human cruelty as well as the struggle to endure. With Bound Hands stands as an enduring testament against the Nazis and their crimes -- and powerful reading for Catholics today.

3 comments about Shadow Over Shangri-La.

1. ESSAY
   The best memoir you never heard of:
   'Shadow Over Shangri-La' offers compelling and timely story of Nepal
   By Cynthia Haven
   Sunday, November 12, 2006
   
   Every so often a reader discovers a memoir that has the power to disturb long after the last page is turned. It shakes your world -- but not only yours. Its author becomes a megastar, a household word appearing on talk shows, perhaps even bagging a Nobel Prize (think Rigoberta Menchú). The book shoots to the top of the best-seller lists and becomes required reading at universities.
   
   And every so often one runs into a memoir that should have had such power -- and mysteriously didn't. It winds up at the top of the remainder bins.
   
   Durga Pokhrel's compelling, inspiring "Shadow Over Shangri-La: A Woman's Quest for Freedom" was published in 1996, and disappeared without a bubble in the sea of annual offerings. But its true relevance might be now, as Nepal hovers on the brink of change. With the signing of a peace agreement on Nov. 8, Maoists terrorists have joined an interim government -- but after waging a 10-year insurgency, the Maoists' track record for nonviolence is unpromising.
   
   The Himalayan kingdom, home of Everest and Annapurna, is 550 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south, much of it mountainous -- but its strategic importance is disproportionate to its size. It lies between the world's most populous democracy, India, and communist China, or more specifically, the Chinese province of Tibet. Maoist influence could destabilize the entire region -- but few in the world worry about the peril; few people could name a famous Nepali since Gautama Buddha.
   
   "Everyone who cares about freedom should be interested in her story," writes Chinese human rights activist Harry Wu in the book's foreword. Yet hardly anyone has read it at all. Ten years ago, "Shadow Over Shangri-La" vanished from bookstore shelves long before word of mouth might have given it a second, or even a first, life. Its intelligent and appealing heroine, an inconnu outside her native land, had been adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience two decades ago. She might be someone who could successfully put a face on a national crisis, making a remote people and culture more immediate to an uninterested world, which exhausted Nepal's sound-bite possibilities when the hippies left in the 1970s.
   
   Pokhrel's tale begins with her political frame-up for an attempted kidnapping of the crown prince -- an almost comical Keystone Kops imbroglio, with bombs toted like cell phones. ("I was being portrayed as a revolutionary and extremist when I could not even kill a mosquito," she writes.) It includes her 18-day hunger strike as she was detained in police custody without charges, and her subsequent imprisonment in the far western hinterlands of Nepal, where dirty prisoners lived on blackened, maggot-infested rice, which smelled like "a dead animal." What followed was worse: In the hellish Kathmandu Central Prison, arbitrary torture and beatings were routine entertainment for the prison staff. Prisoners, sometimes girls in their early teens, were jailed without charges or trial. The socially inconvenient were herded with the naked pagal, the mentally ill prisoners who were injected with tranquilizers and living amid bedbugs, fleas and feces. Pokhrel ends with an impassioned plea -- a visionary hope for a Hindu democracy, a cry that echoes to the present day.
   
   Who has heard of it? I bought my own copy on Amazon.com for 65 cents. The book had deeper ties for me: I had lived with Durga 28 years ago in Kathmandu, when she was a little-known political activist, a young professor and journalist with a law degree (an unprecedented combination for a Nepali woman, even today), a rebel whose Brahmin family in the easternmost hill country was constantly arranging marriages for her that she resisted. Rejected by them, she lived alone.
   
   Time has done much to both of us, but some things time cannot undo: "Shadow Over Shangri-La" brought back the Durga I remember -- fearless, headstrong and dedicated, with an astonishing lack of self-pity.
   
   We had been introduced at the bungalow of scholar and statesman Rishikesh Shaha, then chairman of Amnesty International's Nepal chapter, an erudite, roly-poly man in his early 50s. He presented her like a national jewel, with good cause.
   
