5 comments about The Persistence of Memory: A Novel.

1. A very slow read and pretty depressing. Vocabulary difficult - maybe common in South Africa.



2. After reading several books by J.M. Coetzee, I was more or less prepared for the conditions and incidents portrayed by Mr. Eprile. However, the experience here is that of a person maturing in the closing years of apartheid, rather than the older characters in Mr. Coetzee's works. The result is a view into the vulnerability of a young person trying to adapt to a collapsing racist society, the lack of alternatives for living a morally fulfilling life. Perhaps it's this lack of structure in the experience that leads to a shortage of structure in the novel. While some of the parts are intensely interesting, and all are worth reading, most can be read without reference to the others. The lead character's gift of memory is a unifying factor, but really not vital to most of the events. The writing is outstanding, though it might benefit from cutting, and the work is entertaining despite the grim subject at its center.



3. Great historical depiction of the Apartide in South Africa. Beautifully written; it reads as a historical memoir. Plot not that engaging. Very interesting protagonist point of view. By the end of the book, the question of 'accurate' memory lingers.



4. One of the lessons to be learned from The Persistence of Memory is that a photographic memory does not necessarily tell the larger truth. The short and perfectly recollected moments in the life of Paul Sweetbread (the protagonist with perfect recall) add up to a whole that is somehow less than the sum of its parts. Sweetbread is unconvincing and unreliable as a narrator precisely because his grip on the details is so startlingly clear.
   
   Cameras lie, Eprile tells us. The propaganda corps of the South African army stage scenes where soldiers play football with local children. Judicious cropping is all that is needed to make the perfect observer into one that cannot be trusted. The comparison with Sweetbread as witness is inevitable.
   
   I can think of very few metaphors that would work better for the process of truth and reconciliation in South Africa. It is a brilliant idea for a book, and one that seems to fit perfectly with the situation that it is describing.
   
   The flaw in the book is that it seems to try to do too much above and beyond developing this central idea. The Persistence of Memory is also a coming of age story, and also has a lot to do with the response of Paul as a human (and not a camera) to what he sees in Namibia. There is a lot of material, and unfortunately the beautifully written individual scenes do not seem to gel very effectively into a larger whole. As a reading experience, I found it disjointed and ultimately unsympathetic.
   
   It might sound strange to sum up a review by saying that while I admire the book immensely, I am not certain how widely I would recommend it. I certainly think that it would be of interest to people who have read a lot in the literature of South Africa. I can also tell you that it makes a satisfactory book for a book club. We had a lot to talk about after it was finished.
   
   It is at least an impressive effort. Eprile is a writer to watch for the future.
   
   Read it for yourself to decide what you think.



5. South Africa from 1968 - 2000 is revealed in all its cultural variety and internal stresses through the life story of Paul Sweetbread, an overweight Jewish boy who is an outsider to everyone. Neither a Boer nor an Englishman, he is also not really a Jew, since his family has never been observant, leaving him without any common roots that connect him to his Caucasian countrymen. A person with a photographic memory, he is, from the outset, a victim of his memory. Because he can quote from his schoolbooks exactly, teachers think he cheats; his fellow students torment him.
   
   As he sets the scene and creates a fully drawn personality for Paul, the author recreates his early school and home life, his relationships with black servants, and his family history, including the death of his father. The action intensifies when Paul, having finished school in 1987, joins the South African Defense Force for two years, instead of going to college. South Africa is nervously protecting its borders against what it believes are communist insurgents, while also facing threats from within. Apartheid has been challenged, the British and Boers are at odds, and African nationalism is growing.
   
   Paul's wartime experiences, recreated in stunning detail, further develop his character as he observes Captain Lyddie, "The perfect specimen of South African manhood," engaging in racial brutality, described in passages of great power which embed themselves in Paul's perfect memory and in the reader's. The battle for survival of South Africa and the changes which will be necessary as the country changes from white to black rule are ever at the forefront of the novel. Paul's empathy for the Bushmen, whom the SADF uses as trackers, is palpable, while his fear, engendered during a photo assignment in a black township, reflects his awareness of the dangers from within.
   
