5 comments about Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (Yale Nota Bene).

1. Much of Paul Celan's later poetry is hermetic, and acknowledge by many to be impossible to truly understand without knowledge of the poet's life. Nonetheless, for a long time English speakers had no biography of this influential modern poet. In PAUL CELAN: Poet, Survivor, Jew author John Felstiner covers the whole course of Celan's all-too-brief life, emphasizing the poet's Jewish identity above others. Besides a simple biography, Felsteiner also discusses a number of Celan's poems, which he himself has translated into English (the book assumes no knowledge of German), and also chronicles Celan's output of translations and his relationship to other (especially Jewish) poets.
   
   For Felstiner, Paul Celan's feelings as a Jew play an important role throughout his poetry, but it seems especially important in the early and late periods over the middle. Celan began his mature career as an orphan whose parents perished in the death camps and who himself served forced labour in wartime Romania. This of course, providing the impetus for not only his famous "Todesfuge", *the* poem on the death camps, but also the imagery of much of his first acknowledged volume. In the last decade of Celan's life, on the other hand, the poet was gripped by paranoia that Germany was not sufficiently acknowledging its sins and that neo-Nazis were plotting against him. This, Celan as representative of a race that has not only suffered before but is still hunted today, Felsteiner sees as an important part of the late works.
   
   If I give this biography only three stars, it is because I wish that there was more information about Celan's life and less exegesis of his poetry. Indeed, Celan's mental distress which sent him more than once to a psychiatric clinic is barely touched upon. Had Felsteiner split this into a more substantial biography and a separate work of criticism, the reader who wants to know about the whole of Celan's life would be better served. Nonetheless, for anyone trying to tackle Celan's poetry in English translation (e.g. Michael Hamburger's collection Poems of Paul Celan), this may be useful



2. Paul Celan was born into what soon became the wrong place and time. His family were German-speaking Jews from the eastern reach of the Austrian Empire. They lived in Czernowitz, capital of the Bukovina region, which passed to Romania just before Celan's birth in 1920. After a nine-month visit to his uncle in Paris where he was exposed to the Surrealists' influence in 1938, then his return to Czernowitz where his studies were interrupted by Soviet and then German occupation in 1940 and 1941, after forced labor in Romania's western mountains, his parents' deportation and death in German-occupied Ukraine, after the Red Army's return in 1944, Celan left home for Bucharest and then Vienna, where he first attracted recognition as a German-speaking poet, and in 1948 he settled in Paris. There he found a haven of sort at the Ecole Normale Superieure, where he taught German language and literature to generations of students (some of whom later contributed to his posthumous fame) and pursued his vocation as a poet in exile, estranged from his German mother tongue and survivor of a world that no longer was.
   
   Coming from a homeland that hardly existed anymore, writing for a German audience that he did not live among or trust, residing in France yet undervalued there, Paul Celan's native tongue itself was the only nation he could claim. Yet his relation to the German language was itself problematic, for the Nazis had abused and contaminated the words that once belonged to Goethe and Holderlin. Celan's austere idiom, mindful of death and horror, is rooted in his struggle to realize--by way of uninnocent language--"that which happened", the understatement he used to designate events of 1933-45. As he put it when receiving the City of Bremen's prize for his work in 1958, his language had to "pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, `enriched' by all this."
   
   The biographer gives detailed accounts of several episodes that took a heavy toll on the poet's sensitive feelings: the accusation of plagiarism that accompanied the publication of his first volume in France and that was to resurface later in his carrier; his almost paranoid belief that Nazism was again on the rise in post-war Germany and that Neo-Nazis were orchestrating a machination against him ("you can hardly imagine how things really look again in Germany," he wrote to a friend in 1960.) Paul Celan refused to submit a poem to Martin Heidegger for a Festschrift on his seventieth birthday, mindful of the philosopher's past complicity with Nazism and his enduring failure to recant after the war, but he nonetheless signed the Black Forest hermit's guestbook "with a hope for a coming word in the heart" during a visit to Todtnauberg in 1967.
   
   Recognition came late, and for much of his life was confined to the German-speaking world. When a European Jewish poet's turn came for the Nobel Prize in 1966, the more accessible Nelly Sachs got it, not him. His bouts of depression and psychic distress led to several hospitalizations. The poet concluded his life on the 20th of April 1970 by jumping from the Pont Mirabeau into the Seine, drowning himself. On his desk, a biography of Holderlin was found opened to an underlined passage: "Sometimes this genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart."
   