   She was in her late 20s, her unbound black hair hanging well below her waist. Her sari was a brilliant yellow that might have resembled a monk's saffron -- but I'd never seen a monk wear chiffon. The lift of her head was proud, almost defiant, as was her half-smile as she drifted into the room and stood before us in "Namaste" greeting. She was unbending, like a lily.
   
   By that time, she had already been jailed on several occasions in the corrupt Hindu kingdom with one-party rule. Durga was one of the promising up-and-comers of the outlawed Nepali Congress Party. Her dedication to democracy was her bond with Shaha, who had been his country's ambassador to the United Nations as well as its foreign minister. An opponent of royal autocracy, he had only recently returned from exile.
   
   With Durga, I met men who would play prominently in Nepal's future: B.P. Koirala, a newly released Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, who would later become the nation's first elected prime minister; his brother G.P. Koirala, the current prime minister; Ganesh Man Singh, a disciple of Gandhi who was considered Nepal's father of democracy; and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, who served as prime minister twice. When I returned to my then-home, London, I schlepped through Gatwick in Durga's pink-and-blue chiffon sari and a pair of sandals; my luggage had been stolen days earlier on India Rail.
   
   Durga's path took her to exile in the West in 1983, after receiving a tip-off that she was to be rearrested. Friendly American tourists sent her a plane ticket to Minneapolis. She escaped into a Minnesota blizzard with little more than a lightweight sari and a pair of sandals. The 16-year American sojourn that followed (an American Durga would have seemed an oxymoron in the 1970s) garnered her a Harvard doctorate, marriage to a specialist in rural agricultural development and conservation, and three half-English sons. "Shadow" was written in exile, largely from memory. Police raids and distance had whisked away many personal records, which, perhaps, accounts for some discrepancies in dating.
   
   But how to account for the total disappearance from the public eye of her own powerful testimony? Alas, the authors with the best stories to tell may not have the publishing savvy to climb the best-seller lists.
   
   Durga, in a characteristic moment of intuition, had found a publisher only a quarter mile down the road from her digs in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. When a manuscript was requested within days, she may not have realized how vital the right publisher is to a trade book's success (and not one largely devoted, as Brassey's was, to military history).
   
   She and her husband and co-author, Anthony Willett, approached the project like the scholars they are, and not like veterans of the showbiz that is publishing today. They received a grant from the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation, and a tiny advance from Brassey's. But in the world of trade books, the size of the advance signals the publisher's commitment to the project, and how much it will promote and publicize the finished book. Durga never had an agent to tell her this. Author tours were small and largely confined to the East Coast. Translation rights, TV rights, movie rights were not discussed. The book received little notice and no major reviews -- not even from the Washington Post, where the authors were living and the publisher was situated.
   
   Publisher's Weekly justly criticized the book for its occasional infelicities, which, to my memory, closely replicate Durga's own idiosyncratic English, and also the book's shortcomings in explaining Nepalese culture and politics. It further notes "her own suffering was mitigated by exceptional privileges, particularly the services of a cellmate as her maid and cook." The reviewer failed to grasp that Durga's "privileges" largely accrued because she was classified as a political prisoner rather than a criminal one, and the "maid" was simply a lower-caste woman deferring naturally to a Brahman. Such is the world of caste. Even in hardship, Durga was served by the loyal cook she always referred to simply as "Lama" -- a mild boy so self-effacing that, in the months he cooked for us, I cannot recall him uttering a single syllable, a kid so unassuming I was surprised to find he had a full name (Ram Bahadur Lama) listed in Durga's index -- or that he was listed at all.
   
   "Shadow" is labeled "biography/women's studies" -- a category that, in Barnes & Nobles everywhere, foredooms it to shelf space alongside Gail Sheehy's "Passages." The jacket cover has a well-meaning blurb from a friend of Durga's, health guru Deepak Chopra ("impelling support for the revival of true feminine energy"), that further pigeonholes "Shadow" as a "woman's book." Although Durga is a passionate advocate for Hindu meditation, prayer and yoga, especially for prisoners, "Shadow" is no New Age textbook.
   
