1 comments about After the Holocaust.

1. This book promises to tell the rest of the story how those Jewish youths who survived the Holocaust preceded with their lives after the war. The survivors' narratives are divided into four segments. This, unfortunately, leads to some problems for the reader as it is rather easy to become confused about what happened to which individual survivor. I found it easier to read about each one of the Jews individually throughout the book first. Then I reflected on their experiences as a whole.
   Readers will be saddened to learn that the trials of these young people did not end with the defeat of the Nazi. Imagine learning that you are the only survivor of your family or that your home belongs to others. This book adds an often-unmentioned dimension to the plight of the Jewish survivors. Little has been written about the Displaced Person Camps, immigration restrictions and the continued hatred and mistreatment of Jews after the war.
   The black and white photographs add an intimacy often lost to Holocaust readers. The author's sidebars and comments do not intrude, but offer helpful insights into the victims' plight. The author's reference to hidden scars applies well to these survivors.

2 comments about A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (A Centennial Book).

1. Yitzhak Zuckerman's (Cukierman's) fabulous book stands out in stark contrast to much of the superficial and distorted material that is so often used in Holocaust education. Then again, he was an eyewitness, so he should know. Unlike the anti-Polish slant of most Holocaust educational material, Zuckerman finds much good and bad in both nationalities, and repeatedly sternly warns those who would espouse hatred for Poles. He also has high praises for Zegota, the Polish underground organization that rescued thousands of Jews. Zuckerman is unusually frank and candid in telling the full story of what happened during this cruel time. For instance, Holocaust films invariably show the collaborationist Polish blue police, but not the Jewish ghetto police. Zuckerman, on the other hand, makes it obvious that it was the Jewish collaborationist police which inflicted more of the sufferings on the imprisoned Jews. Most Holocaust materials only show Poles who would betray Jews to the Nazis, while Zuckerman surprises the reader by pointing out that he was just as frequently accosted by Jewish blackmailers as Polish ones. Unlike the movie Schindler's List, which showed a Polish girl cheering as Jews were deported, Zuckerman recounts a diametrically-oppposite personal experience as an incognito Jew (with false documents expertly made by the Polish underground) on the Aryan side of Warsaw. As the Warsaw Ghetto was being burned by the Germans, very few Poles rejoiced, and these were primarily from the criminal element. Zuckerman found that many Poles cried as they saw the ghetto burn. Zuckerman also acknowledges that Jews were disproportionately involved in Communism, and this was a major factor which provoked Polish anti-Semitism, including the murder of surviving Jews who returned to reclaim their property after the war. Finally, Zuckerman spends considerable space detailing the many German crimes against Polish gentiles, something which Holocaust materials rarely do in depth, if at all. A superb book!