   John Felstiner devotes a whole chapter to Celan's most well-known poem, Todesfuge. Although similarities with Picasso's Guernica or Yeats's `Easter 1916' come to mind, no work of art has exposed the exigencies of its time so radically as this one, whose speakers--Jewish prisoners tyrannized by a camp commandant--start off with the words: " Schwarze Milch der Fruehe wir trinken sie abends"--"Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk"--and evoke the fate that awaits them: "Wir schaufeln ein Grab in der Lueften da liegt man nicht eng" --"we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped."



3. Todesfuege (Death Fuge) is Celan's most famous poem, although he wrote it when he was only 24. Although it might seem cryptic, it is quite accessible in comparison with his later poems. Felsteiner does an excellent job of helping the reader to understand what Celan must have been like and further allows insight into his poetry in a straightforward, readable way. Because Celan is so difficult to understand, many critics, including Derrida, tend to interpret him in their own images.

   Felsteiner, on the other hand, is more concerned with portraying Celan accurately than using him as a platform to promote his own agendas. I would strongly recommend this book as an introduction to Celan.




4. I appreciate this book most for its study of the relationship between Paul Celan and his most famous poem, "Deathfugue." Before the English translation of that poem in this book is a photograph with the caption, "Orchestra playing 'Death Tango' in Janowska Road Camp, Lvov, ca. 1942." Prisoners used that term "for whatever music was being played when the Germans took a group out to be shot." (p. 30) Before reading this poem, I had read that it was impossible to get permission from the holder of the copyright to translate it into English and publish it, even if an American expert wanted to call it the best poem that had been written in the German language since World War II. The poem may have more meaning for those who already know what it means, and who would not be puzzled by, "We shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped."



5. This is one of the most powerful books imaginable, touching chords in the human heart that we would often choose to ignore. It is the story of a man whose courage and creativity helped him communicate truth in a world that was desperate to silence his voice. Please read this book....it will change everything.

5 comments about The Passover Plot: Special 40th Anniversary Edition.

1. Previous reader reviewers of this book have made many good comments, but have not, I think, made clear enough one important aspect of it. Only a portion of the book actually describes a "Passover plot" by Jesus involving a highly detailed planning of his own arrest, trial, crucifixion, faked death, and faked resurrection. That portion is far-fetched and sensational, but is a relatively small portion of the whole book.
   
   By contrast, the first 100 pages of the book present a picture of Jesus that is, I think, credible and insightful. It is a naturalistic presentation of the entire life of Jesus, stripped of all supernatural acts and events, though not beliefs, and without fantastic intrigue either. Schonfield, as a Jewish scholar, is able to probe deeply into the Jewish background of Jesus. It becomes clear that 1st century Jews in Palestine, and especially Galilee, were intensely superstitious, nervously engaging in prophesies, oracular readings of the Old Testament, messianism and apocalypticism. Schonfield writes of the sickness of that society, a time in which young Yeshua (Jesus), among a number of others, naturally and honestly came to believe he was the messiah. After all, Schonfield notes, many boys everywhere, living in less intense times, dream of becoming great heroes or leaders of their people, even unto death. He also bravely points out some personal faults of Jesus such as a father-fixation and a grim tendency toward scorn. His passage on Jesus cursing the fig tree is precious. So are his comments that the Christian religion is basically pagan because it made of Jesus an anthropomorphic idol.
   
   Up to about page 100, Schonfield's picture of Jesus has much in common with Albert Schweitzer's famous finding of an apocalypse-preaching historical Jesus. But Schweitzer's book is so massive and complex that few readers are likely to read much of it. Schonfield's simpler, easier-to-read book offers a more accessible account of that apocalyptic or eschatological Jesus. He also lucidly suggests that the ignominious martyrdom of John the Baptist partly prompted Jesus' desire for his own more spectacular death in Jerusalem at Passover.
   
   However, after about page 100, a neat demarcation-line as it were, Schonfield moves from this credible account of Jesus' general belief in himself as a messiah who must suffer to a not-at-all credible account of his detailed plotting of every specific step on his way to that goal - and more. At about p. 100 I stopped reading the book (not only in disbelief, but admittedly also for lack of time).
   
   As for the remaining, intrigue-laden scenario (which the dustjacket had described), Schonfield clearly borrowed much of this from the lives of Jesus written c. 1800 by Bahrdt and Venturini, whose "swoon" theories (coma on the cross, resuscitation later in the tomb) were understandable in their time but are much less so now that we know far more about ancient crucifixions and how efficiently deadly they were. Schonfield's 1965 reprise of that moribund theory (drugged vinegar drink on cross would cause coma) was probably influenced by the widespread drug culture of the early 1960s.
   
