3 comments about Milena: The Tragic Story of Kafka's Great Love.

1. Since the hardback edition of the new translation of Milena was published last year, Margarete Buber-Neumann, friend to the mistress of Kafka for four years at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, has died. She died old enough to see the collapse of the Stalinist system that imprisoned her in Siberia, old enough to feel the great hopes that the socialism she fought for will now at last sweep through Europe.
   
   Milena Jesenska fought for the cause too, in her writing and through her actions, leading to her arrest and incarceration at Ravensbruck. She initially sought out Greta Buber to hear the truth about Stalin; what developed was a deep and passionate love. Though Buber-Neumann is no great stylist indeed the book at times fails to come alive because of her reverence for Milena this is a profoundly moving memoir, part biography, part autobiography and part love story, even if, as the subject predicted, told by an 'indulgent judge.' For Milena, on her deathbed, commissioned Buber-Neumann to write this book as a document of life in the camps. However, the camp is but the terrifying context for a tale about a beautiful girl who turned the eyes of the Prague Circle in the Twenties with her boyish looks and who began a painful love affair with Franz Kafka and of how she outlived him and of how 'the living fire' as Kafka described her was quenched.



2. Milena Jesenka is most known to the world through her connection to and correspondance with Kafka. Her friend Margerete Buber- Neumann tells her story with great insight and feeling. She tells especially of Milena, who imprisoned at Ravensbruck was a heroic helper of others there. This story inspires and saddens deeply because it shows the tragic and painful end of a truly noble and courageous human being.



3. This is a biography of Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist who was, in a way, a great love of Kafka's. She was an unusual woman for her time. Highly intelligent and with a rebellious streak, she fashioned herself into a journalist and became well-regarded for her literary and political writing. In her 20s she came to know Kafka when she translated his work into Czech. This gave rise to an impassioned correspondence between them, although the connection didn't turn into a real-life love affair, partly because Milena was married, and partly because of Kafka's numerous anxieties and aversions in the male/female domain. Unfortunately, those interested in insights into Kafka will not get many from this book, as he comes and goes quite quickly in the narrative. Rather, the book is a loving tribute to Milena by Margarete Buber-Neumann, with whom she was imprisoned at the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück. The two had planned to write a book together when they were freed, but Milena died of kidney failure in May 1944, so Margarete chose instead to tell her friend's story.

No comments about To Live And Fight Another Day.

1 comments about The Road to Hell: Recollections of the Nazi Death March.

1. Very compelling story. Seems like taken from a dream. It's amazing how much can a human being endure, and it is equally amazing what level of cruelty and sadism can man invent.

2 comments about The Longest Road to America: Vol. 2.

1. 5 stars for this book that makes you think deeper about your own life, things we take for granted. The way this author arrived to America is amazing and it SHOULD be put on a big screen. Amazing!



2. True story that is easy to read and very interesting. This is one of the three books about her life.

5 comments about A Jump for Life: A Survivor's Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland.

1. 
   Originally written in 1946, Cyprys' account is remarkably free of the Judeocentric, German-whitewashing, anti-Christian, and anti-Polish tendencies of today. She devotes almost as much attention to German crimes against Poles as to those against Jews. Furthermore, Cyprys makes it clear that the Germans regarded the Poles as having no more inherent right to live than the Jews. Consider what happened when two Poles were mistakenly herded with Jews into a Treblinka-bound train: "Two gentiles in our wagon tried to explain to the Germans that they did not fit into this society and tried to show their documents. All to no avail. `Even if you are not a Jew, you are a damned Pole', yelled the German, and slapped the older woman's face, barking `Polish swine' and with his rifle butt drove her to the wagon." (p. 95).
   
   Cyprys reported a balanced range of Polish attitudes towards Jews (pp. 118-119, 127, 132), some of which varied within the same family (pp. 142-143). Ironically, she was helped by the obsessively anti-Semitic Mrs. Zosia, who felt sorry for the Jews and who aided them (pp. 220-221).
   
   In his FEAR, Jan Tomasz Gross presents a distorted view of Poles acquiring Jewish properties during the German occupation. In contrast, when mentioning how some Poles pretended to be Volksdeutsche in order to join in the German-sponsored pillage of Jewish properties, she nevertheless added: "The local mob usually guided the Germans to the rich Jewish houses and stores. With the deepest shame I must admit that there were some Jews among the scum." (pp. 25-26).
   
   One inflammatory Polonophobic Holocaust myth is the one about Jews, while being transported to the death camps and with full knowledge of their impending deaths, being forced to endure the sight of indifferent or gleeful Polish onlookers. Against such nonsense, we learn that the death trains had small, barred windows well above eye level, and with nothing to stand on in order to look out of them (p. 96). Viewing (in either direction) was nearly impossible. The author and her daughter were loaded on a Treblinka-bound train. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Cyprys was boosted up and enabled to cut through the bars to jump out and to have her daughter Eva (Ewa) get pushed out.
   