   In the reptilian mutual eating of the publishing world, the English-owned Brassey's Inc. soon became Potomac Books Inc., which was acquired by American book distributor Books International in 1999. Some will argue that "Shadow" is outdated. The royal family she discusses in the book was assassinated, en masse, in 2001. Ironically, they were slaughtered by the Crown Prince, who had been the centerpiece of Durga's political charges.
   
   "Shadow" was published the year the Maoists began their decade-long People's War -- characterized by looting, abduction, torture and extortion -- which has so far left 13,000 murdered by one side or the other, most of them civilians, and many of them children. (The villagers say that 95 percent of the people support the Maoists -- by force -- only 5 percent by choice.) While Maoism is being consigned to the dustbin of history, even in China, it thrives in the green hills of Nepal, a country whose Nepali Congress Party was ultimately too weak to forge lasting democracy.
   
   One political insider of my acquaintance described the political situation in September: "Now, along with Lebanon's Hezbollah regime, we are the only country in the world that has a heavily armed terrorist movement openly operating its national office in the capital city. They have some 40,000-plus regular guerrillas in their People's Liberation Army and another 100,000 less well trained but armed militia -- almost as many people as the formerly Royal Nepal Army. "In October, when the Maoists deployed 200 rebel soldiers in the Kathmandu streets as "security patrols," one wondered whether it was the first step toward a rumored revolution. ("We have arrested 190 people, of whom 180 were freed after investigations," the Maoist commander said, blithely overlooking the illegality of the move. One can only speculate what methods were used in the investigations, and what happened to the remaining 10.)
   
   Durga, a devout Hindu, would say the nation's problem remains unchanged since she wrote her book: She would say that the nation's dilemma stems from a loss of dharma -- a term encompassing personal duty and sacred action, resulting in social harmony. ("I remember first recognizing at this time that human rights issues extended beyond political killings, imprisonment, and harassment to the social realm of domestic tragedies," she writes.) No doubt her sense of dharma was greatly reinforced by Nepal's decision, pressured by Maoists, to abandon its Vedic roots and its commitment to being the only Hindu nation in the world.
   
   "What secularism does in inherently religious societies like Nepal and India is to politicize religion, and the last spectacle I wish to see is a Hindu resurgent movement mobilizing against other groups in society," she writes.
   
   That was the point where Durga broke with the Nepali Congress party she had worked so hard to promote -- that, and its elimination of the monarchy from its constitution. Durga served on the royal cabinet as its minister of women, children and social welfare until it was disbanded after April's political upsets. She is tainted by her association with the short-lived government of King Gyanendra, but she says she was motivated by her wish to clear herself of charges for which she never stood trial. Gyanendra may not be a great king or even a good one, but until last year, he was considered Nepal's living incarnation of Vishnu, an important link with Nepal's past and its ancient traditions. Durga's longed-for Nepal -- akin to Gandhi's erstwhile dream for an agricultural India -- is already part of our vanishing choices.
   
   "Shadow" has many scenes of "institutionalized torture," featuring haunting characters the reader will never forget, but I will remember this one, early in the book, when Durga, in police custody, hears the terrified screams in the night of the "new prey." At 3 a.m., she speaks to a police officer:
   
   " 'Did you kill somebody tonight?' I asked.
   
   " 'You always imagine something big; he is not killed. As a routine treatment he was enclosed in a sack and beaten. But he would not speak a word, so some other police friends put a couple pins in his fingers. That is all,' he replied.
   
   " 'Who was he?' I asked.
   
   " 'Not a big shot. It was your cook, Lama,' he said."
   
   Don't hold your breath for the Nobel.
   
   Cynthia Haven most recent book is "Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations."
   
   [...]



2. For most people, the country of Nepal (nestled between India and Tibet) conjures up images of magnificent Himalayan peaks.
   Nepal is an incredibly wonderful country of great contradictions - breathtaking beauty against a backdrop of poverty and political and social injustice. Shadow over Shangri-La is the true story of one woman's experience in this country on the top of the world.

   Durga Pokhrel was born into wealth and privilege in Katmandu's educated upper class, but as a young woman her conscience led her into Nepal's underground democratic movement. As a university lecturer and a prolific writer (with an opposition printing press), she worked tirelessly for political change in her country. Arrested for her activities, Pokhrel was thrown into a medieval-like prison "where women were hung by chains from beams, beaten mercilessly and left to die." Eventually adopted as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, Pokhrel was freed from prison but death threats against her continued. She left Nepal and found safety and good friends in Minnesota and eventually received an advanced degree from Harvard, married and had a family.