   Yet, even Schonfield's fantastic notion of a highly detailed "Passover plot" by Jesus has some redeeming points. It offers a naturalistic theory for the reputed resurrection, which must indeed have had natural causes of various kinds (a body theft by whomever, then dreams, or visions, or chance glimpses of Jesus look-alikes, or the sight of his image on his shroud, or embellishments by storytellers, etc.). Moreover, some of the clues to a conspiracy that Schonfield thinks he sees in the gospels involve passages that are undeniably bizarre, passages that Schonfield did not invent and that Christians have no satisfactory explanations for. Schonfield deserves sympathy at least for his attempt to make some natural sense out of those bewildering passages.
   
   I first heard of this book in the 1970s and, judging from what little I heard, did not think it worth reading. Now I have finally read it, or part of it, and must admit that I was long mistaken about its full contents. The first 100 pages or so can certainly be recommended to all readers curious about the real Jesus.



2. Excellent read with a new angle, at least to me, on the life of Jesus. This book describes the environment both politcal and religious that led to the death of Jesus. You may not agree with the facts, as presented, but it is logically presented and entertainingly educational.



3. The 1960's were a wild time for revolutions of independence not only in race or gender, but in behaviors and ethics. It was the hippie revolution; the drug revolution; the sexual revolution. It was also a time that many thought they had a right to rebel against the social norms and the religious "oppression" that was placed on them. Many had proclaimed "God is dead," and now books by the hundreds were being written to prove this, such as The Death of God by Gabriel Vahanian (1961), Hamilton and Altizer's Radical Theology and the Death of God (1968), and more popular books criticizing Christianity such as John A.T. Robinson's best seller, Honest to God (1963). It is on this scene that the Jewish "Nazarean" author, Hugh Schonfield, writes this intriguing and strange book (written in 1965; I read the 40th anniversary eddition).
   
   I call The Passover Plot intriguing because it is somewhat of a mystery spy novel of sorts with a touch of historical flair that any reader not very in tune with the issues may really be taken away with. Schonfield is a very good writer, and in my opinion has done a decent job at arranging this book and trying to make his case. But the book is also "strange," because it seems that Schonfield really wants to convince us of one thing, and then the next thing we see is a contradiction of it in his main premise!
   
   He states, so convincingly, that Jesus counts for "so much," and answers "so much of human need" (p. 10). Jesus was a "most exceptional man," and that in his presentation of Jesus he will not "detract from his greatness and uniqueness" (p. 15). He believes that Jesus was no "charlatan, willfully and deliberately misleading his people," or that there was not the "slightest suspicion of pretence on his part," and that we have to "accept the absolute sincerity of Jesus" (p. 41). Jesus was "one above all others who showed mankind how to make their dreams come true" (p. 48). He was a man not of ambition or "self-aggrandizement," but that his recognition of himself was that of the "Servant" of the Old Testament (p. 66).
   
   With such high praise for Jesus in the forefront, Schonfield now decides to investigate what he believes was this same man; an ingenius, willful mastermind attempting to "swoon" his own death in order to make sure people don't believe him to be a false messiah (pp. 83-84). This is a man who Schonfield has said has no inkling of pretence or ambition, but then ends up using trickery and deceit in this incredibly manipulative plot to get people to kill him at a certain time, whereby he will feign his death and be able to show himself to be the Messiah to his people. Thus Schonfield is presenting, in my opinion, a "Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde" Jesus, one who is a genuine figure but has a side to him which is devilish when you really consider Schonfield's proposal.
   
   This proposal was that Jesus, knowing he must fulfill the Old Testament prophecies concerning his death, plotted how this could be done, and meticulously fulfilled it, using Joseph of Arimathea (who was to "drug" him) and the Beloved Disciple to help in getting this plot completed (see Chapter 10, The Plot Matures). While for 1960's hippies and rouge scholars from liberal theological seminaries, this is an interesting and intriguing look into why Christianity "mistook" Jesus as dead and raised up again, Schonfield today is just not taken seriously, even by radical biblical scholars such as those from the Jesus Seminar (I have yet to see his name or his book quoted in their works). The reason for this is that first of all Schonfield is obviously taking from the Gospels only what will make a case for his work. He obviously does not at all believe that the miracles could ever take place, and that especially is central with the resurrection of Jesus, and thus sees miracle stories as mythological or even pagan entries into the story. This the Jesus Seminar folks will agree with. But then he actually utilizes the basic story of Jesus, placing the Gospel of John as the main text, and really takes much of the information to be reliable (which the radical scholars would leave him here).
   