2. " I don't think there's any need to analyze the Uprising in military terms. This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army, and no one doubted how it was likely to turn out. This isn't a subject for study in a military school. Not the weapons, not the operations, not the tactics. If there's a school to study the human spirit, there it should be a major subject. The really important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youths, after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. I don't know if there's a standard to measure that." -Yitzhak Zuckerman From A Surplus of Memory A Surplus of Memory is Yitzhak Zuckerman's memoir of the events of 1939-1946, the period before, during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Zuckerman, or "Antek," his pseudonym in the Jewish underground, was a commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which became the primary fighting force in the Jewish ghetto. After the Uprising, Antek led clandestine operations in Aryan Warsaw, then commanded a unit of Jewish fighters during the Polish Uprising. After the war, he helped Jews returning from exile in the Soviet Union from death camps, and those emerging from hiding after the Nazi occupation. Antek became a major figure in Brikha, the movement that smuggled Jews into Palestine after the war. He finally immigrated to Palestine in 1947 and co-founded Lohamei Ha-Getaot, the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz where he established a Holocaust museum. He was also a witness at the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Antek was a member of Zionist youth organizations in Poland before the war. At the age of twenty-four after the blitzkrieg stormed through Poland, he risked his life to travel into the Nazi occupied zone with his destination Warsaw, where he had been summoned to teach by Ha Shomer, a Zionist group. His mission was to help sustain the Jewish educational movement. After all was lost, Antek worked around the clock supporting the exodus of resistance survivors from the inferno of the ghetto to the relative safety of Aryan Warsaw where approximately 20,000 Jews were already in hiding. He arranged for transportation and shelter in temporary apartments for the survivors and devised subterranean escape routes though the sewers where he shepherded the survivors of the carnage. Many escaped via this route with Antek, but other tortured souls lost their way and died horrible deaths in the maze, eaten by rats or swept away by torrents. Others escaped through a tunnel to the other side. Antek continued his activities in the underground, in particular organizing a Jewish unit that fought in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he stayed in Europe and continued to be an advocate for Jewish survivors. A tragic postwar chapter was his rescue mission to the town of Kielce where sixty Jews had been killed, victims of a pogrom. After the war, surviving Jews were met with hostility and violence when they attempted to return to their homes. Antek led a support contingent of Soviet soldiers and Polish government officials to Kielce and transported Jewish survivors to safety in Lodz. Antek also became a leader in the Brikha movement, smuggling Holocaust survivors into Palestine. During the remainder of his life in Israel, Antek told his stories of the Uprising to those on his kibbutz. He admitted that he suffered from a "surplus of memory," thus the book's title, the result of thirty-eight tapes and sixty hours of conversation. The burden of the events and comrades that lived and died with him in the Warsaw ghetto became more vivid with each passing year. He told friends," I feel in my soul that I'm a thousand years old, since every hour there counts for a year in me." . Antek's survival through the Holocaust and telling his Surplus of Memory were perhaps his greatest act of resistance.This is an essential piece of not only Holocaust history, but in the history of humanity's resistance to oppression. It's a tragic, yet inspiring book.

No comments about Jews in Sports (Uh! Oh!).

2 comments about In the Shadow of Love: Stories from My Life.

1. Walter Meyerhof has written something really special. When I read his book - which I did in one 'go', as it was quite impossible to put it down - I felt really privileged to have entered his world and seen something of the joy he has obviously found in his life. INSPIRATIONAL was a title which came immediately to me as the title for this review. INSPIRATIONAL is what this little book is. Thank you, Professor Meyerhof, for showing us the way!



2. During the Hitler period, a number of extraordinary immigrants came to the USA, fleeing certain death because of their Jewish ancestry or religion. The USA did not make it easy for them to get in. Our society was extremely anti-semitic itself at that time. As a result, only the most promising people managed make the jump.

   Walter Meyerhof, who was the son of a Nobel prize winning scientist and who later went on to become a physics professor at Stanford, was one who made it out and made it here. Like many refugees, he was not actually Jewish, but had Jewish ancestry.

   The book consists of a number of short vignettes about Meyerhof's life. The vignettes are not really connected into a single narrative as one would expect from a biography, still one does get a picture of the flow of his life.

   The book's account of Meyerhof's flight from Hitler is understated, but the sense of the closing of the horrifying vice of death still comes through.

   Meyerhof's tales of his encounters with romance are also fascinating in giving us a window into how such things happened even before the "free love" generation.

   The book does leave us with many questions about the parts of the author's life that are missing. Still, the parts that are there are well worth reading.

5 comments about Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations.

1. A well written and researched true story. Many, who have grown up after the holocaust, will find it hard to imagine what people went through only a generation ago . Diane was fortunate enough to have many members of her extended family survive (though they have scattered around the world in their effort to do so) and we are fortunate she has written the story of their survival. Readers that are fearful of books about the holocaust that have gruesome details can easily read the book as it is more a book about survival.



2. Excellent account of life in pre-WW2 Poland and the devastating years of the war itself. What is so remarkable is that the survival rate of this family was comparatively high compared to other Holocaust stories - mostly as a result of a family that saw the terror coming, and fleeing outside of the eventual jackboot sphere, with Diana's immediate family living precarious daily lives through their sheer wits in Nazi occupied Poland. How remarkably easy reflect our own lives against these - just to be grateful and marvel at the human spirit, read and be grateful.