   The years spent away from her native country only strengthened her resolve to return to Nepal one day and be an effective agent for change. Today, the political tides have turned in this now fledgling democracy and Pokhrel and her family have returned to Nepal. More passionate about her politics than ever, Pokhrel has recently been appointed as the director of Nepal's newly formed Commission on Women.




3. I am surprised I have not heard of the author's name before: Durga Pokhrel... what an amazing woman! She presents this book to the world as a plea for consciousness, and once you read it, you can't help but want to do something to help advance her cause. In this enlightening book I learned about modern Nepalese culture, it's "dharmic" Hindu roots and its disentegration as modern leaders gave up their responsibility for leading and protecting the people, and instead have victimized the weakest members of the population to maintain and cover up their greed, criminal activities, and lust for power.

   Durga herself became one of these victims, falsely accused of attempting to kidnap and/or kill one of the royal princes. Although her status as a political prisoner, and as a person of the Brahmin caste gave her some protection, she suffered from extremely poor conditions of nutrition and cleanliness in the places she was imprisoned. She saw horrible tortures perpetrated against other women inmates, also falsely imprisoned. The image she presents of imprisoned women in tattered rags, worn day and night and washed only once a year, with their hair matted with filth and lice, of so-called demented women living in concrete rooms without even a mat to sleep on, huddled together, trying to keep their feet out of piles of excrement, women hung from pillars for days on end, their female organs protruding from their bodies because of ghastly violations perpetrated against their bodies... this is unforgettable, and totally inexcusable.

   Durga's book is a call for enlightenment and action...not only on the part of the world community to learn from Nepal's mistakes, but for Nepal itself to face its failings against its people and against its spiritual roots. Durga ends the book with an incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and spiritual vsion for Nepal. She lays out a plan for government change, the role of the monarchy in developing a spiritual "dharmic" community, for the course of tourism, conservation, education, human rights, agriculture, and economy. Her vision of a country resurrected from the shadows into a true Shangri-La seems impossible to achieve as long as people continue to be greedy and corrupt, but Nepal would do well to heed this wise woman. Since finding refuge in America, I wonder what Durga Pokhrel is doing now, and if she herself will ever end up in a position of leadership in Nepal. Nepal should be grateful to her.

1 comments about Letters and Dispatches 1924-1944.

1. The Letters and Dispatches of Raoul Wallenberg provide a glimpse of a man who paid, somewhere and somehow in the Soviet Union, the ultimate price for his efforts to bring others to safety. While much is now debated about the benefits of neutrality to Sweden during the Holocaust, what cannot be debated is the intentionality of this man to provide Hungarian Jews a safe haven in Sweden, saving them from Hitler's death camps. An excellent read, this work provides insight through Raoul's own words and the responses of those he wrote to. Introductions to the letters and dispatches provide an excellent framework, assisting the reader with historical perspective, relational understanding and context.

5 comments about The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer.

1. Good overall reading, but the bottom line is that Dan van der Vat's book is dedicated to answering the question as to how much Speer really knew about Nazi evils. THE GOOD NAZI explores the biography of Albert Speer as one of contrasts. The author regularly compares Speer's admissions, and often wholesale paragraphs from INSIDE THE THIRD REICH with information that disputes Speer's versions of his governmental involvement.
   
   There is not a lot here that is new. Even reading Speer's INSIDE THE THIRD REICH left me convinced that he knew more than he was publicly admitting. Some praise Speer for his cooperation at Nuernberg and skillful defense. Others condemn him for essentially plea bargaining for a lesser charge. In reading this book you have to form your own opinion as to what anyone else would have done in a similar situation. The story is also very clear that as one of the few surviving senior ministers of the Third Reich there were very few peers left to confirm or deny aspects of Speer's life.
   
