5 comments about Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag.

1. The most important thing that I gained by reading Janusz Bardach's book is that the will to survive is as important as food when it come to survival. More times that he imagined, he survived because he felt that he would, like he had a special angel or just more "good luck" than other people. It doesn't matter if it's true, it only matters that you believe it.
   
   Luck is also helped by brashness and the will to succeed. His story about becoming a medical assistant, though he had absolutely no formal training, reminds me of Solsenitsyn's tale of how he survived the Gulag by lying about having training as a nuclear engineer. It's the ability to adapt that keeps you alive. Goebbels said that if you told a big enough lie enough times, people would begin to believe it. The only way to survive in the Gulag was to lie to yourself and everyone else.
   
   Since so many of the NKVD were corrupt and brutal, the only way to survive in there world was to also appear to be corrupt. Stalin sent so many of the NKVD and those who worked for them to prison, that they were well cared for by their ex-comrades, because they knew they had a good chance of joining them. Who could survive better in a criminal state within a state then a criminal?
   
   This is a story of hope without all the 'hearts and flowers'. It just the true story of what went on, warts and all (lots of warts).



2. This is one of the most unbelievable stories I've ever read. It's written with superb simplicity, making it a rapid and engrossing page turner. What a great gift Bardach has given us in writing this book about his horrific and heroic experiences. This is the best account of any world war 2 camp survivor, period. He clearly illustrates that the Soviet Union was about as horrible a place to be as Europe at the time. The book is as well written as the story is interesting. Fantastic. Thank you, Janusz!



3. I read this after reading The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. This book may be bleak and shocking, but remember, the author survived! It is an amazing, gripping, shocking story about humanity. I loved it.



4. I can't really say anything that hasn't been mentioned already, and I think that it would be inappropriate to give away any of the plot.
   
   This is simply the most fascinating story of survival of any that I have ever seen. It is incredible as well as inspiring. It teaches you to value your life, and the relationships that you have with the people you care about most. There were so many instances when he could have resigned to his fate and accepted death, but instead he kept going. Millions of people died in prison camps during the war, and unfortunately all of their stories cannot be told. But to understand what they had to go through in their fight for survival, nothing beats this book. Besides telling his story, it examines the history and psychology behind what happened to him. And overall I believe that it is a valuable read for anyone interested in Russian Gulags or prison camps in general during WW2.



5. Janusz Bardach, who became a plastic surgeon in Iowa City, Iowa in 1972, recounts his experiences in the Gulag in this bleak tale of survival reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. A secular Jewish man and supporter of Stalin and communism living in Poland In 1939, he and his family fear their future as Germany's military forces are set up along the border. He is eventually drafted into the Red Army, but when he inadvertently gets his new tank stuck in a river, he's arrested and given a sentence of 10 years of hard labor. He, like the other prisoners, spends most of his time working to meet ridiculously high work quotas, while in a constant state of starvation. He travels from camp to camp during his six years in captivity working in various work situations including a mine, the forest felling trees, and as a medical assistant working with tuberculosis patients (which he eventually contracts). Once he recovers, he's sent to work in a psych ward, where the main focus is exposing the "fakers," those trying to get out of work. His job is to inject them with a seizure-inducing drug, which he does reluctantly. With a little help from his one surviving family member, Polish army officer brother, he is eventually released and finds out the fate of his grandparents, parents, sister and girlfriend. They were all executed.

5 comments about Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood (Gb772).

1. As I ponder how or what I could write about this story, I ask myself: Who am I to write any kind of critique about this story? For that matter, who are any of us to critique a story as compelling and personal as this one? Neither I nor just about anyone else in this world is in a position to speak critically concerning this autobiography of one family's unlikely survival, a true story of cheating death daily while friends, relatives and peers were slaughtered by hatred. This intensely personal narrative deserves only the reader's respect and appreciation that the author had the courage to put her story on paper and share it with the world.
   
