No comments about Doors to Madame Marie.

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 Rescuing the Children: A Holocaust Memoir.

1. This is an excellent book well worth reading. It is the story of one of the many people who saved children, including myself, during the Holocaust.



2. This was a very interesting memoir of something that I hadn't known about: camps in France to house, not French jews, but those fleeing from eastern europe and germany. The writer had a great deal of courage! Well done.

3 comments about The Blood Tattoo.

1. I am from the UK and have had great priveledge in meeting Ebi and becoming a friend to her. She has been my inspiration in devloping my knowledge on the Holocaust. Her book evokes all the emotions one can imagine. She has written from the heart and when one reads her book one can anly imagine what she and her family were going through. A must read. Thankyou Ebi for sharing your story with us, I know it must have been a harrowing experience when you wrote this but I am so glad you did.



2. Okay, Okay...you'll say I'm biased because it tells my Aunt's story and how she survived together with my most loving grandmother after removal from their home, imprisonment in a ghetto, and then the train deportation to Auschwitz. I have loaned my copy to so many people and each person returns it to me stunned. It is truly a gripping story and you will know my aunt through this book--she will touch you too. Please buy it, read it and then loan it to someone who wants or needs to learn more about modern man's greatest atrocity.



3. This book is the story of a young lady, that survived the Holocaust. With her mother and one out of three brothers she survived. Her mother would have been died if it worent for a Jewish Kopo who keep the secret of a her surviving mother. I personally experienced the story of this strong at heart lady, she visited my school as a volunteer Holocaust survivor.

5 comments about Swimming Across: A Memoir.

1. This is an inspiring story of Andy Grove's extraordinary life. As a contemoprary, I do not relish thinking about how well I would have fared against the dangers and adversities Grove faced, including Nazi invasion of his native city of Budapest, Soviet takeover, Communist Hungarian government, persecution as a Jew, physical illness. This book could be titled "Only the hard-headed, determined, and confident survive". On a small negative note, it is not realistic to think that he could remember many years later the degree of detail he includes in the book, although I have no doubt that the essential events happened as reported.



2. Andy is a wonderful person and a genius - but not a writer. This book is simply childish.Sorry Andy.



3. The reason we should read biographies, to my mind, is clear - to find out what drives other people towards success, towards failure, towards redemption, towards evil, even to find out how the Mansons, Stalins, Hitlers and Husseins grew up. The pursuit of a clue towards a person's later decisions is a delicious game, to find the key events in childhood that makes that person later go down in the history books.
   
   However, there is one problem in an autobiography: the person is himself writing it, therefore editting out consciously and unconsciously factors that may well have been much more critical, omitted due to personal embarassment or because the family members and friend are still alive.
   
   Reading the life of Andrew Grove, according to Andrew Grove (born Andras Grof), is to have a feeling that his whole childhood was drawn through a cheesecloth with small holes. If he did write it all himself, without outside editting, it reads in a very simplistic way, for a very complex man. It seems as if the "big words" were taken out, the more complex self-examination of his soul was either never set to paper, or deleted.
   
   Nevertheless, you will find this book a good read, like a suspense story, as young Andris, only child of a Jewish comfortable family in pre-WWII Budapest, grows up with a strong sense of separation from others.
   
   He has several marks against him from the start - he is Jewish, and all around him know it, and for the most part, in Europe, that was no plus. He rejects his own religion and remains fiercely secular, so he has no religious morality on which he hangs his decisions. He is a pudgy boy, whom others tease, whom girls reject. He turns to books, to study, to the English language, and finally to science, in his loneliness. His own father is taken away during the war, hence his mother loses her social life and is isolated along with her son. The situation is restored to prosperity and popularity after the war, when the father miraculously survives a dreadful work camp, returning home a filthy skeleton.
   
   When the father is in clover, getting top level positions in the post-war economy, by means unclear to readers, all seems well, and people come in a steady flow to the house. Later, the father is accused of illegal activity, and loses his position and 75% of his salary, along with the pretty secretary and the car. The sensitive son, Andris, notices how popularity depends on the income and position of the father. NO doubt that this is driven deep into his consciousness more than anything else.
   
   When a chance to leave Hungary arises in 1956 with the 17 days of fighting the Russian Communists, his parents do not hesitate to encourage him, for at least he has a fighting chance with relatives in New York City, and years of English lessons under his belt. These two factors hasten his journey by ship to America, where his relatives adopt him and support his way through college, until he has a degree in chemical engineering. His attachment to Hungary is weak to this day, and he has not returned since his mudcaked trudge over the border to Vienna. He never voices a strong hatred of Communists, perhaps because his own father must have been one to have been appointed an inspector in an area in which he was not qualified. Yet it is the Communist mentality which has hung over his country and threatened the Western world for decades. It is a strange omission in a man who celebrates America's open doors and willlingness to give immigrants a chance at great capitalistic success, something that could never have happened in a Russian-dominated nation.
   
   I am impressed with this older man's willingness to write about his painful and persecuted youth, but any experienced reader can feel that there is a stiffness in the writing, especially in dealing with any of the women who did not mother him (i.e. his own mother and the aunt in NYC), as if the human elements in his life were not so critical for him. He seems to be a very tough nut, although he may have underneath some sentimentality, i.e. when the grandchildren were born, he wrote this book. He admits in the closing chapter that he himself is not sure why he does not return to the country of his youth, but I have my own suspicion - that he felt himself an outsider and a social failure throughout all those years, both as a Jew and a "nerd", and that his father's ups and downs with the economy and with the Communist affiliation made a much bigger impact than he will dare delve into. He perhaps underestimated the English-speaking world's understanding of this kind of dictatorship and decided not to go deeply into that part of everyday life.
   