   Thoughtful and challenging but filled with wry humor, Eprile's novel presents events from Paul Sweetbread's life slowly, sometimes deliberately omitting important information in order to maintain suspense and let the reader come to know Paul through his life and actions, rather than through background information. He creates a sympathetic picture of an extremely sensitive young man who finds himself in impossible situations which mark him for life. His philosophical musings near the end of the book about memory and metaphor raise important questions about society and national "memory," how a country constructs its memories of the past in order to make it acceptable, and careful readers will savor the language and sheer intelligence of Eprile's observations. Mary Whipple

4 comments about Atlas of the Bible (Readers Digest).

1. ANOTHER IN READER'S DIGEST'S SEVERAL EXCELLENT BOOKS ON THE BIBLE, THIS ONE PROVIDES A GREAT OVERVIEW OF BOTH THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS.PLENTY OF MAPS TAKE THE READER FROM PLACE TO PLACE AS THE EVENTS OF JEWISH HISTORY UNFOLD.THERE ARE ALSO MANY BIOGRAPHIES OF KEY FIGURES THROUGHOUT THE WORK, AS WELL AS AN INDEX AND DESCRIPTION OF TOWNS AND PLACE NAMES MENTIONED THROUGHOUT THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. ANOTHER MUST HAVE FOR ANY BIBLICAL LIBRARY.



2. I know there is a tendency to look down one's nose at Reader's Digest products, but this book is a very nice addition to anyone's library, if you can find a used copy floating around. The best feature is the full color maps and photo's - easily some of the best I have ever seen. The four full page maps on pp 44-47 (and reproduced in part throughout the text as smaller detail maps) are particularly impressive and alive with color, although the scale is about 8 miles to the inch, so alot of detail is lost. The text is well written and, as far as I can tell, reasonably accurate, although the lack of sources (other than Biblical citations) is a little annoying.



3. "Atlas of the Bible" is filled with maps aplenty, photographs of archealogical sites, and some cut away illustrations that would make Richard Scary proud. As a reference - particularly for school reports - it's pretty good. It includes people/animals/currency of the bible and a gazeteer in the back (a sort of dictionary with everything from short biographies to a list of books in the bible).

   It's probably a little dry for yonger kids - in part, because the land isn't quite as interesting as the people; and also, because the layout has some pages reading like one very long paragraph (though I'm sure this was done to allow room for more pics, but it's not easy on the eyes).

   It's not as successful as its Reader's Digest companion, "Who's Who in the Bible", but if you hunger for more (particularly the "when" and "where") this makes a good addition. 4 stars for content; -1 for layout.




4. A valuable addendum to general reference. Excellently presented, as with most Readers Digest products. The ideal companion book to this is the wonderful "THE Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth and the Missing Years" by Richard G. Patton. Readers digest shows you where the Master walked, Patton shows you exactly who left the footprints!

3 comments about Surviving Treblinka.

1. 
   Samuel Willenberg is one of the few Jews who escaped from the Treblinka death camp. He provides gruesome details of what took place there. About 870,000 Jews were gassed or shot. The bodies were buried, and eventually re-exhumed and burned, up to 18,000 at a time, in massive open-air pyres. The book includes a sketch map of the Treblinka death camp, and even a photograph of German earthmoving equipment used to unearth the earlier-buried bodies.
   
   When he was first deported to Treblinka, Willenberg heard remarks from Poles about "getting turned into soap" (p. 39). He neglects to mention the fact that Poles also used such remarks in reference to themselves (as later Jews did to each other). (It subsequently turned out that this was largely apocryphal. There was, however, a factory in Danzig (present-day Gdansk) in which Germans did use the bodies of mostly Poles to make soap.)
   