   Hers is a story of remarkable, miraculous survival, told from her very personal experiences, thoughts and observations when she was a young Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied Poland. Her story is simply written, gripping, harrowing, and emotionally exhausting. It is a story I shall remember for a long, long time. I treasured the moments I spent absorbed in her experiences and recollections, the introspection her words conjured in me, and the gratitude I felt for never having been forced to experience the dread, fear and violence that this family endured every minute of their existence for a period of years.
   
   I was distinctly impressed with the strength of character and leadership her father displayed. His paternal wisdom, guidance and competence bound this family together and sealed their survival against all odds. Absent his clarity of thought, calm demeanor and strength of will, I think this family would not have survived. He inspired the resolve in his family to keep going; he summoned from deep in their souls the spirit of survival. I could only hope to be half the father he was were I to have been in such a circumstance.
   
   This is a story that today's youthful and historically uninformed generation should read and understand. Only through knowledge of such history can we perhaps stave off for a few generations longer the tendency of history to repeat itself (as we now see happening in Africa).



2. "Dry Tears" is an autobiographical recollection of life in wartime Poland, during the Holocaust. Not only did the author and her sister have to "pass" as non-Jews and live in constant terror of being caught, they also had to worry about their parents, who couldn't "pass" and who lived in hiding.

   I've read perhaps a dozen books by Holocaust survivors. This may be the first time that I thought about each individual murder as that: an individual murder, and not as genocide. What happened to the girls' governess in the early pages of the book left me more sleepless than anything since "Anne Frank."

   Sometimes, however, there are the occasional winners in a war. The author's family survived as an intact unit. That, dear readers, is a victory.

   This book belongs in every historian's library, be it public or personal. Deeply moving, it's not too much for a mature teen to read, and I will be suggesting it to a friend's young adults.

   "Dry Tears" will haunt me for a long time.




3. Dry Tears is an unforgettable Holocaust memoir and coming-of age story. Tec is a gifted writer and her comments about her experiences are deeply insightful.

   Tec was hidden during the war---disguised as a Polish Christian, she lived with a variety of families before settling with a working-class family who also took in her parents (neither of whom spoke Polish well enough to "pass") and her sister.

   What is most interesting (and depressing) about Tec's story is her slow realization that the family who took her in was anti-semetic. As a child, she experiences deep confusion about this and wonders how she should feel when the family compliments her by telling her that she is not "like a Jew." Her conflicted feelings about this family (she grows to love and respect them while at the same time being appalled by their prejudice) illustrate one of the greatest paradoxes regarding prejudices (***). The sad truth is that when one looks behind the stereotype one always discovers individuals who defy the stereotype (Tec herself experiences this---she assumes that one of the woman who takes them in---Stella--is a typically stupid and lazy member of the working class but when Stella is tortured by the Nazis and refuses to eveal any information, Tec is forced to look beyond the stereotype todiscover a very real and very complicated individual).

   Tec's story also explores an aspect often not found in books dealing with adults under the Holocaust. As a hidden child who could "pass" as a Polish Christian, Tec spent her days as Krysia, a Polish Gentile. Not surprisingly, this caused her to become deeply confused about who she was---like all pre-teens and adolescents, Tec was struggling to discover her own identity but unlike her peers, Tec was forced to hide this identity.

   I have read a great number of Holocaust memoirs---and this is not the "typical" memoir (as far as one can say there is a "typical" memoir). Several factors make this book unique---Tec's age at the time of the Holocaust, her insights into her own experiences (not surprising as Tec later became a scholar specializing in this period) and her openness about her struggle to assume an identity at a time when she was forbidden to assume her true identity.




4. "Dry Tears" is a memoir of the author during the years she and her family struggled for survival in occupied Poland. After many attempts to escape Nazi officials, they find shelter in a small town under the protection of a peasant Polish family, in exchange for financial benefits. The story is a lesson on faith, of compliance to ever adjusting circumstances in an environment filled with prejudice and ignorance. Well written, with no high literary aspirations, but with a high moral content. This is a must for adolescents and pre-adolescents, and for anyone who is not aware of what it really means to face adverse circumstances in life.



