1 comments about Escape from Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol.

1. Originally written in 1963 under the pseudonym "Jozef Lanik", Escape From Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol is the true story of author Alfred Wetzler's horrifying experience as a one of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust, his fortuitous escape, and most poignantly, his efforts to subsequently inform the world about the truth behind Nazi camps of mass murder. Escape from Hell describes in detail the inhuman atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis, the ingenious plan made by the resistance movement in the camp, and how Wetzler successfully escaped with his friend Rudi Vrba. A chilling day-by-day account of life in Auschwitz, by a man whose determination to spread the truth likely saved more Jews from the machinations of the SS than any other single act. A "must-have" for Holocaust Studies shelves and collections.

5 comments about Behind the Secret Window.

1. In _Behind The Secret Window_ by Nellie Toll, the message that the story has to offer is that life can knock you down sometimes, but most importantly you can't let life keep you down. Nelly is a small girl who is hiding from the Nazis during World War Two. The Nazis take her two siblings, aunt, father, and is really unhappy. Throughout the book she realizes that being unhappy won't help her during this dificult time. Instead she starts believing that one day her loved ones will return. Nelly finally benefits from this by making it through the war alive and finally seeking freedom. This book gives you the best of advice and messages you could ever find for difficult hardhsips and advice.



2. 
   
   This book is a memory of Nelly Toll's childhood experiences during World War II. She battled so many things none of us could imagine. She lost very much during the war but always had hope.
   The main characters in this book are Nelly, her mother, and pani pan Wotjek. (They are Christians willing to hide them).
   This book takes place mostly in Poland 1943-1944. She also goes to Hungary. She spends most of these two years living indoors.
   It's a very in-depth look at the war. To me it seems almost fictional. It's amazing how much she remembers about how she felt.



3. This book is about a girl. She is about 7 when the Nazis come and invade her town. Now she is 8 and her dad has left or "disappered". Her maids have been taken away, and the soldiers are takeing her stuff from her so they can give the stuff to other kids in thier country. She is so mortived! It is now her and her mom. They move to her aunt's appartment. And then something happens that you have to read the book to find out. By the end of the book the little girl is left alone with her alful thoughts of the horrible things that the soldiers do to the people that live in her town. So all she can do is paint pictures of what she thinks of all the things that are going on around her. This is a book that every one needs to read.



4. The story Behind the secret window was a good book.It's about a girl named Nelly Toll who was six years old. Nelly said she could remeber every thing that had happened.She said by the time she was eight that the world war two had destroyed her live. But she said that to ease her pain she wrote in her diary. She said that was better then thinking of her parents dining in the war. My oppion is that this was a great book. Try to read it.



5. We were given a World War II book report in English. I chose this book over Anne Frank. The way Nelly Toll told her story, it made you feel as if you were there, hiding in a small room, waiting for the Gestapo to leave, and praying that they don't find you. Even though her family was hunted by the German army, the Nazis, she continued to read, and write, and paint. Though the story has a sweet, and happy ending, sadness does lurk behind it. I highly recommend this book!

3 comments about Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology).

1. My great great grandparents lived in Kamenets. Their children spread thruout that region before they and their children left for America, Israel, Moscow, and South Africa. This book's explanation of the 19th Century social and economic order of this town and its environs finally allows me to understand, interpret and to place into perspective the stories my grandfather told especially in regard to Jews, the Polish overlords, Belarussian serfs and Russian rulers. Anyone interested in Jewish "family history" of that area of Grodno will greatly appreciate this book.



2. My next-door neighbor raved about this book when he read the Hebrew translation. It was more recently translated into English and I received a copy as a birthday gift. There is a very long introduction that I suggest that readers read only after reading the actual memoir first. The intro then becomes much more meaningful.
   