   After the Jewish revolt and escape from Treblinka, the Germans' hunt was so intense that two of the Poles who helped Willenberg had already experienced a German search of their domiciles (p. 144, 147). He noticed how Germans were checking all traffic on the roads (p. 145), and also encountered a poster that warned Poles against helping any of the "typhus-bearing Jewish bandits" (p. 149). Some Poles approached by Willenberg for help were obviously so frightened that they immediately departed from him (p. 25, 28, 144). But, in spite of the death penalty for the slightest Polish assistance to Jews, local Polish peasants helped Willenberg on no less than nine separate occasions in the first days after his escape (pp. 143-on).
   
   In time, Willenberg became a member of the AL, whose Communist nature he denied (p. 181) and, for awhile, the AK. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising, repeated accusations of the NSZ killing fugitive Jews (p. 178), and then said the same thing about the AK. Interestingly, Willenberg reports a discussion with an AK officer, who produced a list of Jewish Gestapo informers about to be liquidated, and with Willenberg on the list! The list had been found in possession of a Jew who was accused of being a Gestapo agent, based on the fact that he had been caught living with a German woman (pp. 182-183). Taken literally, this suggests that at least some cases of the AK killing innocent fugitive Jews was due to faulty intelligence. (Of course, with regards to wartime espionage, underground organizations don't have the luxury of conducting detailed investigations, and some innocent people get killed because of mistaken inferences). However, the very fact that Willenberg became an openly-Jewish member of the AK, and was allowed to survive a face-to-face accusation of an AK officer, alone should soundly refute the accusation of some (e. g., Yaffa Eliach, Oskar Pinkus) that the AK was implementing some sort of secret plan to kill all remaining Polish Jews!
   
   One particularly malicious Polonophobic Holocaust myth is the one about the Nazis' choice of Poland as the site of the death camps because Poles welcomed them or at least wouldn't object much to them. No doubt, this libelous canard is facilitated by the countless misleading accounts in the western press of "Polish death camps". Ironically, not only didn't the Germans seek any form of "permission" from the conquered and despised Polish untermenschen, but actually kept the death camps a jealously-guarded secret. So extreme was this secrecy that a German woman who had inadvertently been shipped to Treblinka was deliberately killed in order to protect the secret of extermination (p. 30). And to add plausibility to the fraud about Jews only being resettled for forced labor, and Treblinka only being a labor camp, the Nazis actually HAD built a nearby labor camp, Treblinka 1, to which they had been sending Poles and later some of the deported Jews (p. 9, 101, 202). Periodically, Treblinka 1 inmates were dispatched to the Treblinka death camp, but never the other way around!
   
   Certain authors (e. g., Yisrael Gutman, David Engel) have accused the Polish government-in-exile of delaying, and then understating, its reporting on the numbers of murdered Polish Jews. In his introduction, Bartoszewski puts Willenberg's experience in perspective, making it clear that only a trickle of substantive information ever escaped those extermination camps in which Polish Jews were being murdered: "Together the four death camps exterminated over 2 million Jews; we know of only two survivors from Belzec, three from Chelmno, sixty-four from Sobibor, and around forty from Treblinka." (p. 9). Even the indirect clue afforded by the odor of vast numbers of bodies being burned at Treblinka did not become reality until early 1943 (p. 17). In stark contrast to the Jews, Germans usually murdered Poles publicly. So why invoke nefarious motives to explain the fact that the Polish government-in-exile knew much more about the extent of Polish deaths than Jewish ones, and did so much earlier?
   
   Another anti-Polish canard is the one about Germans choosing Poland as the site of the death camps so that they could conveniently recruit numerous Polish volunteers to assist in the extermination of Jews. In actuality, Willenberg doesn't mention even ONE Polish collaborator serving the Germans at Treblinka! He elaborates on the work of Ukrainian collaborators numerous times, describing them as follows: "While they disliked Poles, White Russians, and Cossacks, they reserved a sizzling, boundless hatred for the Jews." (p. 56).