5. Dry Tears,dealt with the survival of a Jewish family during the Nazi Holocaust. The story is told by the youngest daughter, Tec, during her pre-adolescent years. If one does not fully comprehend the power of faith, hope and love, then this book is a must. It is a lesson for any family, group or individual who is struggling with circumstances that seem overwhelming or out of control.

5 comments about Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series).

1. I found this book extremely tedious, poorly edited, full of boring speculations and philosophical self centerdness. Am shocked at myself being able to say this about any survivor, but there you have it. I kept thinking, "OK, now when are you going to get on with the actual story", before realizing that it just droned on in this way. A much better book that I just read is 'A Jump for Life', a far more moving account and likeable woman.



2. There are many excellent memoirs describing the Nazi death camps, but this one touched me in a way that no other book has.
   
   My fiancé died in the World Trade Center, and this is really the only book that resonates with the deep, bitter grief I felt in that disaster's aftermath. I don't mean to compare 9/11 to the Shoah at all, but Kluger articulates many of the contradictory feelings and beliefs I myself have struggled with, including my frustration at being shaped by something that everyone knows about, but almost no one understands. I felt a shock of recognition when she complained about people visiting Auschwitz as a sentimental gesture, because I feel that same (totally irrational) discomfort about people visiting "Ground Zero". Though I have lived my life as an intellectual, Kluger spoke to the savage in me that still rails and howls at my loss.
   
   This is oftentimes an angry, bitter book, but she mentions in passing that she has grandchildren, so I believe she found some measure of joy in her life after her internment. After my tragedy, I was forced to ask myself how someone who doesn't believe in life after death can go on in the face of the gruesome injustice of existence. I never really found an answer, but I kept on living, and I don't intend to stop anytime soon. I heard a lot of my journey in Kluger's voice as well, and I am exceedingly grateful that she wrote this book.



3. Ruth Kluger gives a remarkably lucid and thoughtful account of her experiences as WWII Austria, and eventually the concentration and forced labor camps of Germany. Even though English is not her first language, Kluger writes remarkably succinct and cogent English prose, and she confronts the moral and emotional complexity of the holocaust in her memory. "Still Alive" is loosely structured, as Kluger prefers to record the events as she recalls them as opposed to adhering to strict chronology, but the result is very interesting, she superimposes her thoughts and secrets as the horrible events unfold. She paints a vivid and, at times unusual portrait of the Nazi holocaust, often ruminating on the pain and humiliation (she wonders if her father trampled children when sentenced to the gas chamber), but also the sheer enormity of the camps as an historical event, she recalls that when she received her tattoo she felt glee because she realized that she was a part of something that was much larger than herself, something "worth witnessing." A third of the memoir is post-holocaust, Kluger recounts her experiences in New York after the war as she and her mother struggle to regain control of their lives, and look for possible meaning and redemption in their past-suffering.



4. The author doesn't simply recount fact and opinion, she has truly analyzed her childhood growing up in Vienna and then through the Holocaust and concentration camp. What a treasure we have in this book to document one girl's life, living through a horrific time in history. It is a bonus that the author is such an outstanding writer. Kluger allows the reader to relate to her life through their own life experiences. She is certainly someone I'd like to know better. Highly recommend.



5. I really enjoyed reading this book. It was written in a way that went through Ruth's life during the Holocaust years. It starts at the very beginning and just talks about her whole experience. I like how Ruth mixed in experiences and comments from the future. This showed how the Holocaust still impacts her life and what she thinks about her surroundings. No one will ever be able to understand what Ruth had to suffer while in the concentration camps. But I feel that by reading her life story it makes it seem more of a reality and brings to life aspects of how the Jews were treated during this time period in American history. All the hardship and discrimination that Ruth had to endure shows the power and willingness she had to live. I liked how she never said it was strength that le ther live rather it was mostly luck. I thought that reading this book made me feel greatful for everything that I have. I would recommend reading this book if you want to realize what life during the Holocaust was like.