   In THE GOOD NAZI we find Speer a gifted up and coming architect who is attracted to the National Socialist party. Unlike other later opportunists, Speer joined the party before it showed any promise of ruling Germany. At the time the party put more stock in the fact that Speer owned a car rather than his architectural skills. From austere professional beginnings to designer for massive rallies in less than a decade.
   
   With the start of war Speer still remained at Hitler's court as his personal architect, with reconstruction duties, as well as architectural planner for post war Germany. With the death of Fritz Todt and Speer as his replacement, Speer finally became a part of the German war machine. His ministerial powers expanded from heir to the the Todt Organization to almost, though never completely, czar of armaments and military construction.
   
   Speer toiled endlessly to improve efficiency, suspend civilian luxuries, and adapt Germany for total war. In this pursuit he was ony partially successful. Still Speer was able to bring Germany's war industry to peak production in July 1944. Unfortunately for Germany the production spike came too late in the war to alter fate. As Germany collapsed Speer played his final role in doing everything he could to preserve public works and industries from Hitler's scorched earth decree.
   
   The culminaton of van der Vat's book is the question of how much Speer knew about and participated in the Holocaust. This never completely answered except that Speer knew more than he was ever willing to admit. This question of Speer's wartime liability was partially obscured in Nuernberg by Speer's open admission of guilt in some quarters and outright denials in others. Speer's defense was also aided by the fact that the British did not press the charges against him, while the Americans were grateful for his cooperation. The more aggressive Soviet prosecution was unable to shake Speer's position.
   
   There was also the issue, still debated today, as to whether or not Speer really intended to do away with Hitler at the end of the war. The evidence in the book supports that Speer at least discussed the possibility with a very small circle, but his actual intent is something that is left for the ages.
   
   Overall THE GOOD NAZI was good reading. Much like author Charles Whiting, Dan van der Vat is not shy about including editorial opinion throughout the volume. The opinions are hardly necessary as the facts lead the reader to the same conclusion anyway. My recommendation is that you also read INSIDE THE THIRD REICH either before or after reading THE GOOD NAZI.



2. With the amount of Speer texts in existence, van der vat's biography certainly falls into the bottom quarter in terms of quality and relevance.
   
   As an attempt to set the record straight, with regards to Speer, van der vat falls hopelessly short by focusing on Speer's motives, rather than the historical facts at hand. Most of this book is conjecture, trying to connect Speer to some larger Nazi conspiracy, refusing to acknowledge that Speer could have simply been an administrator, who was isolated from the larger picture of the "Jewish question" and war crimes.
   
   Finally, the book's citations and bibliography leave something to be desired. For instance, the index does not contain an entry for "slave labor," which was one of Speer's greatest transgressions as Armament's Minister.
   
   Recommended, Inside the Third Reich, Speer: The Final Verdict, and Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands.



3. Yes, the author is biased but he makes no secret of it so you can agree or disagree with him without having to read between lines.
   
   What I think of Albert Speer is irrelevant so I am not going to "judge" the guy but the book.
   
   What I liked the most is that contrary to recent books on the subject like Joachim Fest?s one on Speer, this one gives us a LOT of information about what was happenning in the enviroment around Speer (German politics, other countries, etc) before presenting actions by part of Speer so it is a very interesting way of understanding facts that in other biographies of Albert Speer are presented more or less like a shopping list. In other words, Speer?s life and actions are presented in a much broader context of connections and causes and consequences. Isn?t it what a person?s life is after all?
   
   Besides, the author has a nice sense of humour and writes very well. Be it that you agree or disgree with the book?s content, the book is very readable.
   
   Last but not least I expected to find -given the author?s confessed bias against Speer- facts that I could feel, having read a lot of books about Speer, that were not true or were presented in a questionable way. This is not the fact and all information presented concours and concatenates with what it is now common knowledge about Speer.
   
   In short, a very good book about a very interesting person in the history of the 20th century



4. Dan van der Vat makes no secret of his purpose with this book. It is to damage Albert Speer's reputation by exposing him as a hypocrite and a liar. He wants to drag him down in the dirt. In my view this was completely unnecessary. Speer was a war criminal, and there was nothing inherently "good" about him. The things that have made bestsellers out of the books by and about him have very little to do with his personal dirty laundry.
   