2. One of the great Treblinka stories, though there have been relatively few unfortanetly, this one ranks right up there with Richard Glazar's book "Trap With A Green Fence", referring to the fences that were fitted with pines and shrubs so no one could see in or out of the camp, even being used to camoflauge sections of the camp from each other. A very detailed book, it was written right after the war so the facts had to still be fresh in his mind. The book is a hard one to read but also interesting, even psycologically, as many great books are from this era of the holocaust. But everyone knows Auschwitz, and terrible that place was. But life in Treblinka was a bit different from many other camps. Many prisoners wore fashionable clothes,taken from the sorting piles of those who had been killed in the camp's diesel engine gas chambers, a far cry from the Zyclon B which was to be used extensively at camps like Auschwitz and Majdanek, not the striped pajamas that many have seen in archival footage from concentration camps. Treblinka extermination camp was a world unto itself. The tales of SS men like Kurt Franz, Kuttner, Miete,Mentz, and Hirthreiter, among a few others, are spine chilling and just udderly sadistic. All in all, you need to read this book, even if you arent totally familiar with Nazi camps. But these extermination camps, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, they were much different from any other camp in occupied Europe during WW2. Read this book!



3. An exceptional account of the Nazi death camp at Treblinka.

   When one visits Treblinka today, it is difficult to imagine the atrocities and slaughter depicted in this excellent book. My own personal visit to Treblinka was on a Summer's day when the sky was blue and the birds were singing. The lasting impression left on me was one of utter isolation, emptiness and an absolute thunderous silence surrounding me.

   Gone are the buildings and gas chambers, long destroyed by the Nazis in their attempt to extinguish any memory or evidence of the genocide that was perpetrated here. Apart from the symbolic cemetery and memorials and the remains of the railway station where the innocent Jews were disembarked prior to their massacre only minutes later, there is little to see apart from the location of the mass graves and the vast empty space amongst the surrounding trees where the Nazi extermination camp once stood.

   Each individual stone memorial at the site representing one Jewish community whose members perished at Treblinka. Photographs, diagrams and maps are provided which afford a valuable context and framework to assist in the readers' understanding.

   It is fitting therefore that Samuel Willenberg, one of the very few survivors of the Treblinka holocaust, has been able to provide us with his harrowing account of what actually went on there. The vast open spaces that I personally saw are here filled with maps and detailed descriptions of the hell erased by the Nazi genocide machine that killed so many innocent Jews. The procedures at this death camp from the moment that the innocents arrived at the still visible railway platform are documented in detail, until their wholesale slaughter in the gas chambers and the burning of their bodies in the burial pits not so far away.

   This moving account of the functioning of the Treblinka death camp not only speaks out for those whose lives were destroyed and who cannot speak for themselves, but it also covers the heartbreaking daily lives of those prisoners who were forced to function as vital cogs in the Nazi death machine. Further to this we have a commendable account of the uprising against the Nazis amongst these prisoners, many of whom were also killed. Very few in fact survived to escape. One of those who did survive, escape and manage to bring this moving account to our attention was Samuel Willenberg.

   The author's memoirs of Treblinka extend from October 1942 until the rebellion and his escape in August 1943, when he went into hiding in Warsaw and took an active personal part in the armed Polish underground resistance against the Nazis until the quelling of the Warsaw Uprising.

   This is a must read on this particular section of the Holocaust. Of some interest is the portrayal of the underlying Polish-Jewish relations during the Nazi occupation. This is a story that will chill you to the bone.

No comments about British Chief Rabbis 1664-2006.

4 comments about T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, Second Edition.

1. This book is great for those who are contra Eliot and as well as his fans. Part of the author's thesis is that Eliot was actually able to employ his anti-Semitism towards the construction and development of his art and that even though Eliot's attitude towards Jews was bigoted he managed to create some of the most significant verse of the early 20th century. The book is accompanied with some close readings and analyses of Eliot's most important early works including "Sweeney among the Nightingales" and "Gerontion" which provide the reader with enormous insight regardless of the author's specific ideas and theories.