1 comments about Kasztner's Train: The True Story of an Unknown Hero of the Holocaust.

1. An expertly researched, captivatingly written and long overdue book about the courage, ingenuity, successes and ultimate sad persecution of a great but much maligned hero. Brava Anna Porter!

5 comments about Seed of Sarah: MEMOIRS OF A SURVIVOR (Illini Books Edition).

1. I could not put this book down once I picked it up. I have read many great books involvong the Shoah and this one stands out. Judith is such a truly a remarkable woman, that it serves as a reminder of how many remarkable lives were lost.



2. Among the many published accounts of the Holocaust, Seed of Sarah stands out for its amazing clarity, its portrayal of courage in the face of unprecedented crimes against humanity, and for its optimism despite those crimes. Not many first-hand accounts of the death camps center on the perspective of women. This one does, but it is also universal in its appeal and the genius of the author is that she allows the reader to be with her during the worst of the experience and to survive, as she has done, with love. If you are teaching or taking a course on the Holocaust or on World War II, this book is essential.



3. I'm amazed that someone who has endured a tragic event in their life has found the stength to speak, and write about it. These survivor's had their businesses, properties and personal belonging taken from them, because they were Jewish!! The treatment in the camps was horrendous. I'm not even sure how they managed to survive. You can spend your life reading and studing the Holocaust, however unless you were there you will never really know. This book bring you as close as you can get.



4. Judith Magyar Isaacson tells her story of the Holocaust that speaks of those who cannot. This first person account amazes me that she has to decipher her role in life, but also has to fight for her life. Why should someone have to fend for him or herself while going through the hardest part of her life? When I started reading this book I thought it was going to be like any other Holocaust book I read, but it had a twist to it that made it unlike any other book I have read. This book I think is one of the best first person accounts of the Holocaust, its right up their with Anne Frank's Diary. She has so much courage to speak out about this horrific time period, to have the courage to tell us what you went through to be where you are right now.
   Judith Magyar was born to two Jewish parents she and her family was like any other middle class family in Hungary except that they were Jewish. She was stuck in this everyday life closed off from the world until Hitler comes to power and establishes the first and second Jewish laws. During the establishing of these laws is in which she is first discriminated against because she is Jewish. Even though it happened, she doesn't allow it to get to her; she acts like it's every other day. This all changes when they are ghettoized into the center of town. Her 19th birthday is celebrated in a horse stable, when it's supposed to be celebrated at home with family and friends. That's when it hits her that her world has changed. Then they are transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they lose their reason for living. As it comes close to liberation, the Americans are within a town away. The Kommandant all of a sudden decides that they are going to keep moving. This cliché keeps happening throughout the rest of the book. When they first come in contact with there first taste that the Americans were close, they felt as though they are destined to live, and that someone really cares for them. She is transported from camp to camp, inching closer and closer to death. She is liberated from this hell that they have been living in for the past couple years and she realizes that she is really suppose to live. She meets an OSS officer. They get to know each other from spending a lo0t of time together. Judith realizes that she loves him when he is sent to the western front, and she actually becomes really sick because she misses him so much. When he gets back he proposes to her. Guess what she says? After years of being away from her hometown, she come back and is amazed by everything and how different it is. She realizes that she is one out of 250 that survived the Holocaust out of 5000 people from this region 5% AMAZING! What ends this heart wrenching yet beautiful book?
   This book was really astonishing it was unlike any other Holocaust book I have ever read. This book would be good for anybody who is interested in the Holocaust or also if you like historical fiction. There are a couple of mistakes with the writing the first is that there are a few misspelled words. In addition, it skips around really quickly. I got lost a couple times, but I found out what was happening. Even with those mistakes it is still a really good book. I highly recommend it to anyone. This is one of the books I have ever read.
   Steven Kidder "Book Fiend" (Concord, NH USA)



5. In November 1976, the Bates College Dean of Students - Judith Magyar Isaacson - was invited to give a talk on the Holocaust at her alma mater, Bowdoin College. For the first time since her concentration camp and forced labor camp experiences, she spoke about them in public. After that she knew she had to write her story, just as she'd planned she would while those events were happening to her.
   