   Van der Vat's basic ambition is to prove that Speer must have lied when he said he didn't "know" about the atrocities against the Jews. He invests a lot of effort in convincing his readers that Speer "must have known" where he only admitted to "should have known".
   
   Knonwledge is never just "on" or "off". It's a matter of degrees. The process starts with input data that get filtered and interpreted as information. It continues as a state of awareness that gets deeper or shallower as time goes by, and more or less conflicted internally. Van der Vat overlooks this. He turns the matter into a black-or-white issue. This is the greatest weakness of the book.
   
   The best part, on the other hand, is about the developing conflict between Speer and his old friend and helper Wolters in the last years of their lives. Not because of who they were or what they did, but because of the deep symbolism of what they were disagreing about.
   
   Nobody in Germany had absolutely no information about what was going on. Everybody knew something about persecution. Speer knew more than most, but less than some, but everybody knew about neighbours who had been evicted, colleagues who had lost their jobs, shops that had been sacked and relatives who had had their spouses arrested. They didn't know for sure that these people had been deported or murdered. But they must have noticed that there was nowhere any trace of them. No letters, no phone calls. Nothing. They had disappeared into something that must have appeared, even at the time, rather similar to the Nazi name for the system that swallowed them up. It was called "Nacht und Nebel", abbreviated NN, and it meant "night and fog".
   
   This term was not widely known during the war. But significant parts of the reality behind it were. And what did people do with it? Nothing! They turned their backs on the scraps of information that they couldn't avoid altogether, and they went on with their lives as best they could. Individually, they were powerless. The shock of the exposure after the war wasn't just about seeing something that hadn't been realised before. On a deeper level, it was the shock of seeing something that everybody "should", as opposed to "must" have known. The suspicion must have been there, and this is the basis of the collective responsibility.
   
   On the personal level, Speer was also relatively powerless when his friend Karl Hanke told him in the summer of 1944 that he must never ever accept an invitation to inspect an unnamed concentration camp in Oberschlesien. Speer wrote later about that conversation that "the whole responsibility had become a reality again". Van der Vat pounces on the last of those words (page 217). To him, it means that Speer must have known earlier that atrocities were going on. Therefore, he must have been a liar when he didn't admit it. To me, on the other hand, the word "again" means only that this can't have been the first time that Speer was troubled by his conscience for things he had good reason to suspect, and which he had managed to turn his back on for the time being.
   
   Speer's masterstroke in Nürnberg was to admit to a principal share in this phenomenon of collective guilt, and to offer himself up as a national sacrifice for it. An atonement in the good old tradition, the Christian myth about the man who takes on himself the guilt of others, and expunges all their sins. It was a risky strategy, but it worked. The judges were were OK with hanging people, but they didn't want anything to do with what could have been seen as a symbolic crucifixion. That is, in my opinion, the reason why Speer got away with 20 years in prison while others were executed.
   
   Van der Vaat does a good job of showing how shamelessly Speer treated his old friend and helper Wolters towards the end. I can understand his indignation. But I have worked professionally with interpersonal conflicts for over 20 years, and I've seen such things happen again and again to basically decent and honest people. That it happened to a war criminal like Speer sholdn't surprise anybody. The thing that ought to catch the reader's attention is not that Speer and Wolters fought, or what they did to each other, but the nature of the underlying problem. The real issue was not personal. It was political, and one could almost say that it bordered on the religious.
   
   Wolters' point of view was that Speer never should have admitted any responsibility in the first place. According to him, Speer's biggest sin was to drag the German people down into the dirt with him, because there was no such thing as individual or collective guilt in the first place. And even if there had been a collective guilt, Wolters must have felt that there was no way that Speer's punishment could atone for it. Speer was a bueraucrat, not a saviour. Wolters punished Speer by making sure that his lies should come to the surface after his (Wolters') death, not in order to avenge the Jews (far from it), but in order to drive a wedge between "the liar" Speer and the "innocent" German people.
   
   Dan van der Vat has done a good job of dragging his subject down in the dirt. And in the process of exposing quasi-lies, real lies and marital infidelity, he has also managed to throw some light on the most important and still unresolved issues that have made bestsellers of the books by and about Albert Speer.