3. First i'd like to thank Ms. Armstrong for writing such a wonderful and powerful book. I could really relate to it and i'm sure many readers have as well. Ms. Armstrong writes so well that it is never a struggle to keep track of the abundance of family members, which can sometimes turn a book sour. Her chronicle of her family will make you ponder about your past. I HIGHLY recommend it! It is a stunning read.



4. I absolutely loved "Mosaic: A Chronicle of 5 Generations". I have read many Holocaust memoirs & oral histories, but none have moved me as Diane Armstrong's book has.

   The strength of "Mosaic" is it's breadth and it's protagonists, the author's family. The central family, that of Daniel & Lieba Baldinger & their 11 children is augmented by cousins on the maternal side (the Spira's) as well as the family of Ms. Armstrong's mother, the Bratters. Although Poland is the setting for the first 30 years or so, as WWII beckons the scope becomes the entire continent of Europe as the now-adult children of Daniel & Lieba pursue their lives.

   The majority of the family is caught in Nazi-controlled Poland & thru various ruses attempts to escape being deported to the death camps. These are the most thrilling sections of "Mosaic" because Ms. Armstrong's writing is so vivid that the reader can feel the never-ending fear that she & her family lived with for years. While she & her parents live as Catholics in a small Polish village, her aunt & young cousins are standing behind a wardrobe for days at a time in Krakow; we experience both types of anxiety as well as many others as the author recounts the many ruses various family members undertook to survive.

   There were family members outside of Poland during WWII as well. With 2 uncles in France, another uncle who moved his family from Belgium thru Spain to finally end in Rio de Janeiro & various aunts & cousins everywhere from Andorra to Tel Aviv the reader is treated to a kaleidoscope of war experiences. The post-war years & family diaspora is dealt with in detail also.

   What makes "Mosaic" especially memorable for me is that nobody is a "hero" or does "historic deeds" at any point in the book. While most Holocaust memoirs are by individuals who somehow stood out from the crowd, this account is of the members of that crowd, the folks who by simply surviving without compromising themselves became heroes. It is a marvelous reminder that everyone has a story worth telling.

   The final chapter, in which Diane Armstrong & her daughter Justine return to Poland & reunite with the priest who befriended & helped her family shines with joy & compassion. I truly hope that Father Roman Soszynski had the opportunity to read this book. I hope that you will read it as well.




5. Gripping, exciting, and suspenseful reading. Great factual writing with immense feeling. Diane Armstrong took me back to my own childhood. I lost my then nineteen-year-old sister as well as grand parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends from school to the holocaust. It was painful as well as joyous to read. The book brought back memories and filled in some necessary gaps from my own past. A reader of a book which I wrote sent me MOSAIC all the way from Australia to the USA. I am very grateful to her. This book encompasses five generations of the author's families including detailed explanations of Jewish traditions then and now. For those of you who escaped the holocaust, you will be able to relate with it. For all others, it will be an eye-opening experience.

1 comments about Streets and Alleys (American Storytelling).

1. This is a very funny, poignant collection of stories from Mr. Leiberman's life. For those of us who were lucky enough to have him for English 12 AP at Evanston Township High School, it is wonderful to read the stories and be able to hear his voice in your head. While the stories are great to read, nothing beats seeing him perform them in front of you, the way he grins and his eyes light up as he gets ready to perform. Thanks for everything, Mr. Leiberman, and thank you for the gift of these wonderful stories!

   So, whether you knew him or not, these short stories will take you for a nostalgic trip through your own real or imagined past.

3 comments about Anne Frank.

1. There are two editorial reviews here that summarize the book quite well. I would like to concurr with another Amazon reviewer that states this would be a good book to read to students prior to any discussion in detail of " The Diary of Anne Frank." The art work is like the story itself; a stark portrait of one of the darkest time periods in man's history. It is a somber subject and should be treated as such I suppose; there is only one smiling group family portrait in the book. I would read this book to fifth graders and above only because of the subject matter and the questions and answers that will arise might be difficult for some youngsters to understand. This is a good picture-book biography for a parent or teacher to use if they feel the audience is mature enough to handle hard questions and answers. This book would make a worthy addition to the school library or community synagogue so that young people may better understand the injustices of the past and how they relate to contemporary times.