   The book was written in 1913 and describes what life was like in Kamenetz - the shtetel that he grew up in. It was a typical Eastern European shtetel and the period the book covers is the 1850's and 1860's. It is amazing how the author so clearly captures the spirit of that period. He wrote the memoir as a series of little vignettes - each one describing a different aspect of life in his village. Some of the stories are comical and some are sad. Relations with the non-Jewish population is discussed as well as the relations with the representatives of the Tsar.
   
   My grandparents came from Eastern Europe and after reading this book I felt that I was given a rare treat - a glimpse into my own past.



3. Okay, so I Google myself. That's how I discovered this astonishing memoir, published (1913) in Warsaw in Yiddish, by a man who may or may not be my blood. I read the Hebrew translation in 2001 and corresponded a bit with Editor/Translator Dr. Assaf, a professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. Assaf is a thorough and inspired scholar. The Hebrew edition was superb, and the English edition is, too.
   
   Yekhezkel Kotik was born into one world and lived long enough to die in another, one in which nearly all physical remants of the old were vanished. An essentially medieval culture, on the periphery of the Russian Empire, unchanged for nearly a milleniuum, was in the course of Yekhezkel's adulthood swept away by the ripples of modernity which swept through the Russian Empire.Kotik was born in a small town in the Belarus -Lithuanian region of the Pale of Settlement, at a time when most men expected to spend their entire lives within a few kilometers of the spot where they came into the world. The 19th Century, however, did not end as it had begun. The emergence of industry, global commerce and the fundamental transformations of political economy which devolved from and fueled these tectonic shifts set people in motion to an unprecedented degree.
   Kotik's adult life was strikingly modern. He resettled himself several times in different towns in Belarus and the Ukraine, operating ( with generally disappointing results) a series of businesses. He came to rest in cosmopolitan Warsaw, where he opened what turned into a thriving coffee house much favored by the city's Jewish intellectuals, artists, activists, bon pensants and bon vivants. Yekhezkel flourished in this milieu, and became locally famous as an organizer and promoter of all manner of cooperative societies.
   
   Late in his life, Yekhezkel's socialist son Avraham urged him to write a memoir. It had become clear by this time, the early 20th Century, that the millenium of shtetl life in the Pale of Settlement would otherwise leave few traces of its existence. Yekhezkel, who had never before written anything but pamphlets and corporate by-laws, applied himself to the project and produced the first volume of a planned three. The book was made available to the leading Yiddish writer of the time, Sholom Aleichem, who declared it superior to anything he himself had written. Kotik's subsequent efforts were somewhat less well received, but now I'm giving away too much !
   
   For me, Yekhezkel Kotik is an inventor, possibly the greatest of all time. He invented a time machine.
   
   
   Paul Kotik
   Plantation, FL USA

No comments about Survival & Beyond, H/C.

1 comments about Witness to Annihilation: Surviving the Holocaust.

1. Samuel Drix was a physician in Lvov, was one of the great Jewish communities of pre-war Poland, whose fate under the Nazis was one of the worst and yet gets little attention from historians. Drix was caught in a roundup and sent to the Janowska camp on the outskirts of the city. This camp left few survivors. Run by some of the most vicious commandants, Janowska had hardly an equal in the brutal treatment of its prisoners. Drix's memoir is unusual for several other reasons. It is one of the few accounts of a professional; it gives a vivid glimpse into the conditions in the Lvov ghetto as well as in the camp and it tells of Drix's remarkable escape from certain death and his subsequent , quite startling, experiences among Polish and Ukranian peasants in the countryside where he survived in hiding until the end of the war.

2 comments about Black Becomes a Rainbow: The Mother of a Baal Teshuvah Tells Her Story.

1. This narrative is mostly about the relationship between Natalie and her mother, Agi. Natalie comes from an upper middle class mainstream Jewish Australian family. Natalie eschews the comfortable upper middle class secular life that her mother envisions for her to become a baal teshuva, a repentant one. Natalie joins a Hassidic sect
   
   Black is a reference to the clothing Hassidic men wear and the rainbow is the joy Agi eventually finds in being the grandmother of five Hassidic children.
   