5. This book claims Albert Speer was far worse than he himself confessed, though his confessions were quite full. It builds a case against him of even greater crimes - complicency in the holocaust - on two extremely flimsy and unrelaible pieces of evidence - that he might - or might not! - have been in a room when Himmler mentioned killing Jews, and he knew Jews were being deported by the Nazis from Berlin - though there is no evidence he knew where.

   Speer served a little over 21 years in prison, more or less in solitary confinement with a couple of other Nazi leaders, for having used slave-labour in World War II. He committed a major crime, but certainly received a major punishment. He did not attempt to minimise his guilt in this matter, accepted the sentence - the only Nazi to do so - and seems to have been sincerely repentant. This book, lacking evidence that he was even worse than he admitted, bolsters its "case" with emotional overkill - for example saying Speer behaved oddly the day he was released after serving 21 years prison - well, he would, wouldn't he?

   I think this is another book trying to exploit the Holocaust and prove again that "There's no business like Shoa business."

   The book has a bombastic, sneering tone not only towards Speer but generally. Although the author claims to be a naval writer, one notices mistakes when he touches on naval subjects. He was co-author of a book containing an outstandingly ridiculous conspiracy-theory on the Titanic, which seriously claimed it had been swapped for a different ship and delibertely sunk. Yeah! And the Captain, first officer, engineers and a lot of the crew went down with it to keep the secret - that's company loyalty for you!

2 comments about And Yet, I Am Here!.

1. While the experiences of Holocaust survivors have been traditionally represented by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel, Halina Nelken offers a third approach to Holocaust studies blending diary entries, post-war reflections, and an academician=s critique. Drawing from her diary composed over the six-year period from 1938-1943, Nelken intersperses into the text occasional comments as well as reminders of the greater historical context. As a contribution to survivor literature, Nelken's work has the making of a classic.
   
   Nelken's vision of everyday Jewish life in pre-war Poland was/is that of a good life. As for rising Antisemitism in Poland and Germany, it had little impact upon Nelken's sense of her Jewish identity before the war. Following the defeat of Poland, Nelken's family moved into Krakow's Jewish ghetto. In the beginning, Nazi policy towards Jews appeared intent on humiliation rather than as a precursor to extermination. While working at the pharmacy, Nelken became keenly aware of the dangers of being Jewish in Nazi-occupied Europe. Paralleling the story of Oskar Schindler's Jews, Nelken would subsequently be transferred to Plaszow, Auschwitz, and finally, Ravensbrück.



2. Halina Nelken's book starts slowly - a book anyone over 50 might write about his/her childhood home town--who lived where, what kind of personalities they had, what became of them and their children.... Ah, suddenly it's not so mundane, as so many of these humdrum lives of ordinary people were snuffed out by the Nazis. It is this very ordinariness that serves as a foil for the horrors that Halina Nelken experienced as an adolescent and young woman and writes about - powerfully - in this book. We all know something of what happened in those dark days, but Dr. Nelken makes it personal by telling exactly what happened to her and her family. The book is actually based on the diaries that she kept. Anyone who has seen and appreciated "Schindler's List" should read what kinds of things happened to the people who were not on that list. There are unforgettable moments in this book, such as the young Halina working in an office in Auchswitz and finding a record of the murder of her father. Or the terrible choices she had to make when her mother was too exhausted to continue on a forced march. Only my knowledge that her mother had survived the war made it possible to keep reading this painful account. But, after finishing this book, my overwhelming reaction was that Halina Nelken had taken on the Nazis and won! They tried to reduce her to a sub-human and failed. She came through these terrible experiences without being twisted, without being as bitter as she had a perfect right to be! She not only survived, she survived as a whole person with a sense of humor, a will to succeed, and an ability to relate to other people - even to German people. In a larger sense her book is about the triumph of the human spirit. It is, admittedly, painful to read about the atrocities that took place before and during that horrible war. But we must not ignore the testimony of this strong woman who lived through the things that we don't want to have to think about and came out of it alive and even stronger. Ada M. Prill