   What does it mean to be a Hungarian Jew, in the years before the war? Judit Magyar, nicknamed Jutka, lives a happy and secure life as the only child of a middle class couple. That comfortable existence falls away piece by piece, as laws are passed that take away one right after another from the Magyars and other families like them. By the time Jutka and her remaining loved ones are deported, they've already survived being barred from working for a living - being deprived of their property - and being crowded into a ghetto, that used to be one of many neighborhoods where Kaposvar Jewish families lived.
   
   Wrenching though the rest of the book is, to me its most interesting aspect is Jutka's calm narration of how the city that once respected and valued her family gradually embraces Nazi-sponsored anti-Semitism. What happens when government institutionalizes hate, and makes it respectable, is all the more frightening because the culture thus poisoned is both ancient and thoroughly civilized.
   
   Brrr. Could there be a lesson in this for today's world?

5 comments about I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks).

1. A must read for all those who are compelled to understand the insanity of Nazi Germany. The evil is in the details as these journals so devastatingly reveal. Sometimes necessary to read only a few pages at a time as the devastation and slowly increasing helplessness of this man's life is revealed. A critical historical document.



2. As an educated Professor of Philology, Victor Klemperer documents life as a Jew in Nazi Germany. The very act of keeping this diary was grounds for his demise.
   The essence of these incredible documents, is that it records the tightening of control of the Jewish people under Nazism. The progressive pogroms took away simple things such as going to a movie or taking a ride on a tram. The taking of one's own home and living in a communal Jewish home further degraded the Jewish people. The simple fact that each had to wear the yellow star which indeed put all Jews into harms way.
   Mr Klemperer was forced out of his professorship because he was a Jew. Even though he was an honorable World War I Veteran, he was forced to live on a half pension.
   The only thing that saved Victor Klemperer was his Aryan wife Eva. She never abandoned Victor as I'm sure other wives in similar circumstances did. Looking at this, I think is an incredible act of love by Eva. Her subjucation to Nazi Life living with a Jew for 12 years was indeed a severe prison term.
   The diaries are edited to delete repetition. However several things are constantly repeated. Victor was always at death's door with an ailing heart. The other repetition was he and his wife's constant physical hunger.
   This set of diaries should be required reading for anyone who is a serious student of 20th century history.



3. When my son told me a student said the Holocaust was much less gruesome than reported and was exagerated by people over the years, we started to read this together... Not that he needed to be reminded, but how incredible that even today some are still floating this insane rumor!



4. This is a great memoir that any history buff or historian or anyone should read. It ranks right up there with Anne Frank's diary. It offers a unique view since Mr. Klemperer was married to a German woman during the Holocaust. It is this unique view on the Holocaust that makes this memoir so good.



5. Victor Klemperer's diary of pre war Germany provides fascinating insight into what life was like for ordinary citizens in Germany. Interspersed with the mundane aspects of life, e.g., shopping, driving, going to the dentist, etc. are ever increasing examples of the insanity that was Nazi Germany. It was a little difficult to get into, but it soon became a page tuner. The later years are particularly interesting. I couldn't put it down.

5 comments about The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival.

1. I was unfamiliar with the Kindertransport that moved 10,000 Jewish children to safety from the Holocaust. This biography brings that event to life through the memories of Lisa Jura. At 14, her parents sent her to London and the book covers that wrenching journey and the next six years of her life. Growing up during the blitz in a refugee home with 31 children makes a fascinating book.
   Lisa's devotion to music weaves the story together as she strives towards her parents' dream. Becoming a concert pianist seems unachievable under the circumstances, but this touching biography details Lisa's progress towards that goal. This account has appeal for both adult and teen readers.
   I also recommend In The Shadow Of The Cathedral: Growing Up In Holland During WW II by Titia Bozuwa



2. author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family
   
   from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
   August 30, 2002
   
   Vienna, 1938. In the city of Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Strauss, 14-year-old musical prodigy Lisa Jura looks forward to a promising career as a concert pianist. Hitler has other plans. With the breaking of glass on Kristallnacht, Jura's dreams are shattered.
   