   Agi is at times meddlesome and disapproving and at others very helpful,
   
   Mother and daughter eventually come to accept each other's differences.
   
   Recommended for anyone interested in the Bal Teshuvah movement, Hassidism, or any non-religious mother who feels lost or distraught because her son or daughter has joined a fundamentalist religion



2. Helpful book for parents of children who become bal teshuva. Realistic yet heartwarming and encouraging.

No comments about Protective Custody: Prisoner 34042.

3 comments about The Gi's Rabbi: World War II Letters Of David Max Eichhorn (Modern War Studies).

1. Rabbi Eichhorn's letters and diary entries portray a family man, soldier and rabbi. The book gives you not just a memoir of the war, but insights into his personal life (letters to his family), his own journals (detailed and much more frank about the war), and finally, reports to various Jewish agencies and the Army (the most disturbing ones of all). How he managed to experience all of this, and still retain his sanity and faith is astonishing. He is a man I wish I could have met, and I respect him highly for all that he did during his life.



2. "The GI's Rabbi: World War II Letters of David Max Eichhorn" is edited by Greg Palmer and Mark S. Zaid, and includes an introduction by Doris L. Bergen. The book brings together not just his letters, but also other documents that illuminate the wartime career of Rabbi Eichhorn, who served as a chaplain in the U.S. Army. His service included time in the European combat zone.
   
   Other texts interspersed among the rabbi's letters are excerpts from his 1969 unpublished autobiography, as well as letters he received from family, friends, and colleagues. Altogether these texts create a vivid portrait of his travels and service. Also included in the book are photos that span the rabbi's entire life, including his wartime service; a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew words and phrases he uses in his letters; an index; and an epilogue by coeditor Zaid, who is also the rabbi's grandson.
   
   The letters and other texts cover the rabbi's travels in France and Germany, his encounters with important military leaders, and the living conditions he experienced in wartime. The book is full of interesting details about his duties as a chaplain. He discusses the horrors and inhumanity of war, as well as examples of kindness and courage that seemed to restore his faith in humanity. The personal touches on his letters to his wife and children are charming and sometimes humorous.
   
   This is a marvelous book and a fine tribute to a man who, in his own words, strove "to be a good soldier and a good rabbi" during one of the most critical periods in American and Jewish history. Inspiring and educational, "The GI's Rabbi" is an outstanding contribution to both U.S. military history and Jewish studies. I strongly recommend this book for both academic and general audiences.



3. This book captures an individual perspective of World War II from someone who was intimately involved. It provides glimpses that historians and even many of the contemporary books did not. It's also an easy book to read -- like reading letters from your family, only these letters are not just about personal matters but about matters of general interest and international importance. A good book to read, no matter what your age, especially in these times.

5 comments about Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past.

1. "Motherland" by Fern Schumer Chapman centers around an intriguing premise, that of a mother and daughter returning to Germany to discover what happened to the family left behind during the war, in an effort to let go of the war that plagues their relationship. The author's mother was sent as a refuge to America a year after her older sister, leaving her grandma and parents to endure the wrath of the Nazis. Feeling abandoned and unloved, the author's mother never returned until the early 1990s, still hesitant to encounter the past.
   
   For Germans, it seems as if WWII and its legacy is always close to the surface; a feeling a guilt pervades their interactions with those from other places due to the constant association with evil they must endure. Mother and daughter certainly encounter that on their journey to the small town where her mother lived her first 12 years of life. The town, while greatly changed, is still home to many former classmates. Escorted around town by a man eager to make amends for his past actions, the two discover that the past is always present, no matter how hard one tries to forget.
   