   Most refugees from Communism and Nazism are willing to go on for chapters about the restrictions and mind control of their homeland's dictatorships, but you will find that these are only briefly touched upon. I see the young Andris a boy of self-conscious, sensitive and rationally intelligence, who refuses to let external factors push him down, what the Finns call SISU. Whether it is outside takeovers like the fall of Hungary to COmmunism, the rape of his mother by the Russians, the imprisonment of his father, and other extremely horrid life situations, he shut his emotions down and plowed ahead. Yes, he is very much like the Finns, especially their men.
   
   We can all admire Andrew Grove as a great leader of Intel, as a driven and highly intelligent man, but the person underneath, as revealed in this story, is a damaged and isolated person from his youth. No wonder that he did not want to write it down until so much later in life, when material success and a family of his own could prove that he was great.



4. Never would I have expected a man behind Intel could have such a childhood.I picked this book because it was written by Andrew Grove and mostly because it sets in the the times of World War II. Although I could not get much from a Jews perspective during the war time, however the book has captured some of the essence of tension during the period.
   
   I was intrigued by his childhood story and found it hard to put the book down one I started reading it (Yes, it is cliche to say that..) The title of the book "Swimming Across" could not have been more appropriate with his escape from Hungary to the United States - that made such an outstanding person in man's history!



5. When I finished this book, I was rather disappointed at its incompleteness. No doubt Andy Grove must be an extraordinary person after immigrating to America with almost nothing and then moving to become the CEO of Intel Corporation. His book gives some insight into his personality through his childhood experiences and his dedication to hard work can easily been seen through his striving for an education.
   
   The most disappointing aspect of "Swimming Across" is that it does not explain how he became such a successful person after moving to America. The story ends after his college education from City College in New York. It does not describe any part of his involvement in the development of Intel Corporation. Rather than a biography, it is more of a complication of his childhood reflections.
   
   A good portion of the story revolves around his childhood experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust, followed the Soviet occupation of Hungary. It is interesting to read from a historical perspective. Much of the book also deals with his interest in chemistry and his quests for girls during his gymnasium (high school) years.
   
   The writing is easy to read and not very intricate. While it offers an interesting tale of his personal experiences as an American immigrant, it does not have very much on how to climb the corporate ladder. It has a very good glimpse into the real Andy Grove's personality from a first person perspective, but not the details on what made him stand out as a successful individual among other Americans.

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.

No comments about And Yet I Still Have Dreams : A Story of Certain Loneliness.

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 Beating the Odds: A Boyhood Under Nazi-Occupied France.

1. A young boy wanders from one vivid experience to another to another, just like kids do. His childhood had unique exposures to Nazi terror and horror, to be sure. But throughout those grim days, there remained that irrepressible insouciance of youth. There was even hero worship when he became involved with the French underground. He brings us right along with him as he becomes a man.

   This author described what was, more than anything else, a normal, adventuresome boyhood. Although I was expecting something more like "The Diary of Anne Frank", this book was more reminiscent of "Huckleberry Finn".




2. Seeped into the depths of war and dispair of mankind, Dr. Burnell takes us on a journey through Nazi-occupied France during WWII. As opposed to the atrocities of holocaust victims in that same era, we are instead introduced into the lives of the common citizenry as they struggle through each day not knowing who is friend or foe. Dr. Burnell's family must decide when to run and when to stay; while knowing their decisions set them at risk to lose everything, including their lives. Balanced with historical facts, Dr. Burnell tells a tale that has us turning the pages, immersing us into the joys and sorrows of a family that in the end prevails despite their losses and succeeds in spite of the tragedy brought by war.



3. Dr. Burnell tells a story of fear, brutality, resourcefulness, courage, and sensitivity. These emotions are the backdrop to his autobiographical tale of growing from just-past-childhood to near-adulthood in Nazi-occupied France during WW 2. Burnell describes how he and his mother survived the relentless threat of the Nazis as they fled from city to city in France just barely ahead of the Nazi persecution. From Strasbourg in the eastern part of the country to Paris to Bordeaux and finally to Lyon in the south. Along the way his stepfather was consumed by the Holocaust and by the end Burnell was fighting back by working for the French Resistance. The writing is clear, personal, and carries the read along swiftly. I could barely put it down- thus I read it in just a few nights.



4. This is a well written, interesting memoir of a Holocaust survivor in France. The sections on political events are well placed and provide appropriate historic background to contents of the book.
   Myself a Holocaust survivor, I learned from it a lot about life in France during those years and enjoyed reading it.



5. "Beating the Odds" by George Burnell is the exciting autobiography of a youngster growing up in Nazi-occupied France during WWII. In 369 action packed pages, the author traces his journey from Strasbourg, France in 1939 until the end of WWII in May, 1945. "Beating the Odds" is a real page turner that reads like a novel full of twists and turns. As an adolescent French Jew, George with his family lived in constant fear of discovery by the Nazis and moved frequently to ellude them. Despite these risks, he manages to join his Uncle David, a Dentist, and others in the French Resistance and narrowly escapes with his life. This fascinating memoir gives the reader an interesting and unique perspective on WWII in France and I highly recommend it to you.

No comments about My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900-1944.