No comments about The Fastest Kid on the Block: The Marty Glickman Story (Sports and Entertainment).

2 comments about The Terezin Diary of Gonda Redlich.

1. This is not a book to start with when reading about the Holocaust. Theresienstadt, the Potemkin village ghetto, was an unusual place and Redlich's experience there is not as universal as some, like Elie Wiesel. The book demands a fair amount of knowledge about the events of the Holocaust. That said, it's one of the most moving documents I've read from the period.
   
   Unlike Anne Frank, Redlich writes from within the eye of the hurricane, rather than at its edges. His hope, tempered with his ignorance of his own fate, is wrenching, especially when his child is born and he writes the last few chapters as his son's diary. It literally brought me to tears. Highly recommended.



2. The Diary of Gonda Redlich is an enlightening tale of life and death within Theresienstadt, the "resort" or "paradise" concentration camp of the Jewish Holocaust. Throughout the course of the diary, we see Theresienstadt from the first hand experiences of Gonda, the head of children's affairs and the transports. We learn of all of the great cultural activities of Theresienstadt, while we learn of the transports east to Auschwitz, the greatest death camp of all. The first hand experiences and writings of Gonda provide envaluable information to any serious historian of the Jewish Holocaust. Can any person read this book? Must you be a historian? No, I believe that this book can be read by anybody. It is a timeless tale of life (with the birth of Gonda's son and the activities in Theresienstadt) and death (Gonda eventually was sent to die in Auschwitz) in the final solution. It is first hand proof for the world of the horrors and sometimes joys in the Jewish Holocaust.

1 comments about My Hometown Concentration Camp: A Survivor's Account to Life in the Krakow Ghetto and Plaszow Concentration Camp (Library of Holocaust Testimonies).

1. The realm of Holocaust History and the realm of memoir come togther smoothly in 'My Hometown Concentration Camp.' The book is precise in its historical details without ever straying into uncessary digression. Mr. Bernard Offen provides details of his life that give the reader the essential qualities of his family members, the camp administration and fellow survivors. Mr. Offen never unleashes an ounce of criticism towards his captors; rather, he speaks like a humanist and brings ideas from psychology in attempt to lead the reader towards awareness and understanding of our inner motives. Like the historical details, the departure towards psychology is not heavy-handed or pretentious. The book is not only a good introduction to the subject of the Holocaust but also Polish/Jewish history.

1 comments about Soviet Emigre Artists: Life and Work in the USSR and the United States.

1. The public became aware of new ferment in the Soviet art world in 1962, when Nikita Khrushchev pungently expressed his distate for some modernist works of painting and sculpture exhibited at the Moscow Manege, and again in 1974, when police bulldozed an "unofficial" open air art exhibition in Moscow and roughed up the spectators.
   
   Not so well known is the fact that quite a few of the Soviet artists whose nonconformity to the canons of socialist reform once brought them world attention now live and work in the United States, often in relative obscurity. What motivated these artists to leave the USSR? Why did they chose to come to the United States? How have they fared in their new lives and careers?
   
   In this study a sociologist and two art historians, one an emigre, the other an American, seek to answer these questions, drawing on interviews with the artists themselves and examples of their work. Together the essays provide a revealing new perspective on the lives and work of contemporary artists, the difficulties they encounter in two very different cultural worlds, and the experience of attempting a transistion from one to the other.
   --- from book's dustjacket

3 comments about The Book of Telling: Tracing the Secrets of My Father's Lives.

1. Muir's style is incredibly striking and her characters and stories are interesting and unique as is the way she weaves everything together. Not only is book relevant historically, but touching as father/daughter relationship is described. Pulls at the heart of anyone who has loved and lost her daddy. This is a great book to read and discuss with friends.



2. 
   