   The oft-quoted Polish remarks about Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising "getting burned like bugs", although invariably presented as such, wasn't necessarily derogatory. After all, Poles used the same phrase to refer to themselves in the face of their defenselessness against German incendiary bombing during the Warsaw Uprising! (p. 200).
   
   The Germans strongly promoted alcoholism among Poles. This was done in order to degrade them (Lemkin elaborated on this) and to exploit this dependency as leverage in the denunciation of fugitive Jews (p. 174).
   
   Cyprys elaborates on the semi-collaborationist Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa): "There were policemen who would accept neither bribes nor ransoms but, for the sake of their ideology, would hand over the Jews. Looking at this group objectively, however, one has to say that among their ranks there were many Volksdeutsch volunteers. The activities of the Polish police aroused such hostility among the majority of the Polish people, that death sentences were passed on several policemen by the Polish underground organizations and executions were carried out by Polish lads...upon the orders of the Organization a detailed list of all policemen was kept in the Underground offices. These contained, apart from proved misconduct, evidence of their standard of living which ascertained whether a dark blue was profiteering from blackmail or extortion. These lists of evidence were kept till the Warsaw Uprising: I do not know whether they survived the insurrection." (p. 138).
   
   However, by no stretch of the imagination was the Polish Blue Police the main force in the roundups of Jews for their deaths: "On about 5 August [1942] all `workshop territories' were hermetically closed and the Germans and Ukrainians started a ruthless expulsion of anyone found outside these areas--always with the efficient help of the Jewish militia. Wherever a German or a Ukrainian did not venture the militia men would gladly fish out as many as possible of those still hidden in cellars and vaults, only to oblige the Germans." (p. 52).
   
   Most Polish blackmailers (szmalcowniki), "the scum of mankind" (p. 119), took only part of the belongings of their Jewish victims and didn't usually actually denounce Jews to the Germans (pp. 119-120). They sometimes excused their conduct by their poverty and even gave the Jews advice on how better to disguise their Jewishness (p. 140).
   
   Underworld Poles weren't the only ones that fugitive Jews feared: "The Jewish Gestapo men who remained alive were very dangerous. Their eyes were penetrating and Jews pointed out by them were lost beyond hope." (p. 165). Cyprys personally observed them shouting Jewish slogans or singing Jewish songs in order to provoke a telltale reaction in fugitive Jews among the pedestrians (pp. 165-166).
   
   Cyprys alludes to Zegota as follows: "It goes without saying that only a fraction of the Jews in hiding knew about the existence of this committee. Those who were in touch with the patriotic `Polish intelligentsia' or people who worked in the Underground were most likely to benefit. Everything was obviously carried out in the greatest secrecy, using all available means of security." (p. 150). Complaints about Zegota aiding only a modest number of Jews are clearly off the mark.
   
   In fact, Cyprys has a very sage understanding of ALL underground activities: "In reality underground activities were extremely stressful and required a great deal of steadiness and concentration. And because it had gone on for so many years, it was exhausting even to the strongest individuals and led to many casualties." (p. 184).
   
   Cyprys provides a level of detail about the Warsaw Uprising usually done by Polish authors. We read, for instance, about the devastating effects of the German nebelwerfer ("roaring cow" or "cupboard"), and the systematic destruction of Warsaw by Germans AFTER the Uprising.



2. It is ironic that the author of this amazing journal never saw her work published, instead it was her two daughters who published it after her death. It is a gripping read,and recounts how the author escapes a death train heading to Treblinka by sawing off the bars on the window of the train and jumping out of it into the wilderness, together with her 2 yr old daughter! It is so much more than an account of survival, it gives one pause for thought as to what one would do given similar circumstances...I myself am mother to a toddler, and reading this just made me feel connected to the author, in that I too would do anything for my child, but do I possess the same courage as Ruth? It's impossible to imagine her life in occupied Poland, trying to live on the Aryan side, amongst Gentiles, keeping her daughter amongst strangers, not knowing if she will be saved...this is an amazing account of a woman's courage, a mother's love, and undying faith.



3. I read this book about 6 years ago, in a period when I read every Holocaust testimony I could lay my hands on, to help me understand the first hand testimony I, alone, had received from a lifelong friend who herself survived the Vilna ghetto, and three concentration camps.
   
   As Cat R reports, the author's daughter found her mother's manuscript in 1979, after the former had died. The text gives a very personal account of the Nazi invasion of Poland, this one from the perspective of a Warsaw native shipped with her small daughter, in January 1943, aboard a cattle car from the ghetto, bound to a certain death at Treblinka.
   