2. I think its a great book that we should read I found it both sad and happy. Anastasia



3. The retelling is stark, compassionate, unsentimental. The art is reminiscent of ROSE BLANCHE, in grays and browns. This would be a good readaloud intro in any classroom before launching into reading the diary, no matter the students' age. An end page lists the chronology of events, has contact info for Ann Frank House in Amsterdam. This is really for all ages.

2 comments about My Reconstructed Life.

1. This is more than a story of a Holocaust survivor, it is a story of one man's personal trimuph. In this brutally honest and open autobiography the author decribes his peaceful childhood that was shattered by the Holocaust. Although a portion of the book describes his life, and death of most of his family, during the Holocaust, the second half of the book is a psychological drauma of how this young man rebuilds his life against more improbable odds. After he survives near certain death in the concentration camps his losses continue to mount. The author brings the reader into his psyche when he decribes pivitol decisions: whether to kill his abusive concentration camp guard when given the opportunity, to live with his father after the war or seek out an education, or to marry into wealth but loose control over his destiny. Although I would recommend this book to any person interested in Holocaust history or Jewish Studies, I think my recommendation goes beyound that limited group. This is a book that most mature high school students should read but I can recommend it to any adult who wants to know how one young man rebuilt his life after loosing everything, then loosing more.



2. I was fortunate enough to get a prerelease copy of this book before it hit the streets. Some people wanted to know what I thought about it because I have an interest in identity issues. I really liked it. It's a very honest treatment given the series of events that the author describes. The author contrasts different times of his life in relation to the atrocities that occurred in Hitlerite Germany. I don't think that you have to have a pronounced interest in Judaism to appreciate the depth of pain and suffering that happened during this time in history or to this man in particular. Though, if you do or if you're in interested in human rights issues, there's an additional benefit associated with it. The net result is that this book gives a very real human face to a very real human tragedy that now seems foreign to most. Though the barbarism of the Nazis is unsettling at times, it's worth the read. The truth often hurts. Maybe it should because that way you can learn from it. Good stuff.

5 comments about The Passover Plot: A New Interpretation of the Life and Death of Jesus.

1. In 1971, I was a public high school senior who had dropped out of the Catholic School system after ten years of Catholic indoctrination and an excellent high school education under the Sistine Jesuits. I took an English elective entitled, "The Bible as Literature." Our first reading was "The Passover Plot."

   I found the book to be highly interesting in its presentation of the historical facts of the time (history has always been my passion), and its subjective interpretation of the life of Jesus. Keep in mind that my background had been the religous indoctrination of the Catholic Church, which had been the preeminet spiritual and temporal leader of Europe until Martin Luther happened along. Also, keep in mind that Protestants are considered to be heretics of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

   Anyway, my take on the whole matter is quite simple. I am sure most of us remember the old school game where you wisper a message in someones ear and have that person pass it to ten people. At the end of the line you ask the last person to reveal the message, and your original message has been totally twisted around. The same with history. Here we are two thousand years later after Jesus' presumable death at the
   "brutal" hands of the Romans whose empire is also dead, and, more importantly, still waiting for his "SECOND COMING" as Christian believers, and no one can really say with sound accuracy if he lived or if he was just a myth.

   The bottom line really is quite simple. Regardless of his existence, a religion was started, and our modern world is now caught up in the grips of a terrorist inspired JIHAD. The crusades revisited. Jews against Moslems, and Moslems against Christians---an age old story. Yet, all three religions claim to be descended from Abraham, but are killing each other against the precept of "Thou shallt not kill thy neighbor." The more lethal the weapon, the better.

   Oh, and now we have a movie, "The Passion," which is exploiting the violent side of our souls in order to get a message out or is it the old Hollywood story--to make a bigger buck and be the all-time money grosser.

   When will we as so-called educated, enlightened humans ever learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
   Sorry, if this was not an exact review of the book, and more like a polemical takeoff of my feelings on the book...but,...