   With rockets attacking Israel, there's no better book to read than
   this lovely, fascinating memoir/history, recently rave-reviewed in the
   "Times Literary Supplement" and "The Jerusalem Post." There is so much
   to think about in this rich book, and the prose stands up to many
   readings. It's billed as a memoir but is so much more than that.
   Muir, the only child of an enigmatic, divorced father who kept her a
   secret from his friends, discovered after his death that he had
   invented Israel's first rocket, in a top-secret group of weaspons
   scientists during Israel's '48 war. These scientists later became rthe
   creators of everything from Israel's nukes to her national water
   system, but their '48 story was untold. By contrast, Muir's father,
   Itzhak Bentov, left Israel for the US where, as a freelance inventor in
   the basement of his house, he created the world's first remote-operated
   cardiac catheter, still in use. Bentov also gained acclaim as the
   author of the New Age bestseller Stalking The Wild Pendulum: On the
   Mechanics of Consciousness. Muir's book weaves together her memories
   of a "mad scientist" father, who was her inspiration and her
   heartbreak, as well as the wartime stories of his comrades, and her
   personal search for the meanings of these histories. A family tale in
   its personal complexity, the book is also timely because of the image
   of the rocket: you can't help comparing Hezbollah's 10,000-odd rockets
   with Israel's first rocket (Bentov's brainchild) which was 15 inches
   long and improvised out of a water-pipe. It symbolized a newly-born
   Israel's desperate creativity. Bentov's assistant on the rocket
   project tells us: "It was like, sort of, a miniature Manhattan
   Project. True, we didn't have the time or the resources to develop
   anything new. We barely had the time to copy what already existed to
   save ourselves. But that rocket, I can't tell you how exciting it
   was. Because it meant we had a future." The group's executive
   commander, a refugee from Russia, revealed that the scientists'
   creativity began within, by having to invent new selves after their
   roots were erased by the Holocaust. In his words: "I had no past, no
   family. I was no one. I could do anything." The former head of
   Israel's missile programme sums it up: "Instead of tradition, we had
   improvisation." Beyond the timeliness of the book, however, is a
   universal and timeless theme: the nature of invention itself. A poet
   who loves science, Muir lovingly and brilliantly depicts the passion of
   inventors and gives each of their inventions poetic resonance. The
   "invisible mine," produced by one Israeli scientist, becomes a metaphor
   for the destructive potential of scientific creativity when applied to
   military uses. The recoilless cannon, which seemingly violates Newton'
   s law of action and reaction, accompanies her father's, and Israel's,
   urge to move forward without reacting to the devastation of the past.
   In a brilliant and touching chapter near the end, Muir, reading her
   father's laboratory notebooks, stumbles across gynecological devices
   intended to keep women from pain and injury - and discovers a
   tenderness and love in her father that had been hidden from her during
   his lifetime. As Muir tells her story, the "Telling" itself changes
   her, teaching us that a story is also an invention, and, like others,
   has the power to change its inventor.



3. This memoir traces the secret life of the author's father in Israel (in its early days), the coming to terms with her father's past, and the background of the founding of Israel and all it entailed. She enjoyed hearing her father's 'stories' of his life in Israel, where he had been a member of scientists and idealists, summoned by David Ben-Gurion to develop weapons for defense.
   
   Bentov had jokingly called himself "Invention-a-Minute Ben" but she had no idea how important his invention of the first rocket launcher was to the war of Independence, and why he left that new state and came to United States of America. During the Arab-Israeli conflict, there were five invading armies, and the team of men and women who had to come up with the alternative to death worked around the clock. It was her father, in fact, who came up with the weapon called Loretta; another was developed with a two-inch-bore, but Ben's had only a one-inch-bore.
   
   "While challenging the David-and-Goliath myth, historians agree on the hardships of the first round of the invasion, before the truce on June 11, 1948. A movie was made, 'Exodus,' and Pat Boone wrote the words to the song used in that docudrama. She looks on the photograph of this group of the brightest and bravest, many of them refugees from Europe, she seems to have a jaded eye on the group which was called Hemmed.
   
   For the book, she traveled to Israel and interview many of the scientists. All admired and liked her jolly father, he was at the center of the picture, as he must have been in all of the plans to save his people. I wonder who that is pretending to be Hitler on the left with mustache, hat and raincoat. No one else was dressed in that fashion. It reminds me of the way Mrs. Keys described Julius Rosenberg when she might accidentally run into him on the elevator of the apartment house where they both lived in New York. He always wore a trench coat and hat as if he had something to hide, she'd related.
   
   She began her search for the truth about her father in his basement laboratory. The 'telling' is to tell the truth as she lived it, later discovered it, and believes it to be. This was a self-discovery voyage into the past and the future of Israel.
   Happy New Year, Rabbi.

1 comments about Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History.

1. As I tend to be quite impatient with most biographies, it may well be that I have underrated the worth of this one. But the truth is, I didn't find the story of this remarkable family particularly riveting and had to get very far along before I found something of interest. Apart from the story of Henry Morgenthau Sr.'s efforts to stop the Armenian genocide, I only came alive while reading the account of Henry II's activities and experiences as Roosevelt's trusted advisor during World War II. According to the author, Henry III, Jews around FDR "almost without exception... avoided or downplayed the significance of Jewish questions"... and even "misinterpreted news of the Nazi scourge." Also memorable is the author's description of anti-semitism in the State Department, the sympathy and humanity of Secretary of State Sumner Welles toward the victimized Jews of Europe, and the bitterness of FDR and Eisenhower toward the Germans. After that, I confess that my eyes glazed over once again.

4 comments about Fiet's Vase.

1. I am 14 years old and I am really enjoying this book. It teaches me alot and at times I can't put it down. I reccomend this book highly and encourage children to read it.



