5 comments about The Diary of Anne Frank (Critical Edition) (Critical Editions).

1. The Diary of Anne Frank is one of those books many people read in school. For reasons I don't remember I was not one of them. I stumbled on this version and decided it was time.
   
   Overall this is an excellent compendium of the 3 versions of the diary. The first 175 pages give you the history of the Frank Family, how they were arrested and suspects for betrayal. It also delves into the challenges of Fraud that has been lodged against the diaries. The author shows how these claims are baseless and the gives you the process used to debunk the claims.
   
   This is not a simple read. This book is more for the scholar then the casual reader. Especially when faced with up to three versions of each passage in the diaries. The casual reader will probably find themselves skipping the other passages.
   
   My wife said there were versions that painted Anne as a Saint and I did not see that in this edition. I saw the average teenage girl with the usual complaints about family and the horrible times she found herself in. Yet, she managed to find herself infatuated with boys and tried to outlast the fate that would happen to her.
   
   This is a book all should read especially when considering it has been banned a few times.



2. I am going to tell you about the best book I have ever read. The best book I have read is
   The Diary of Anne Frank. It is about a little girl that is Jewish. It takes place in 1945 during
   World War II. It talks about them being scared of hearing a knock at the door. It talks about them getting sent to concentration camps and how the people get tortured there like in gas chambers that is were they stick you in a room air tight and fill the room with deadly gas fumes. They wood also cut all your hair off and tattoo a number on you. Most of the people would die because they would freeze to death because it was so cold. They were fed very little food and their beds had flies all around them and they would make you have a job like cleaning the bathrooms. So you can see people there were treated very badly. And all this happened because one man named Hitler wanted to do this all because the people where Jewish. These are just a few things why this is my favorite book. And I think that you should read this book too.



3. I really didnt know much about Anne Frank and the Holocaust until my seventh grade year. But once i learned about it i developed an interest in it. It was a sad SAD thing to study but it is life which i want to learn more about and it is history which i love to study. Anne Frank was the most interesting person that i studied about in the Holocaust. Read the book and find out just how interesting she was!!!!



4. I love this book, because it make me understand that all three versions of the diary that know Anne wrote her original diaries,two notebooks and 324 loose sheet while she was hiding.

   Anne did write alot about her friends, sexual feeelings, and fighting between her and her mother. The second one is missing,so she did finish the rewrite on loose sheet which is version B that the dated from December 7, 1942 to December 22, 1943. The last page of the rewrite on loose sheet on March 29,1994 about listening the radio broadcasting the Duth Exile from london that collected the daries and letters that people want to read then after the war. Anne did all the rewrite, but she never finished sadly, on August 4, 1944 the day of the arrest the nazi interupted her. She is a great writer of all times. I'm very obessed Anne Frank, because she is so smart!.

   Anyone want to about Anne's life was Melissa Muller's Biography "Anne Frank" This is a great book!




5. I'm glad someone decided to provide an uncensored version of Anne Frank's diary in English. This book contains English translations of three versions of Anne Frank's diaries, printed in such a way as to make it easier to compare them than if they had been printed back to back or in separate volumes. One version is Anne's fictionalized version. One is the, censored version as it was introduced to the Puritanical United States. The unabridged version is excellent, but not for prudes. Anne Frank was apparently bisexual, as well as a young woman of great intellect, insight and literary talent! I was amazed at how well I was able to relate to her, even though she was of another gender, born into a different race, raised on a different continent (Europe), about a quarter of a century before me! Thanks to this book, I fell in love with her!

3 comments about Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust).

1. I was disappointed in the way that the book was written. It was hard for me to stay interested because they just jumped from one thing too another and some things that you had already read were repeated.



2. Jacob Frank speaks with a voice that comes from an ever distant time and place. He grew up in Poland, in a Jewish Society that was almost totally destroyed during the Holocaust. Out of the sixty four members of his family in Poland, Jacob Frank is the only one that survived. The only physical remnant of his entire family that still exists is a single photograph of Jacob Frank and his wife Dora. Mr. Frank carefully sewed the photograph into his clothing, and kept it hidden during nearly six years of survival in concentration camps and prisons in Poland and Germany. He wanted always to remember his wife and family; and to keep their image in his mind and heart. The poignant photograph of Jacob and Dora Frank is included in the book. With great courage Jacob Frank tried to protect his family and to help other people in the concentration camps, but he was trapped in a nightmare world where life had little or no value. There was not much that he could do to protect himself, or anyone else. Jacob Frank was valuable to the Nazis, because of his great skill as a master tailor. They needed him to make uniforms and suits. Because of his forced duties as a tailor, Mr. Frank often came into close contact with some of the leading Nazis; including Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann. He felt intense fear when he was in their presence, and sometimes he could not bear to look directly at their faces. He could only see shadows of evil when he glanced at them. As one who was there and survived, he speaks with a deep and unique insight into the Holocaust. He helps us to understand what really happened; and the men capable of carrying out a plan of genocide on a huge scale. He helps us to understand the great tragedy of entire families being murdered and lost forever. The witness and memory of Jacob Frank provide a valuable service to the world. His important book sheds light on a time of great darkness, and helps to stand guard against any future Holocaust.



3. I loved the book...I hated the book. What can I say? It's a wonderful story about a terrible time. From the time I picked up the book I found it difficult to put down. Knowing that Mr. Frank is indeed a survivor, I needed to get to the part where he was safe. I especially liked the way author Mark Lewis presented the very essence of Mr. Frank by not altering his accent, his syntax. The question and answer format was interesting. Not too many questions, rather, enough to help clarify certain points.