   In conclusion, the book does make an interesting read for someone who is open-minded enough to accept or reject the authors precepts. It should be read along with other books on the subject. Like the Constitution and the Bible, it is a matter of one's own interpretation. For historical research, I give it four stars, and for his "subjective" analysis and conclusion, I give the book three stars.




2. write this book in 1965, and to try and provide the thesis with scholarly support. Schonfield does exactly that. I'm not sure I can buy into all of what he is saying, but there certainly exists an aura of plausibility. Indeed, if one reads the Koran and some of the Indian texts that exist, Schonfield's book isn't so revolutionary. Specifically, Indians to this day claim that Jesus is buried in their country. Is it true? who knows, but we do know that contemporaneous writings from immediately after the crucifixtion refer to Jesus in India. Who knows, maybe it is all bunk. I think one thing is for certain--that Gospels as published today, don't match up with their original Greek manuscripts. I suspect that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between the Gospels and Schonfield's view.



3. When _The Passover Plot_ first came out back around 1965, it hit like a bombshell. Right away Schonfield tells his readers that the book is "the outcome of an endeavor which has extended over 40 years to discover who the 'man' (quotes mine) really was. However, rather than publishing this in a scholarly book, Schonfield aims his writing toward the general public in a commercial enterprise. What this means is that the author gets to make unsubstantiated assertions and does not have to field points of view contrary to his own.

   So for Schonfield, Jesus became a Galilean who was caught up by his times. There was a great deal of messianic expectancy in Galilee and the Scriptures were reinterpreted to pertain to current events. One can find this same technique in the Dead Sea Scroll pesharim. For the pious in Israel, Rome was the archenemy,
   the Fourth Kingdom foretold by Daniel 7. Jesus came to believe that he was the Messiah endowed with the spirit of wisdom. According to the Scriptures, he would die on the cross and then be resurrected. This would save Israel from the Romans.

   With meticulous detail Jesus plans his own execution and resurrection. Yes, there would be torture, but that was predicted by Scripture. But crucifixion was not always fatal. Josephus records an interesting story about some who were saved after being crucified. Jesus planned to stay on the cross for only a few hours. He would try to appear dead. The vinegar on the sponge was supposed to be a drug. Then he would try to get into the hands of some close, trusted friends who would resuscitate him. The plan would have worked had not Jesus been thrust in the side with a lance. For a short period of time on Saturday night Jesus regained consciousness and then succumbed.

   I have a few objections to Schonfield's book. For the moment I will grant that he was writing as a historian and not as a theologian. Among other things, this allows him to not consider anything which might be known as miraculous.

   My first objection is that Schonfield has to account for the formation of the early church. He does this by quickly sketching in a few post-resurrectional stories. The angel at the tomb is really the young man who gave Jesus the vinegar at the cross. The man encountered by Mary in the garden is a Jesus imperson-ator as are the man encountered by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

   All of this was supposed to have been planned by Jesus at least some of which was planned on Saturday night when Jesus regained consciousness for a short period of time. Proposing these posthumous manipulation of events stretches credulity. Moreover the whole theory proposes that there were the Twelve Disciples and then there was an inner circle closer to Jesus. One would think that later traditions would know something more about them than an obscure comment.

   My second objection is that Schonfield writes that the Romans were the enemy of the pious of Israel. But on page 143 Jesus manipulates the situation so that the Chief Priests were forced to move against him. Then on page 145 the Chief Priests have bring "strong pressure" on Pilate so they pack his courtyard with their own henchmen. This sounds like Jesus had another opponent than Rome.

   Now I will get back to the idea that Schonfield was writing as a historian rather than a theologian. Schonfield is a Jewish Nazorean. He starts out his book with a question that he asked of his "Christian friends" if it would not be enough if they believed in One God and believed in Jesus as his messianic messenger. On page 141 he points out that early Nazoreans knew nothing of Trinitarianism. He concludes Part 1 of his book with a short homily about "the young Jew, there was the Man." So on the contrary, Schonfield permeates his book with his theology.

   This book should never have made the explosion that it did.




