No comments about Remembering Georgy: Letters from the House of Izieu.

2 comments about My Precious Legacy: Memoirs.

1. A collection of touching stories based on Vera Dalia's return to the land of her birth (Czechoslovakia) to find out what happened to friends and relatives left behind at the time of the Holocaust. The book represents the culmination of a ten year effort to memorialize on paper the deeds of some vary courageous individuals who risked everything to help their Jewish neighbors escape persecution and certain death at the hands of the Nazi. Dr. Dalia shares her reflections as she meets the survivors of a horrific time for Jews and others during World War Two. Thank you Vera for sharing.



2. "My Precious Legacy" is a story about the power of the human spirit. Author Vera Dalia provides her readers with a personal account of the crushing power of the Nazi occupation of her homeland during WW II. Dalia's story is a tale of victory and hope and the resiliency of the human spirit. Her story is told through the eyes of a child and her tale restores the sanctity of our humanity. My Precious Legacy is the memoir of a child and an important retelling of a portion of the history of Man's darkest hour.

No comments about Remembering Raoul Wallenberg: The University of Michigan Celebrates Twentieth-Century Heroes.

2 comments about Love in the Tempest of History: A French Resistance Story.

1. The author is the daughter of two French resistance figures of World War II. Her father was a French naval captain who divorced at mid age and married a young Polish Jew living in Paris. When the French gave up and signed an armistice, this captain wanted to fight on and joined the Resistance. Rather than escaping to London where he could have served in the Free French Navy as a high officer, he serves as a resistance figure and climbs to the head of a cell. He is then tortured and shot with his wife just before the liberation of much of France. It is a sad tale.
   This is a short book, and as the previous reviewer notes, makes these heroes come to light with all their positive and negative characteristics. I feel I was reading something very personal when I read this book. Since the original book was in French, perhaps the translator did not do a great job in the translation. This is why I rated it only three stars. Also, a more detailed description of the aftermath could have been done describing how the daughter was adopted by her uncle and what happened to the Leitner family children.



2. Let's get a couple of things straight.

   1) Little of the story has to do directly with the French Resistance.

   2) This is still a vital, interesting and perhaps even historically important work.

   Ms. Yung-de-Prevaux, in a notable work of journalistic digging, resurrected her deceased parents in a monument to their heroism during the war.

   Through her work, they live and breathe again as people, not dusty historic figures, but people with desires, wants, frustrations and faults, who, seeing their country overrun by barbarians, chose to fight and die together rather than submit to their conquest.

   Their actions in organizing and operating a major resistance information-gathering cell covering the Mediterranean coast, undoubtedly saved the lives of thousands of troops and helped with the eventual liberation of Europe.

   Tragically, Aude never new her parents except through her research, and equally tragically they were executed mere days from liberation.

   This book is the account of their lives, and, as such, is better documented for the period before the war--but then, so much of what was done by resistance and special forces has never and probably never will come to light, having been taken to the grave by those heroes who performed these actions.

   What we are left with, is a picture of these two very human people, their lives before the war and how these fairly ordinary extraordinary people came to make the choices they did to risk (and lose) everything for the sake of others.

   Like so many heroes, they died mostly unknown by and unappreciated by those for whom they died. Thanks to their daughter, their worth is now more publicly known.

5 comments about The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis.

1. This wonderful book is a collection of short biographies of people who were persecuted by the Nazis but were not Jewish. These stories will touch your heart and help us to keep the story of the horrors of WWII alive.



2. It would seem that the world has been held hostage thinking one group or another deserves more because they have suffered more than anyone else. Our history books have misinformed us and downright lied about the experiences of so many people as if they did not exist. When we speak of genocide the first thing ringing in our ears is the Holacaust in Germany and what happened to 6 million Jews. What about the 20 million Armenians on April 24,1919 (or thereabouts). What about 9 million Africans drowned in the Middle Passage. How about the annihilation and almost termination of the indigineous people of the Americas. The importance of this book lies in taking a factual, first person, look at the other resident citizens of Germany who were also issued a death penalty under Nazi rule. Hopefully knowing the world wide experience of Genocide (still going on), we as people of the world can stop it.



3. I thought this was an amazing book. It talks about all the others out there who were affected by Hitler, showing it was not only the Jews who were affected and killed, but many others, like the homosexuals, gypsies, ect. The book offers many different opinions and people, and I thought it was an amazing and saddening book.



4. Pity this book is out of print, for it is worth remembering that many millions of non Jews were enslaved and persecuted by the Nazis, the majority of whom were (as recently scholarship confirms) Ukrainians.



5. The Other Victims was a book of real life stories from the Holocaust. I liked this book because it tells how people had to go into hiding, how they had no freedom, and how they fought back. The book is mainly about people trying to escape from Germany to America or a safe country. My favorite chapter was Bubili: a young Gypsy's fight for survival. Once I started to read this book I couldn't put it down. The reason I couldn't put this book down was it was all true. I thought it was hard to believe it actually happened. The people were killed because of their religion, color, looks, and trying to stop the wrong that was going on.

No comments about Tears on the School Desk.