   As the story begins, Jacob Frank a youth full of hope and dreams embarks on his journey. Who could imagine that choices, decisions made at such a tender age would so dramatically impact his life? As the years pass, the hope, the ambition, the joy of this wonderful young man is slowly, systematically robbed from him. It is a story too horrible to imagine yet Jacob Frank recalls every detail. He describes these events with simple details-not so dramatic as to be unbelievable. The idea of the Holocaust is unbelievable, unfathomable. Thankfully, for survivors like Mr. Frank, the world will know the horrible truth.

2 comments about Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account.

1. For Dr. Nyiszli to bear witness to the day-in and day-out horror of Auschwitz, and still be able to write about it, is quite unreal. Working as a pathologist for Dr. Mengele in the confines of the crematorium compound, we read of the horrors of the camp, and how both inmates & guards coped.



2. Reading this book has completely altered my perception on the human being, individually, and as a whole. The events that took place in Auschwitz were so horrific and yet they mustn't be forgotten. Any person claiming a reasonable level of education must read this book. It will literally change the reader forever.

1 comments about Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah.

1. Previously published as "Kinderlager" (1998), "Surviving Auschwitz: Children of the Shoah" is the companion book for the PBS special of the same title. In 2001 "Surviving Auschwitz" was named to the Top 10 List of Holocaust Books by the Institute for Higher European Studies in The Hague. For more reviews and comments see "Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors."

1 comments about Jakub's World: A Boy's Story of Loss and Survival in the Holocaust.

1. Wonderful story of World War II Flossenburg from a boys perspective. Something we should never forget, very moving story.

No comments about Letters to Freya: 1939-1945.

1 comments about Theresienstadt.

1. This is a beautiful, deeply moving book. Told in a simple, unaffected style, it describes in vivid detail the author's life in pre-war Prague, the three years she spent as a teenager at Theresienstadt (aka Terezin), the many terrible things that she saw, and the resourcefulness with which she repeatedly avoided death.
   
   I have read many books about the Holocaust, but the author's loyalty to her family and determination to survive profoundly affected me. Because she spent so much time in Terezin she is also an important witness to what happened there. The camp was unique -- a showplace for the Nazis, without a gas chamber, that was used to deceive the Red Cross. Art, music, drama, even an opera were created and performed there. And yet it was also a terrible place where tens of thousands suffered and most eventually perished. That contradiction pervades the book and makes it unique.
   
   The text badly needed a copy editor and some of the English usage is awkward. But such minor imperfections are part of its honesty and immediacy. There are also some photographs, but they are frustratingly dark and difficult to see.
   
   Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about Terezin and the heroic and affecting story of this unusual survivor.

2 comments about The Enigma of Anna O. : A Biography of Bertha Pappenheim.

1. The case of Anna O., the founding case of psychoanalysis, is an endless source of fascination to each new generation of readers. As the work of Ellenberger and Hirschmuller showed, the "prototypal case of cathartic cure" was neither cathartic nor a cure. Both Freud and Breur in writing up the case as a success engaged in deception to an extent that would be regarded as scientific misconduct today.

   Historical revision of the case has resulted in dozens of attempts to review the story in the light of modern thinking, many of them highly worthwhle exercises in diagnosis or historianship. In the process, we are learning something more of the neglected and highly interesting life of the real person behind the case, Bertha Pappenheim, who went on to be a pioneer social worker, children's writer, religious figure and intellectual.

   Unfortunately, readers who are hoping for a dispassionate and intriguing voyage into the life of Ms Pappenheim are going to be disappointed by this book, which teeters between a romantically confused sophomoric thesis and a plaintive attempt at public writing therapy. Anyone who doubts this need only read the emetic acknowlegement, going on for many pages, before the actual text commences. After that, it is a steady path downhill.

   The author appears to have no capacity for independent thought and constantly picks from such dubious sources as "feminist French lacanians" to justify her insistent lament that Anna O. was yet another victimised Victorian female who somehow managed to create psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, social work and goodness knows what else. About the only consistent conclusion that can be drawn from this nursery school thinking is that if feminist historians are going to produce work that is critical, deep and intellectually honest, this is not the way to go about it.

   There are good books on Anna O. and Bertha Pappenheim, for example by Ellenberger and Hirschmuller, and more should follow. This self-indulgent work of second-rate scholarship and third-rate history is not one of them.




2. This well-researched and engaging biography broadens the awarenesses of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, historians of Europe in the past century and of Jewish history, and feminists. Knowing Anna O.'s enormously influential life trajectory sends a message of which we need continual reminders: someone can suffer from severe mental illness in one phase of his/her life and emerge from the experience strong and heroic, making powerfully contructive contributions.
   And read Gail Hornstein's "To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World:The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann" - they complement each other beautifully.

No comments about Life in a Jewish Orphanage.

1 comments about Maria Zacharczuk-Gruenwald: The true story of a young non-Jewish girl's dreams shattered by the Nazi regime.

1. This book is exciting and heartwarming that describes the story of a young girls experience in a horrible time of our history. The sacrifies and she had to endure without knowing if she was going to live or die and to sustain harsh treatment on a daily basis, suffering from medical complications and lack of food. This book is a true testiment of what war is and the many lives that our destroyed because of hatered and discrimination. A great book for the young and old.