4. In this book Hugh Schonfield delivers a theory that portrays Jesus as a deceiver who bent the rules in order to fulfill prophecy. According to Schonfield's story, Jesus planned His own resurrection, which was apparently foiled when He was accidentally pierced on the cross by a soldier. However, the disciples--what would a dead Jesus look like anyway? Schonfield asks--wanted so badly to believe in the resurrection that they mistakenly thought they saw Jesus and began what we today call Christianity.

   Pity the poor Christians today, Schonfield seems to be saying. Here they are, believing in a nonhistorical fairy tale. If his story is correct, then the Christian is truly the most pitied of all people, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff. But if he is wrong, there is a terrible price to pay. Yet I believe that history shows the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, or even the spiritual resurrection theory as much more likely possibilities than what Schonfield has to offer.

   In effect, Schonfield is calling into question the integrity of both Jesus and his disciples. Was Jesus really a deceiver? Was He looking for popularity? If so, then why did He not accept the accolades of the people that He received on Palm Sunday and just become their political ruler? Certainly it could have ended no more tragically than what really took place. Jesus' popularity would have given Him an edge in trying to overthrow the Roman government in the Judean region, and perhaps He could have been more successful than the many other "messiahs" who, for the most part, were all unsuccessful and eventually lost their lives. But to claim that Jesus was in this for the power or because He Himself was under dillusional thoughts is not very historical at all.

   Another problem with Schonfield's theory is that there were many events not under Jesus' control for this theory to take place. Here is a man whose very birth was predicted in scripture (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2). What He would say on the cross and other circumstances of His death were also very clearly predicted (Psalm 22, Isaiah 53). His life fulfilled these things. Despite His death and the "plot" wallowing in shambles, everything is supposed to work out just right? Are we to believe that Thomas really touches Jesus, but this really wasn't Jesus? (John 20:26ff) So why does Thomas take the gospel message to India and die a martyr's death? To make everything work, Thomas and the other disciples must have been complete dolts, which is the only possible way it would have worked. With Jesus out of the picture, there is no way in the world this could have fooled so many different people, including the more than 500 who saw Jesus at one time (1 Cor. 15:1-7).

   All in all, I believe that a person will have to own a lot of faith in order to believe The Passover Plot. If the author was not serious about his research, it would almost be a fun theory. But Schonfield shows how far off a person can get by reading into history and creating one's own "what if" theory. To me, believing in the many eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances, the evidence of the power of changed lives because of this resurrection, and a tomb where no body could be found is a much better risk of faith than believing anything Schonfield has to offer. Unless you're curious to see how Schonfield explains his theory, I just don't recommend this book.




5. An interesting analysis of the Passion story, this book is most valuable for the background information it gives about the state of the world where and when Jesus lived. The faked death by crucifixion notion seems a trifle far-fetched, but not nearly so outlandish as the story in the Gospels of the return from death and the invention of the notion of the Second Coming to cover up the historical fact that the Romans crushed the Jewish Messiah like a grape, and he did not save his people. Anything that pokes a few more holes in fundamentalism is worth the price of admission.

1 comments about The Klausenberger Rebbe (Vol.1).

1. The Klausenberger Rebbe: The War Years is part 1 of a two-part inspirational biography of Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe. Rabbi Halberstam was one of millions of Jews who was captured by the Nazis and held in their most notorious concentration camps. Although nothing in Jewish law required him to strictly observe Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath, dietary laws, ritual hand washing and more, Rabbi Halberstam continued to observe every Biblical commandment allowing himself no exceptions despite torture, starvation and the loss of his entire family, in what turned out to be the ultimate defiance of the Nazi persecution. This book, a translation of Lapid HaEish by Aharon Surasky, describes those war years, how the Rebbe refused to be bowed to the will of the Nazis, inspired camp inmates to survive, and then, following liberation, took responsibility for the care and education of displaced children and the spiritual needs of all Jews. The Klausenberger's inspiring tale should be read by old and young alike. Part II of Judah Lifschitz's translation has recently been released (December 2007), and is called "The Klausenberger Rebbe: Rebuilding," which covers the Rebbe's post-war activities in which he built communities, schools and hospitals in the United States and Israel. Hopefully, it, too will be on Amazon.com shortly.