2. I've read dozens of Holocaust testimonials, but this collection is certainly one of the most gripping. Though they are survivor tales, they do not make for light reading (they do make for important reading). I'm still haunted by one story in particular about a young boy who escapes being buried alive -- I challenge you to read this book and not be plagued by the image of his teacher, Jablonski. The author does a fabulous job of culling together incredible stories of how dumb luck, random chance or connections play a role in saving people from unspeakable evil. An important collection that should not be missed.



3. Alison Leslie Gold has given us both truth and connection through the women's lives that she shares with us. In their stories, we find answers to the mystery of survival within that inexplicable fabric of love and spirituality. These are tales that have not been told before, not this entirely.

   It is time for the public to honor the women of the Holocaust. "Any consistent Nazi plan had to target Jewish women specifically as women, for they were the only ones who would finally be able to ensure the continuity of Jewish life. In deed, although statistical data about the Holocaust will never be exact, there is sound evidence that the odds for surviving the Holocaust were worse for Jewish women than for Jewish men" (Rittner and Roth, Different Voices)

   Gold, honors these women whose stories have been ignored for so long, so that we may now we honor their struggles and memory with our own lives. Thank you for the service you do for womankind.
   Shalom, Heather Dune Macadam (co-author, Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz -- part of Rena's story is cited in this wonderful book.)




4. We all have nightmares, but this one was real. In Fiet's Vase we gallop through horror after horror in Europe between 1939 and 1945. There is a thread of hope weaving its way through the book, reminding us of the immeasurable human spirit and of its infinite capacity to survive against the depths of human depravity. This book gives a powerful look, taste and feel of some of those special spirits and the conditions they survived. I am grateful for and inspired by Fiet's Vase, thank you Alison Leslie Gold. Now I must weep for humanity.

No comments about From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564-1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Studies in the History of Christian Thought).

No comments about An Englishman in Auschwitz (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies).

4 comments about The Cartographer ~ 1492 (Boomer Book Series).

1. As an historical fiction buff, I'm glad to see someone is writing good historical novels. I hope Mr. Seiden continues along the path of this book with meticulous research and weaving in a love story, intrigue, adventure and of course, historical events. I can hardly wait to read his next masterpiece.
   
   The first Columbus voyage was described so clearly, you really felt like you were there and gratefully so, because the struggle to just get the ships was so trying. This gives the reader a perspective into Columbus that doesn't exist in the history books - perhaps because it is too controversial. Who cares - I loved it!!! You will too. Great book!



2. Maybe because also in 1492 - There was the Spanish Inquisition, Christians burning at the stake, Moslems and Jews being expelled from their homelands in Spain.
   
   No history book ever mentioned Columbus' spirituality - why? Was he hiding a secret that the world is just now discovering? This historical fiction begs that question... using his private journal and understanding the political environment he was forced to deal in, author Othniel Seiden paints a picture of intrigue surrounding Christopher Colombus as has never been seen before...



3. On the pages of this book unfolds an adventure where the characters are crisp, real and well defined and in the case of Christopher Colombus - legendary.
   
   In the history books, we learn mostly of the voyage itself, but not too much attention played out on what was happening culturally around the events. The Inquisition and persecution of Christians was constant. This historical novel is based upon Christopher Colombus' private journal.
   
   Reading between the lines of the journal, the author Othniel Seiden sees a pattern of spiritual practice that has never been discussed about Columbus and one that might shed a new and deeper dimension on this historical figure and the times he lived in.
   
   It was a great read and a fascinating subject!



4. This historical fiction novel is set in ancient Spain during the time of the Inquisition and the dark ages, one Don Jacob Duponte (fictional) was falling in love and enjoying his career and travels as a cartographer. Unbeknownst to him, someone called him a heretic and in those days, that is all it took to have someone thrown into a torture chamber or worse all in the name of the Inquisition.
   
   Don Jacob was rescued because of his talents as a cartographer by the explorer Christopher Columbus, who at the time of their meeting was still trying to get Queen Isabella of Spain to finance a journey across the Atlantic.
   
   Thrown then into intrique and a secret world where one's personal spirituality had to be kept hidden for fear of the Inquisition, Don Jacob found himself protecting secret Jews; Jewish people who had to keep their faith and their heritage totally secret.
   
   The adventure unfolds right from the pages of Columbus' own journal - with these amazing characters woven in.
   
   This novel takes the reader aboard the Santa Maria to experience the superstition of the crew and the hope of the man in charge. It takes the reader to the shores of the new world where they were warmly greeted and told of vast treasures.
   
   Then sailing back across the sea, through storms that should have killed all on board.
   
   The writing is exquisite. The adventure is captivating. The story is based on fact. The humanity of these explorers and their loved ones is compelling!