   Certain except that she fought back. She knew from rumors what happened there. With a hacksaw blade she had concealed, she determined to saw through the bars of one of two small windows in her car, and reached them from the shoulders of two strong young boys willing to help her.
   
   To ensure that the boys threw her daughter out the window after she had jumped, Eva gave a bag of chocolate, sugar and bread to a sympathetic friend too old to join her, and asked her to ensure they got it if they did as she had asked.
   
   The jump was but the beginning of one Jewish mother's perilous and somehow miraculous bid to survive--with her child.
   
   In the end, this sufferings of this mother and child were far less severe than those of my friend Masha. Nevertheless, this is a gripping, and important account, not to be missed.
   
   --Alyssa A. Lappen



4. This wartime memoir was discovered by the author's daughter in 1979, following her mother's death. It relates the events of the Nazi persecution in Poland, the suffering and degradation of the Warsaw Ghetto ... and an extraordinary courage and will to survive. Realizing the fate in store for her, Ruth made plans for escape. In the winter of 1943, she and two-year-old Eva were rounded up and crowded into a cattle-car for the fatal journey to Treblinka. A single chance for life remained to them: a perilous jump from the moving train. Their first night of freedom was spent huddling together in a freezing, abandoned dog-kennel, with Ruth licking her daughter's wounds. In their danger-fraught flight for survival, they encountered kind-hearted Catholics who risked their lives to aid a Jewish mother and child. This book is a powerful first-hand account of terrifying times, and a testimony to a mother's courage.



5. This would have to be one of the few diaries that tells the story of the horror of the Holocaust. Ruth lives through many tough situations, where her quick thinking saves her and her daughter Eva. It paints a clear picture of how people in Warsaw were treated, and how the Germans got rid of the Jews in the Ghetto and in Warsaw. It is rather sad, but it is true. If you read this story, you will learn first hand about the life that Jews lived in the Holocaust. I suggest reading it!

1 comments about "CZECH ESCAPE".

1. This is a very moving story. So many sentences are written just as Erika would say them. You see, I have heard Erika speak. This is an important story to remember. In these times, people are trying to convince the new generations that the Halocaust did not happen. Erika lived through it, the terrors and the triumphs and is so afraid the younger generations will be convinced it did not happen. It must have been hard for Erika to relive so many of the memories in the book as it is for her when she speaks. Please read the book and believe it. Linda M.

No comments about A Time to Laugh, a Time to Weep: History Experienced : My Childhood Memories of Growing Up During the Third Reich, World War Ii, and Foreign Military Occupations.

1 comments about Night.

1. I recall when I first read 'Night', it was just after Elie Wiesel had given a lecture at my university. It was in the mid-1980s, and the lecture hall was standing-room-only. Wiesel's presentation moved us to tears, and moved us to anger, and moved me to want to follow up on his words by reading what he had written.
   
   This is supposed to be fiction, but in a style that seems to be typical of many modern Israeli novelists, it is so close to the truth of the actual events that transpired in Wiesel's life that it might as well be treated as autobiographical. This is actually part of a trilogy - Night, Dawn, and The Accident - although each element stands alone with integrity.
   
   How does one deal with survival after such atrocities as that at Birkenau and Auschwitz? How can one have faith in the world? How can one accept that a people so closely identified with a powerful God can ever accept that God again? Where is God in the midst of such things?
   
   Wiesel himself as spent his life in search of such answers, but doesn't provide them here. Why then would one want to read such accounts as these? Wiesel was silent for many years, until he was brought into speech and writing as a witness to the events. Wiesel proclaims that there is in the world now a new commandment - 'Thou shalt not stand idly by' - when such things are happening, one must act. One must remember the past in all its personal aspects to both honour those who suffered and to forestall such things happening again (which, given the the depressing repetitive nature of history, is a difficult task).
   
   This is the longest short book I've ever read. It is one that has stayed with me from the first page, and I've never been able to shake the images brought forward, the misery and suffering, the existence of evil and brutality, the sadness and desolation. We live in a culture that likes to gloss over pain and suffering, mask it with drugs and other things, and always end the story with a happy ending.
   
   There is no happy ending here - even Wiesel's own survival is a questionable good here. How does one live after this? How does the world go on?
   
   One thing is certain, we must never forget, and this book is part of that active remembering that we are called to do.
   
   George Guidall's narration gives dramatic emphasis that one might think unnecessary, given the subject matter. There are harrowing pieces and poignant times made more powerful by the reading. This really isn't a book for drive-time listening, but the audio component can add much to the experience of this tale.

1 comments about In the Eye of the Storm: Growing Up Jewish in Germany, 1918-1943, A Memoir.

1. Herbert Strauss' In The Eye Of The Storm also provides a memoirof growing up Jewish in Germany, covering 1918-43 and the author'sescape to Switzerland. The two provide fine insights on childhood, politics, and struggles for survival.

No comments about Third Reich Diaries.