2. The dishonest approach used by Julius throughout this book is characterized by the quotation on page xiii that refers to a personal confrontation in South Africa between Eliot and a Mrs. Millen. The confrontation simply never happened. Julius refers to this item several times in the body of the text. He explains the fabrication in a footnote as "at best, a melodramatic and telescoped version of the truth." No, it is a lie. It refers to a meeting that never happened and the quote has not been removed or changed in the revised edition.
   When one carefully checks each and every source note (and they are profuse) in analyzing the anti-semitic "quotes" attributed to Eliot by Julius it emerges that the actual sources are not Eliot but snippets from other anti-semitic tracts carefully juxtaposed by Julius to give the impression they are Eliot's. This casts a pall of mendacity of the entire enterprise. These sorts of tactics are unncessary and raise questions of integrity.
   The book consists of the intricately wrought polemics of a clever barrister who seeks to give the appearance of a scholarly investigation accompanied by much hand-wringing about being "fair" to Eliot. It would take another dissertation the length of Julius's original to completely debunk many of his specious claims. Don't let the copious notes fool you. Each and every one needs to be checked.
   This book, more than any other, has damaged Eliot's stature and reputation. Some young scholar should spend the time necessary to refute it.



3. I studied the work of Elliot in graduate school. I knew the Anti- Semitic passages, and thus held myself distant from the cult of Elliot worship. Nonetheless reading Julius' deeper probing into Eliot's Anti-Semitism I am angry at myself for not being more outraged. It turns out that Eliot did not want Jewish readers. He scorned us.
   The lines of 'Burbank with a Baedaker, Bleisten with a cigar' and other lines from 'Gerontion' would fit in well with Nazi propaganda.
   Apparently Eliot was as Julius points out a 'literary anti- Semite' whose hate and scorn were for the 'free -thinking sceptical Jews' he believed the enemies of Christian civilization. On a personal level he apparently was able to bear Jewish company, here and there.
   Julius shows how the Anti- Semitism is not a passing theme of youth but also pervades his later prose work.
   I believe that after reading this work it is impossible to read Eliot again without feeling moral repulsion.



4. Anthony Julius has written the most objective and informative work to date on the anti-semitic aesthetics of Eliot's early poetry. Though the author is an admirer of Eliot, he is not the least bit apologetic about his attempts to come to the grips with the literary consequences of an anti-semitic aesthetic. Julius takes a cue from deconstruction when he notes that any attempts to remove or downplay anti-semitic elements in Eliot's poetry will only serve to destroy the thematic body of Eliot's vast literary corpus. Julius also takes aim at the prose works of Eliot, thereby showing that Eliot's anti-semitism was not a phase (as most critics and scholars have argued since the post WWII period); rather, it was an integral poetic topoi. Finally, the author documents T.S. Eliot's association with fellow Anti-semite Ezra Pound and the latter's role in suppressing and expunging the anti-semitic "Dirge" from the finished portion of "The Wasteland." In closing, please believe me when I tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and re-reading this book. I have yet to find anything questionable about the author's research or his methodology. To scholars and students who are interested in the life and writings of T.S. Eliot, I say to all of you: BUY AND READ THIS BOOK!

5 comments about Fighting Back.

1. This book is well worth the time. It is different from the usual story of the fate of Jews in eastern Europe. While we have available many memoirs from these times, there are few that are as well written, edited, and detailed. The initial part is devoted to the author's life in prewar Poland and makes for a very useful background for understanding peoples' reactions to subsequent events. The complex relationships between the author and the Polish farmers and villagers illustrate the moral ambiguities inherent in actions of some, as well as the heroism of others. Names are named and places documented. The book was difficult to put down. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject and especially to those that teach it.



2. This book is a must read. The author shares his gripping story of fighting both the Nazis and the anti-semitic Polish as a Jewish resistance fighter during the Holocaust. It is an inspiration how during the darkest hours of human misery, man's will to survive, protect the unprotected, and fight back against an enemy committed to their destruction propels them forward despite the odds. Harold Werner and the men and women who fought (and sometimes died) beside him should be remembered as heroes for generations to come.



3. Fighting Back, by Harold Werner, is the well told story of a group of Jewish partisans, who instead of quietly submitting to the will of their Nazi oppressors, and those anti-semitic villagers, and there seemed to be many, who collaborated with the Nazis in their quest to destroy the Jews of Poland, decided to fight back. The author was one of those partisans. These people had all lost family members and friends to both the Nazis and to many of their neighbors who had once been their friends, and all they wanted was a chance to fight back, an opportunity for revenge. After reading many holocaust books about the camps, or about Jews in hiding, it was a pleasure to finally read one where the Jews actually defended themselves, and if they had to die, they died "Fighting Back." This is a must read.



