1 comments about Simon Wiesenthal: A Life in Search of Justice.

1. This is an excellent story about the life of Simon Wiesenthal. This fine book takes you through Wiesenthal's mission in life to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. You are shown the time that he spent in a concentration camp up until the present.You are also given the inside look at some of the cases he dealt with in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice.This is avery good book about the life of Simon Wiesenthal.

1 comments about Hedwig's Story: The Life of a Child in Nazi Germany.

1. I have read several historical and biographical books about World War II. The whole world knows how hideous Hitler was and how his invasion of most of Europe crippled his country. But the story as it is written by Hedwig, recounting the memories of her childhood escapades, gave me a new perspective about what it was the Germans themselves saw in Hitler, how his promises of salvation and vindication were things the Germans needed to believe.
   The best thing about this book was the ease of reading. The short chapters, some so sad, but others so hilarious that I laughed out loud, took us through Hedwig's life to adulthood. This book would be a quick history lesson for late middle or high school students and for adults alike.

1 comments about My Childhood in the Holocaust.

1. I personally know Judith who wrote the book. The book is exactly the way she tells it. It is a very moving book.There is such respect and admiration for this women who experienced this awful thing. She is totally amazing and such an inspiration to me. The book is worth owning and more important to tell the story and hope something like this never happens again.

3 comments about Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of L Duce.

1. Ray Moseley does an excellent job in bringing to light the final days of Italy under Mussolini. The Republic of Salo which is formed after the Nazi's free Mussolini from prison is a vague attempt to showcase that Italian people are still in control in Italy. As Moseley shows the Republic had no real power and Mussolini was consulted on almost nothing leaving the German military to run the state. The book jumps around on many topics and discusses Mussolini's stances on a variety of issues from anti-semitism to law and order in the fascist decrees he issued during this republic. The final fall of Mussolini and his capture amongst the mountains of lake Como are very well done and then the final part focuses on various myths related to Mussolini. While the book bounces around it is a great contribution to the last 600 days (594 to be exact) of Mussolini's empire and the tragic fall of Italy's most powerful leader.



2. The best yet on this phase of the war...
   
   ... More extensive review to follow soon.



3. As I listen to the nightly news about our own Governments actions, I find it interesting to read about others. Ours certainly does a bunch of stupid stuff. But then you look at what others do and have to agree with Churchill that a democracy is the worst form of government except that all the other forms are worse.
   
   In this book on the last 600 days of Mussolini, you get a very clear illustration of this point. In his last days, Mussolini was a tyrant, yet at the same time he was utterly miserable in the grip of anger, shame and depression. The German forces that had been supporting were being driven from Italy by the Americans and British.
   
   Mussolini had had the power, as it was said, "he made the trains run on time." But in the end he had failed, and he knew he had failed. He had tried to run a country. And he made some tragic errors. We have so many books on Hitler, it is nice to see that finally we are beginning to see what happened in another aspect of WWII.
   
   I was also amused to see the points of controversy that remain sixty years later. I guess that like the killing of Lincoln and Kennery, and events like Pearl Harbour and the World Trade Center, mysteries will always remain.

1 comments about Shoshanna's Story: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Shadows of History.

1. In this moving book, the author tells the story of her mother, a concentration camp survivor, along with the stories her mother compulsively tells of her large and colorful family, lost in the war. Rather than concentrate on her mother's war experiences themselves, like most Holocaust memoirs, the author chooses to move back and forth in time, covering her own life after the war while using her mother's stories to bring to life the large clan of grandparents, aunts, and uncles she never met in person. Shoshanna had been married just before the war to a soldier who was taken prisoner in combat; thinking him dead, she married a man whose wife and daughter had been killed in the war. By the time her husband, who had survived after all, showed up, she was pregnant with the child who grew up to write this book, and she chose to remain with her child's father. As they travel from Hungary to England, where the one surviving sister lives, to Canada where a brother survives, Shoshanna constantly brings up memories of her life before the war, her sisters' many romances, her mother's constancy. With the stories she insists that her family were not just nameless faceless victims among the millions, but fully realized human beings with full lives. While resenting her mother's insistance on bringing up the dead at every occasion, struggling with her religious identity, and suffering the usual problems fitting in at school as her family moves from country to country, Shoshanna's daughter comes to know her lost relatives through the constant immersion in her mother's stories. She does not spare her mother or herself in describing their conflicts, their closeness, and their shared sorrow. This is a moving, illuminating, and lovely memoir, which gives insight not only into the well-travelled territory of World War Two survivor experiences but also into the people who were lost in the war, and the impact of historical tragedy on subsequent generations.

No comments about Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood.

No comments about Buchenwald: A Survivor's Memories.

No comments about Life in a Jewish Orphanage.

2 comments about From a World Apart: A Little Girl in the Concentration Camps.

1. Francine Christophe's account of her experiences at the French Concentration Camps at Poitiers, Drancy and Beaune-La-Rolande, it is a very interesting book. She tells the story in a very personal way. She leaves nothing out and tells an honest story about her experience in the camps. Her honest writing helped me understand the hardship that a whole group of children survived during War World 2. I would want people to read the book and see what those people went through at those camps.



2. It is horrible, very real and at the same time beautiful.

1 comments about Soundless Roar: Stories, Poems, and Drawings.

1. Quite simply, you will find it difficult to find another Holocaust text quite like Soundless Roar.
   
   Ava Kadishson Schieber, born in Novi Sad near Belgrade, was a teenager when her parents decided that the best chance of survival was for each family member to go his or her own way. In telling her memories of being forced into solitary hiding, Schieber unpacks her lost adolescence in a way that reveals both unimaginable loss and extraordinary acceptance.
   
   By inviting you to "construct your own image" from her collection of drawings, poems, and short stories, Schieber does not allow you to settle on simple interpretations or superficial lessons. Instead, readers will be taken on a frightening yet gentle journey - encountering Schieber's "friendly ghosts" along the way - that will leave them mystified, refreshed, and inspired.
   
   Somehow, Schieber takes her readers through the world of the Holocaust, including a brief glimpse into the Nazi death camps. It is as if she is leading each reader by the hand, as we discover with her the strength of the human spirit and her own personal tragedies.
   
   Schieber's astounding honesty challenges her readers' preconceptions of what being a survivor means. In a way, she also forces her readers to confront their understandings of oppression in society today. Importantly, her ability to write both simply and abstractly makes Soundless Roar a piece of art that is accessible to teenagers and scholars alike.