   Internationally celebrated concert pianist Mona Golabek, with journalist and poet Lee Cohen, has crafted a loving, lyrical tribute to her mother, Lisa Jura, in "The Children of Willesden Lane: Beyond the Kindertransport: A Memoir of Music, Love, and Survival."
   
   Jura was one of 10,000 Jewish children saved from the Nazis by the British and sent on the Kindertransport to safety from Eastern Europe. Already being compared to "The Diary of Anne Frank," this simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting tale weaves together the stories that Golabek's mother told her about prewar Austria; the gut-wrenching separation from her family; life at the orphanage on Willesden Lane; and the power of music to help her survive.
   
   As Jura's mother, Malka, puts her on the train, she says the prophetic words that will sustain and inspire her daughter and future generations: "Hold on to your music. Let it be your best friend."
   
   In a world turned ugly, the beauty of music becomes Jura's strength, and, against tremendous odds, with the help and encouragement of the 30 other displaced children at the orphanage, she wins a scholarship to London's Royal Academy.
   
   "Each kid saw something in my mother's music that reminded them of what they had left behind in Czechoslovakia, in Austria, in Germany," says Golabek, a Grammy-nominated artist, "and that's what I tried to do in the story, not only to pay homage to my mother, but to all these kids and to their bravery."
   
   The book opens with Jura's tantalizing daydream of performing in a great concert hall and closes with the fulfillment of that dream, as she makes her debut before an exhilarated crowd. And in between, the pages burst with melody: Jura pounding the cadenza of the Grieg "Piano Concerto" to drown out the sounds of bombs during London's blitz, Jura visualizing Chopin fleeing a flaming Warsaw as she struggles with the somber coda of the "Ballade," Jura remembering her mother's Sabbath candles as she plays the solemn opening of Beethoven's "Pathetique."
   
   "My mom and her mother never cared if a piece is in C major. What really counts is the passion behind it, the image. If it's `Clair de Lune,' imagine the moon over a desert island. That imagination allowed her to survive the horrors of what she experienced, because a C-major chord will not inspire you through the horrors. It's the moonlight, the idea that maybe the composer wrote it for someone he loved. These things inflamed her imagination, and that's how she inflamed mine."
   
   And now Golabek's book will inflame the imagination of a whole new generation. The Milken Family Foundation, together with Facing History and Ourselves, an educational organization that teaches tolerance to 1 million students annually, are working with Golabek to bring the story to schools across the country by developing a companion curriculum guide.
   
   Plans are under way to launch the book in Austria, and make it available to teachers as part of the now mandatory four-year Holocaust education program for students.
   
   The saga of Golabek's 18-year struggle to get the story published is almost as harrowing as her mother's story itself. "It went through many, many writings; many, many ups and downs, starts and disappointments," Golabek says.
   
   Now the accolades and offers are pouring in. On Sept. 24, she will be an honored guest speaker at the California Governor's Conference for Women at the Long Beach Convention Center and will appear at Beth Am on Nov. 17 with her sister, pianist Renee Golabek-Kaye, and Jura's four grandchildren, all musicians: Michele, 16; Sarah, 14; Jonathan, 8; and Rachel, 7. Brandeis University will honor her at the Skirball Cultural Center next March 31.
   
   Last week Golabek was interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition and was the subject of a feature story by Andy Meisler of the New York Times. In the planning stages is a concert next year co-sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Austrian government. And, of course, Golabek is considering movie offers.
   
