No comments about All But My Life.

No comments about Anne Frank in the World: Essays and Reflections.

No comments about Gedanken und Gedenken.

No comments about Dear Dr. Fisch: Children's Letters To A Holocaust Survivor.

No comments about From Out of the Firestorm: A Memoir of the Holocaust.

2 comments about Pilgrimage from Darkness: Nuremberg to Jerusalem (Willie Morris Book in Memoir and Biography).

1. This awakening-to-consciousness journey laid before the reader is rich and enlightening; painting the pictures of lands and beliefs with a full colored brush.
   The true story gives us a look into how Nazi Germany bent and broke both Jewish and Christian people in subtle and shocking ways; ultimately-in the wake of its destruction-sending one young man, whose indoctrination into the Hitler youth estranged him from his own family and the reality of the plight of Jewish countrymen, across nations on a spiritual search for meaning in an exploration of the religions of the world.
   Information and insights on Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity broaden the reader along with this pilgrim.
   The route from conquered Germany through places like impoverished streets of Bombay, a cave in the Himalayas, ashrams in India, sand stormed deserts in Pakistan, Babylonian excavations in Iraq, the Jordanian border to Jerusalem is filled with richly described encounters, hazards and life lessons. Getting from point A to point B is alternately smooth and tense with risks.
   The end leaves one wanting to know more; believing that if peace and reconciliation can be possible for this man, with all his baggage on his search for a meaningful life of peace, then it is more than a nebulous vision for the rest of us with our multi-patterned, cultural valises in tow.
   I recommend this book to everyone- if for no other reason than to garner a glimpse at Oskar/Asher's winding paths and how it is in the daily existence of those who we may never meet, in lands we may only read about or see in snatches of media.
   This author has sensitively and honestly written this insightful biography which shows practical applications for today's journeys to the possibilities of peace between nations and people with myriad belief systems.
   It says so completely that it is not necessary to go down the path of destruction again.
   This would be an excellent book for reading groups/ethical societies where discussion is included.
   My recommendation is: read and share with others.
   You will want to discuss this book!



2. This is an amazing story of a man who was in the hitler youth, and became an orthodox Jew living in Israel. The story of his journey - spiritual and physical - is incredible. The book is written so that you feel as if you are experiencing the story with Oskar/Asher. Definitely recommended reading!

No comments about Remembering Judith.

1 comments about Till They Meet Again.

1. Great Read!!This novel is fast paced and riveting. I could not put it down. Ms. Elovic's character development is superb. The storyline is unique. I would highly recommend this novel.

No comments about Outwitting Hitler, Surviving Stalin: The Story of Arthur Spindler.

2 comments about The Gift.

1. When I started reading "The Gift," I wondered what Ita Willen was getting at. She wandered in and out of cities, years, travels, families, dreams. Though her meanderings were eloquently expressed, I became distracted. I flipped back and forth between the photos of the author's grandmother on the front cover, and the child Ita two pages in, so that one was superimposed on the other. It was the same face. They shared a name. She had never known her grandmother, who died in a Nazi death camp, and this book had presented their eerie resemblance so artfully that I wanted her to tell me, right away, who the woman was and what her life and death meant. I was restless.
   
   Then I realized that it was the author who had been restless; for most of her life she had defined her identity as a child of Holocaust survivors by trying to escape -- as though, in wandering foreign streets and philosophies, her path would trace an outline that she might call a self-portrait. She eventually discovered that she needed to see the face itself -- her own face with those of her lost family superimposed. In daring to step inside the outline, she found that the knowledge that had terrorized her all her life was actually a gift.
   
   I once knew a man who had survived Auschwitz. When his daughter was growing up -- innocent of the awful truth and needing his protection -- he told her that the numbers tattooed on his arm were the way he remembered his phone number. In telling me this, he gave me a gift -- a personal story to make real one of the millions of victims, who were otherwise an impenetrable mass.
   
   In "The Gift," the author tells us the stories that led her to understand who she was. Take this journey patiently. Every portraitist needs to sketch in the outline first.



2. The Gift is one woman's journey to find an answer from the horror of the past. It is a quest to bring to rest the guilt of the next generation, the children of the survivors and refugees "surrounded by immense family of ghosts...with eyes that shine out of single saved photographs." Instead of rejoicing in being the of the ones who managed to survive the Holocaust, she is trapped in a search for meaning and acceptance.
   
   Seen through the cycle of the seasons, she, the first person narrator, tries to put the past, not to rest, but to life. She searches through time and place, religions and philosophies for the answers to unknown questions. She has embarked on a pursuit of the past. Her personal path is smoothed by the study of Buddhism, not as a denial of her Jewish heritage but as a means of explanation and acceptance.
   She can not find comfort among her own peers for she sees those who are children of refugees and those who are not as very different, "She had gloves on her hands and I had blood in my pockets."
   
   "In attempting to escape it we open doors we never would have opened.
   In confronting it we see what absolute bliss a normal life in peacetime is.
   In returning to it, our selves, our parents, our people, we become quintessential Jews who choose the fate of our people. We choose Auschwitz with our people and attain nobility through that choice. One's self respect hinges on the ability and desire to go with one's people wherever they go....the recognition that one would be willing to sacrifice everything in the face of doom."
   
   The gift is the acceptance and the ability of the children of the survivors to give voice to the pain that their parents feel but can not put into words, "to not have wounds but to feel that pain is a great gift." Willen has written with a bravery that is unexpected. She has been able to confront the confusion, the onus of innocence of a population who has not been acknowledged by the post Holocaust world. The burden of the survivor is to face a part of history that will never end. The Gift is in a material sense a very short memoir at 100 pages but in a true sense it is infinite. It is a work that deserves study and contemplation. Its multilayers of understanding, of comparison and of discussion will make it a fiction legacy.