4. Thanks to Harold Werner for retelling these events from his deathbed. I read the book in an evening and could not put it down. I am very proud to know that people such as Mr. Werner fought back no matter what the odds. Not only does he write about battles and suffering, but he also writes of the community he grew up with, the people he loved, how people made their living, and how they related to their neighbors.



5. This true story takes place in Poland during the late 1930s thru 1946.The main character is a young man named Harold.The trials he experiences prior to WW2 are nothing compaired to the radical changes his life undergoes during the Nazi occupation.There were several things that I enjoyed most about this book.It is scary to realise how treacherous people can be to each other but it is encouraging to see how the human spirit rises to such adverse circumstances.You will follow his life from living in the city to hiding in the forests of Poland while being hunted by villagers and Nazis.Fear and hunger were common among this group of partsians.I found this story easy to read and relate to. This story can parallel any group of people who are oppressed.

1 comments about Planet Dora: A Memoir Of The Holocaust And The Birth Of The Space Age.

1. This is the story of the Dora Concentration camp where Nazi Germany's V-1 and V-2 rockets and jet engines for Junkers were manufactured by slave labor in huge tunnels cut into the Harz Mountains near Nordhausen in the central German state of Thuringia. The book tells the story of the slave laborers inside the mountain and includes numerous stories from survivor interviews. Many died of starvation, exposure, overwork, exhaustion, disease, beatings, torture, hangings, and minimal health care. Dora had a population of about 15,000, and its own crematorium. Prisoners who died were replaced, but no-one ever left except as a corpse (until the end of the war). Conditions in the tunnels were bad: damp, cold, and dusty with poor ventilation. Prisoners included were not only Jews, but also political prisoners and people captured throughout the German occupied lands: Russians, Poles, Slavs, French, Italians, and Germans. Groups were segregated and given different jobs. Jews and Russians usually got the worst jobs.

   Michael J. Neufeld, curator of the National Air and Space Museum at The Smithsonian, provides a detailed introduction. Hitler adopted the V-1/V-2 rocketry program as super-weapons intended to shift the balance after the German war offensive ground to a standstill in Russia. He planned to use them as terror weapons to weaken the will of the British to continue their war effort.

   Experimental work was done at Peenemuende on the Baltic Coast, and initially manufacture was set up at that site too. However, the British were able to detect that work via aerial photography (according to the movie, "Operation Crossbow"). In spite of the high risks, the RAF succeeded in destroying the plant by bombing. The timing was fortunate, because Neufeld feels V-2 attacks on massed Allied forces prior to the Normandy Invasion could have had greater impact. As it was, the Allies were able to shoot down the rather slow V-1s. By the time V-2s were available in number, the Allied forces had landed in France and spread out from their beachheads. That made them a less vulnerable target.

   The book disagrees strongly with several aspects of the movie "Operation Crossbow." Only production, not research was done in the mountain complex. Conditions for inmates were far worse than portrayed in the movie. Neufeld points out the slave labor/concentration camp aspect of the story was largely ignored in publications prior to 1980, but was recognized in more recent works.

   Neufeld provides an excellent bibliography. No index.

No comments about Will Herberg: From Right to Right (Studies in Religion).

5 comments about The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-birkenau.

1. The updated, expanded edition of The Last Album: Eyes From The Ashes Of Auschwitz- Birkenau is out, and no less hard-hitting than the original. These black and white photos were not supposed to reach the world: the Nazi order to destroy all personal photos brought to each concentration camp was meant to destroy memories as much as evidence. Despite this mandate, author Weiss uncovered an archive of over 2,400 photos brought to Auschwitz by Jewish deportees across Europe - photos hidden and saved, at great risk to their owners. These photos accompany a traveling exhibition which is making its way around the world, presenting over 400 of these photos and how the deportees arrived at Auschwitz - and how Weiss came to discover them and to research their roots. A 'must' for any serious Jewish history collection - and many a general interest holding, as well.