   Overall, "Motherland" is a quick-paced read, an accounting of the author's attempt to understand her mother. Yet at times the narrative reads as if the author is trying to hard; she was five months pregnant when the journey was made, and perhaps her emotional swings show through too much. The flow is often interrupted by liteary efforts at similes, comparisons which aren't necessary and do not add to the story. However, the story is one that the author needed to discover and one that she needed to tell. It is an interesting look at how someone who wouldn't necessarily qualify as a 'survivor' did survive, but still passed on that legacy of loss and war to her daughter.



2. I had begun this book and put it down--to pick it up again was a very good idea. This author has a very readable style. A great book to read if you want
   to know about the Holocaust and beyond--just like the title says--it says it all.



3. Edith Westerfield Schumer left Germany in 1938 as a twelve-year-old. She left alone. Her parents sent her to America, removing her from the threat of the Nazis in her German homeland. Her Jewish father mistakenly believed that Hitler would acknowledge his service to Germany in World War I. However, most of her family did not survive the persecution or the death camps. Edith never saw her parents again.
   
   She rarely spoke of her childhood. Perhaps so much loss could not be expressed in words. Perhaps she didn't know how to convey to her family what was ripped apart in her past. Her daughter Fern knew little of her heritage.
   
   "Motherland" tells their story through her daughter Fern's perspective. When her mother finally agrees to return to Germany, Fern accompanies her-hoping to learn about her grandparents, hoping to see aspects of her mother's childhood, hoping to better understand how the Holocaust stole her past when it stole her mother's.
   
   Through their journey Fern and Edith learn much more about each other and about the quest to reconcile the past than they expected, significantly deepening their mother-daughter bond. Fern relates with poignancy how moments from her mother's childhood are revealed during their visit. For the first time she realizes that her mother's inability to speak German without an American accent parallels her inability to speak English without German pronunciations creeping in. Her speech identifies her as different from other Americans-and other Germans. Fern learns her mother's favorite German food only to realize that Edith never learned to cook it before she was sent away. For the first time she hears of her mother's insecurities about leaving her home.
   
   They encounter people from Edith's childhood who through their silence aligned themselves with the Nazis. Their lives still echo with hidden guilt. The mother and daughter speak with others who have never overcome their anger at the Nazis and what they suffered when they tried to help and protect the Jews. The women are struck by how people's lives have never returned to normal.
   
   Their story provides insight into mother-daughter relationships and the role of roots in those relationships. The memoir was named a finalist in 2000 in the National Jewish Book Awards by the Jewish Book Council and a number of schools use Motherland to teach about moral choices.
   
   Edith and Fern acknowledge that the Holocaust has now affected three generations of their family. Somehow those who carry on must remember history and honor those cut down by cruelty, yet let go of the past moving ahead with the new generations into healing.



4. This book covers the return of a Jewess, at 12 years old separated from her parents from the Rheinland on a Kindertransport, to her small hometown, Stockstadt-am-Rhein in 1990. Her daughter, pregnant, goes with her, although unable to speak German, and writes from her younger, American Jewish perspective on this whole process of reclaiming her mother's past, her Heimat (homeland), her Motherland so to speak.
   
   As you can read, most reviewers rave about this book. It is well-written, if a bit too introspective at times (these parts a reader can skip, such as the daughter's thoughts dwelling on herself and her own children). I'd like to make these criticisms for the author, that she may rewrite it perhaps, or if it should be done in a film version, some negative feedback could also perhaps be useful in making a tighter story:
   
   1. The mother's verbatim words should be used in the text, with footnotes underneath for translation into English. Many who read this book know German and do not want to read about the daughter's struggle to make out this or that trival word. Dare I say it, the daughter might have made a better effort to know her mother's language? How else to understand her own roots, her own mother's culture, her longing for her childhood?
   
   2. Don't introduce side issues that remain unresolved. For example, a very intriguing juicy bit is thrown in, that her older sister was sent a year ahead of her to America, adopted by another set of relatives, and now that the two sisters (her mother and her aunt) are now in their late 60's, they still don't get along. This isn't worth delving into, or at least explaining a little bit? WHy leave it hanging? Why bring it up if not to grab the reader's attention? WHy not go and interview the aunt, find out her own bitter memories or reasons for spurning her younger sister an entire lifetime?
   