   On her syndicated radio show, "The Romantic Hours," which highlights stirring writings against a musical backdrop (Saturdays at 10 p.m., 105.1 FM), Golabek often quotes the poet Jean Paul Richter: "Life fades and withers behind us, but of our immortal and sacred soul all that remains is music."
   
   "That was a quote my mother taught me, and the whole reason why I wrote this book and why I created `The Romantic Hours' was that my mother felt through words and through music our souls would be immortalized."



3. This is one of my all-time favorite books. If you are a musician, you will fall in love with it. The story is inspiring and moving and will make you appreciate music to the greatest extent possible.



4. Full of history. Easy to follow. Great read for young and old alike.



5. This is a story which every parent should read to their children. Talk about the history of WW2 and discuss the extremes of humanity. A book which once read you will never forget.

5 comments about Mengele: The Complete Story.

1. Excellent book.Couldn't put it down.A touchy subject that most won't write about but if no one does then we will never learn from our past.The author tackles the subject of his life,evils and in the end his loneliness.



2. 
   That's the feeling one -regretably- obtains after going thru all the pages of this book. One quarter of it is dedicated to his ignominious "works", so it's the only chance we get to know about this criminal; because the other three quarters are about the his wherabouts since the war ended.
   
   There are no first hand testimonies or interviews to peersons who knew him. It all sounds like third person stories, and this is not to question his atrocities at all: there's more than proof to have had him executed many times. I am not looking for necrophilic detail or sadistic descriptions. What I wanted is to know the man closer, his way of thinking, his circumstance, his motivations. The book deals with this very, very, superficially.
   
   The hunt can't be called exactly a hunt, not by far as interesting as the The House on Garibaldi Street (Classics of Espionage) on Eichmann, one of the most exciting books I've read of any subject.
   
   Posner's book lacks substance, grip, interest. A subject like this guy is almost hard not to make it interesting.



3. A very helpful, scholarly bio with information about Mengele's entire life. A great book for those seeking more than just an overview of Mengele. If you want to know more about Mengele's work, visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's website for "Deadly Medicine" exhibition, now at Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta this summer (2007).



4. Was hard to stay interested in this book. I found it very boring to read.



5. First of all: A damned good book! Bonechilling material!! Furthermore:
   What kind of punishment do you give a man like Mengele?
   Deathpenalty? Life in prison? The first one is over too quick and the second one is too easy. No, I think Mengele has got the best punishment he could have. He was 34 years on the run. Never had a moment of peace in his entire life after the ending of WW2. The stress it brought him, even gave him a shorter span of life. He developed a lot of stress related sickness. Always had to look over his shoulder. Did they recognize him? Was this his last day of "freedom"? If he had been sentenced for life in prison he could have reached, like Hess, a respectable age well over 80 years old. Now he died 68 years of age. Alone and forgotten in some Godforsaken place in Brazil. He sticked, untill his dead, to his beliefs about the Nazi's and the Jews. A rigid and untolereant character of a man.
   He never got the chance to fullfill a job on his intelectuel level, always lowpaid workman's labour. Never could socialise with people of his intelect. That hurt him like hell. So, in fact, life in "freedom" was in fact life in hell. Never the hell he created for the people who died through his hands or command. But even we, as normal people, couldn't give him, if he had be captured, the torments he gave all those other innocent people. For that, we are to civilised. No, I think it has been for the best that he stayed on the run. He punished himself with it. More then we ever could give to him. I feel sorry for his son Rolf. You only get one biological father in your life and he got this one.

3 comments about Salvaged Pages: Young Writers` Diaries of the Holocaust (Yale Nota Bene).