2. I read this book by chance, yesterday, Memorial Day 2003.
   Been crying.
   It's like Schindler's List or Sophie's choice.
   How could they do it?
   How can we let them continue doing it?
   The animals still are around us, although using another names, another symbols, another motivations.
   I kept reading, hoping to find some of the people to be safe at the end, but almost everybody was killed.
   Binim, Rozak, Mayer, Bronka, so many of you.
   I miss you, my friends.



3. After reading this book, I feel this should be in every house in every country. You hear so much about the people and the numbers killed that sometimes it doesn't seem real but this book makes it very real. The pictures are so powerful and at the same time so ordinary - they could be pictures of anyone's parents or grandparents. The most haunting pictures are those of the children - you have to wonder how many survived. The stories of the survivors bring it all home - "There's the aunt of the little girl I used to babysit", etc. I found it amazing that these pictures did survive 40, 50 years before being discovered again. Anyone who denies the Holocaust happened should read this book and then try to still say it never happened. Thank you Ann Weiss for bringing these pictures and the stores behind them out of the darkness.



4. "The last Album" by Ann Weiss is well organized and well written. It contains 400 remarkable
   photographs that were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau by victims in 1943. These photographs were taken
   prior to the Holocaust and depict people bursting with life. This is an extremely unique book, and contains material that was lovingly researched for a period of 15 years. The beauty of this book is that the
   photographs and the research accomplished brings to life people that were lost during the dreadful time of
   the Holocaust. The book like the author is soft, sweet, articulate and brilliant



5. This book is an amazing piece of history. The fact that so many photos brought into Auschwitz have survived is phenomenol as all personal effects were automotically burned by the Nazis murderers. When viewing the photos in this book, which were brought in by those of the Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport, it would also be advisable to read Tadeusz Borokowski's book "This way to the gas ladies & gentleman' as this book covers the particular Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport and outlines in gruesome and terrifying detail what became of many of those on this transport. The photographs bring back to life many who are gone and also tells you those who survived, which is a relief to realise that some of those from the Polish ghettos made it. These photos bring back a lost world that will never return and along with Roman Vishniac's collection of photographs are a piece of history that is very much worth investing in.

5 comments about Esther's Story.

1. Esther's Uncle Mordecai is the gate keeper.He raised Esther from a baby. My favorite part of the story is when Esther becomes queen of Persia. My favorite part of the story is when he laughed. When he was done laughing, he said "Esther, you are now queen of ersia". I like the book Esther because it is taken from the Bible. The comments are the same as in the Bible. If you really like the Bible story, I insist that you read this book!



2. Esther's Uncle Mordecai is the gate keeper.He raised Esther from a baby. My favorite part of the story is when Esther becomes queen of Persia. My favorite part of the story is when he laughed. When he was done laughing, he said "Esther, you are now queen of ersia". I like the book Esther because it is taken from the Bible. The comments are the same as in the Bible. If you really like the Bible story, I insist that you read this book!



3. I like this book of Esther because it is all what God knew what was going to happen. My first favorite part is when the king crowned Esther Queen of Persia. That was God's plan. Later, a man named Haman wanted all the Jews killed. God wanted Esther to save her people. My second favorite part is when Esther shows up to the king uninvited. Esther had the courage to do that. But, will Esther save her people in time? Read this book to find out.



4. Esther was an ok book. It is easy to read. It was about
   this girl named Esther and how she became a queen and
   saved her people. I recommend this book to anyone.



5. I have read dozens of Jewish books to my kids, and this stands out as one of the few that I am going to keep for THEIR kids. The reason? It portrays Esther as a real person that girls can truly identify with, while not straying from the honest Torah understanding of the holiday. Additionally, the combination of realistic text (presented in the form of Esther's diary) and stunning illustrations make this book a literary treat. I wish this author-illustrator team would get together to create stories about all the Biblical heroines!