   2. Why no mention of this author's father? Who was he? How did he influence the family with his own traditions, career or job, attitudes and hobbies, personality? Reading this book, one could think that there was no father in the author's life. If we are to understand her pain as a daughter in not grasping her parents' lives, then surely some mention should be made.
   
   3. Why not explain her mother's cowardice in not giving her own daughter Jewish names? She says she is named Fern (for a relative, Frieda) and Brenda (for another one, Brondl). This is strange to me, for the names "Fern Brenda" certainly don't indicate the great Jewish heritage that the mother wants kept.
   Meanwhile, we hear that the German families are naming their kids Joshua and Sara, with no shame or hiding. Strange indeed.
   
   4. Why not look at Germans more as people? Her impression of a silly clerk called the immigrations controller is that of a nasty Nazi, simply because he is German with blue eyes and blonde hair, and stamps their documents with authority. Don't ALL immigration people behave this way in every airport of the world? They're SUPPOSED to be abrupt, to give people unease. Does she call the ones down in Israel with their "brown eyes and dark hair" typical Mossad types? Nasty because they're Jews? I should think not, it's lame stereotyping at best.
   
   
   Overall, this book needs editting by a non-Jewish, non-German hating professional editor, who can guide Fern into a more balanced presentation of her mother's beloved homeland. Otherwise, the hatred comes through with the stereotypical slights, and weakens the story's validity.
   
   The best angle, if a movie were to be made - hopefully in Germany's Babelsberg and not here in Hollywood, God forbid - the theme of Mini, her childhood friend. Now there's a morality play full of contradictions! Wilhelmine (Mini for short), a child six years older from a dreadfully poor family of seven kids, is sent to be a servant/maid to the well-off Jews, and becomes best friends with the daughter she is meant to serve. Then her friend is sent to America, making Mini 18 and Tiddy 12 when they separate. Mini is so enraged to have lost her adopted sister and family that she spends the rest of her life documenting the Nazis, and whether they're all prosecuted. Her own grown son, nearing 50, feels himself deprived of a proper childhood or mothering because Mini devotes herself to fighting the evils of the past rather than living in the present. She is a living testament to the folly of grudges, which the author's own mother avoiding doing - she purposefully shunned nostalgia for her lost homeland and family, until her 60's.
   
   In many respects, this daughter and her emotions, this author, is the problem in the story. She should rewrite it from the participants' point of view, either her mother's or Mini's, in the third person, and take her own petulant self out of it.
   
   Now THAT would be a mature and interesting novel.
   
   Hey, also, put in some of these pictures that she dwells on!



5. I recently purchased your book and happened to glance at the back cover. From that point on I could not put your book down until I had read it from cover to cover. I was memorized! I AM YOUR MOTHER!
   I'm a Vietnam combat veteran and used the same ploy as your mother - denial and never talk about it. My wife and three sons bore the brunt of my walled memories. And, unfortunately, in order to bury Vietnam I also buried most of my youth.
   I recently retired and the unexpected free time has caused my walls to crumble and my nights are filled with nightmares. Part of my counseling is to write about my trauma. You have inspired me to take these outpourings, organize them and get them published. I intend to "look fear in the face" and share my burden with others who may face the same hardships I do. Like your mom, I want to "be here now."

1 comments about When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear: Remarkable Stories of Christians Who Saved Jews from the Holocaust.

1. As a teacher of European History, I must recommend this book whole-heartily to all students of the Holocaust. Peter Hellman does an outstanding job in portraying the unsung heroes of World War II. That not all Christians turned their backs on the Jews of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Especially good for students in areas of low concentration of Jews, because it looks at the acts of bravery from an aspect of people helping people, and that can be relayed to all peoples and races.