1. This collection provides 14 generous excerpts from journals of young people during the Shoah; the earliest diaries are from adolescents who got out before or just as things were getting bad, but as we go further on, the diaries get more intense in scope, moving from adolescents who weren't quite sure what was to come, to people who had some inkling but weren't quite sure the rumors were true, to finally young people in ghettos, young people who therefore knew how bad things were, although they didn't yet know what their final grisly fate was to be. Before each excerpt we also get a generous introduction to the author, his or her surroundings, what generally happened to the Jews of that particular city or town, and the diarist's final fate. Some of these young people survived, others perished, and still others' fates are unknown, though they are presumed to have perished. There's also an appendix detailing a number of other young diarists from the Shoah, some information on them, their fates, whether the diary is in a private collection, a museum, if it's been translated into English, or was published for the general public whatever language it's in. A lot of these young diarists were very literate and intelligent astute young people; it's incredibly sad how some of them died so young and therefore didn't get a chance to possibly become great writers. My only small complaint is that Poland is a little overrepresented; while it's true that at least half of the murdered came from Poland and that Poland was the nation that lost the greatest percentage of its prewar Jewish population by far, it would have been nice to have some variety in the locations, like maybe include more diaries from Germany, France, and Belgium, or ones from Holland, Hungary, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, and Greece, for example.



2. Even after countless movies and documentaries, nothing has personally ever made me direct as much attention to the tragedy of the holocaust than these young writers' words written in ghettos and in hiding places. Their optimism is heartbreaking when you learn of their fates, you see their struggles with hunger, fear of an uncertain future, their grief over losing loved ones and identity. But you also recognize their strength in troubled times and end up appreciating their courage to write, because you know it is essential that they should be known.



3. i highly recommend this book. it is not only for those with historical interests. the diaries are so moving that this book will appeal to all. the writing is very vivid and the diarist's voice will stay with you for some time. zapruder has done an impecable job of introducing each entry. she sets the scene with such biographical and cultural detail that you feel at one with diarist before delving in. i was really moved by this book and encourage all to read it.

5 comments about Facing the Lion (Abridged Edition): Memoirs of a Young Girl in Nazi Europe.

1. I deducted one star because she uses Roman Catholic religious terminology that I wasn't familiar with. That is to say, they failed to provide a glossary.
   
   Her book is more lengthy than her husband's autobiography of surviving the Holocaust (Max Liebster, a Jewish Jehovah's Witness)
   
   I could feel her loneliness and also her strength and determination to win the race for life because Jehovah kept strengthening her at the right moments to that she never felt alone!
   
   Unlike some Witnesses who survived the Holocaust, I'm pretty sure that Simone and her husband did not succomb to Satans' lies of materialism, immorality, idolatry, and apostasy! (At least, I would hope so around here.) All the anointed die faithful and loyal when under severe persecution. It is only when they believe Satans' lies (like Annania and Saphira) that they fail. Remember your Achilles' heel!
   
   I surmise that a Jew/Israeli is more likely to become a Witness than they are to become Mormon. Isn't that funny?



2. What a wonderful true story to inspire courage and the ability to stand up for oneself. A true treasure to be read and reread.



3. This is a powerful, inspiring story of how even a child can have tremendous courage in the face of overwhelming oppression. My 10-year old daughter and I shared it together.



4. This book is a first hand account of a young girl who had what it took to survive her horrible experience under the Nazi's. What she "had" was her religion. It is amazing to me that the large amount of Jehovah's Witnesses came through those war years able to cope with life after the war. So many others (in the camps) had no means of doing so. What J.W.'s have is nothing short of a miracle, as I have seen for myself. My 18 yr. old son and I met Simone and her husband at their home in France this past winter. The first thing Max did was to show us the number tattooed on his arm.Then he said to my son, "young man, I watched a 1000 people being put to death every day". Yet, here he stood, just out of the hospital the day before, still bright and full of life and love for his faith, at over 90 yrs. old. Next on my list is his book which I hear is just as inspiring as his wife's.



5. 
   
   This young girl suffered so much at the hands of the French, who sided with the Nazies.
   She was French and they took her away from her parents and put her in a terrible reform type school.
   This book enlightened me as to how horrific that these Jehovahs Witnesses were treated and only because of their deep religious convictions.
   It brought many tears to my eyes at how the innocent ones suffered.