   Schonfield goes wrong in many ways:
   
   One, he goes back to a fallacy that is seen in many "Life of Jesus" writers in the 19th Century, which is trying to force Jesus to be in the current image of the writer, not in the image which is presented in His sources. Albert Schweitzer, back in 1906, wrote a book exposing this error, in his Quest for the Historical Jesus. He stated that the authors, in trying to write their new interpretations of what they thought was the "real" Jesus, simply made Jesus much like themselves. Schonfield, who takes a naturalistic view of reality, not allowing for the supernatural, places the story of Jesus' death and resurrection into his very own naturalistic bias. Since Jesus could not have possibly risen from the dead, the story of the resurrection must have been generated by a plot to pretend one took place. It seems Schonfield wants Jesus to think as a naturalistic scholar thinks! This is an error that still takes place in portraits of Jesus written by the Jesus Seminar today.
   
   Two, while Schonfield tries to present a plausible alternative to the reason Jesus died and his followers believed he rose from the dead, he attempts to paint the miracle stories as utterly ridiculous, and not worth any credence, and then expects us to believe his even MORE unbelievable scenario that Jesus actually could manipulate situations so well that they all work out almost perfectly to fulfill the Old Testament scriptures (and not realizing the Jeckle and Hyde he has deliberated in the process). In fact, I think Schonfield does much justice in his examination of the prophecies of the Old Testament and his belief that Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah. Most of his good research here match the historical accounts, and most Christians scholars will agree with it. But in presenting the non-supernatural view of his death and resurrection, his great research has no foundation whatsoever. In fact, historically, there is not one story a person can turn to of someone trying to fake their death for messianic reasons, or of an actually historical precedent for a swooning that ever occurred. This is all modern day speculation.
   
   Third, he also wants us to believe that Jesus' failure to swoon his death actually was a great victory of some sort (see pp. 185-186). Also, that even though the plot did not go according to plan (Jesus died when the spear killed him- John 19), that his disciples could still stand up with the authority and earnest desire to declare a Jesus that had "risen from the dead" though he obviously did not. Schonfield wants us to believe that there was another who claimed to be Jesus (must have been in on the plot, also), and the Beloved Apostle's word that it was him (despite it not being him, at least to the other Apostles) was all that the Apostles needed to proclaim the resurrection.
   
   Fourth, if Jesus truly wanted to plan a "swoon" of some sorts, and did such a meticulous job to rouse up the leaders of the Jews against him to the point that he would even get Pontius Pilate to come at the exact time needed so he could be crucified just before the Sabbath, it is something that Jesus would then be so idiotic to not know all the procedures of crucifixion which the Romans did. Such a genius would easily had known the procedure of crurifragium, or the act of breaking one's legs to speed up the death by asphyxiation. This was a common practice when the Romans needed to speed up the death of an accused, and yet, the brilliant strategist Schonfield makes of Jesus completely overlooks this common practice!
   
   Finally, the belief that Jesus' disciples would carry out the mission of Christ, even to torture and death, without knowing FOR CERTAIN that Jesus was truly risen, is false by psychological means. No one dies for a lie, and certainly no one dies for an uncertainty. Schonfield is unconvincing in trying to portray the Apostles as so gullible to believe a stranger to be Jesus and the "Beloved" Apostles sole word to be enough that his stranger would be seen as the risen Lord, and so go on to die for Him.
   
   Schonfield must be commended on his scholarship up to the point where he tracks off into a painting of a schizophrenic messiah. He, as many critical scholars, is only trying to keep the resurrection as a unviable possibility; but at the same time, he presents many details in the story as true representatives of what really happened. But he fails miserably in his conclusions, and doesn't even see it. He has turned his messianic Jesus into a psychological schizophrenic.



4. I never pictured myself reading about about Jesus, however curiousity made me read this without putting it down. This book gives a different spin on this story, and I appreciate knowing more about the man without (what I consider) the exagerated additions. It is much easier for me to understand how people (including Jesus) believed who he was, and the series of events that led him through his life. It is a great read, for those who believe and for those who do not.



5. The best fiction is based, as much as possible, in truth. Schonfield succeeded in writing an entertaining work of fiction in The Passover Plot, but unfortunately that was not his intent. This now-deceased (1988), esteemed Dead Sea Scrolls scholar sets out to prove his take on the swoon theory. To do so, he must deny Jesus' deity, death, and resurrection. The swoon theory makes the rounds every now and then, and here Schonfield attempts to build a case in the face of strong evidence to the contrary.
   
   Schonfield is clear with regard to his beliefs concerning Jesus and the New Testament (the Gospels in particular), unlike many current authors. In the Introduction (1996 mm ed.), he tells the reader Jesus is not divine (11, 12), nor the incarnate Son of God, but was used as a crutch by the fledgling church, which needed the human embodiment of a deity (13). Schonfield claims Jesus himself would see his deification as blasphemous, but offers only conjecture of Jesus' own interpretation of the prophecies. Regarding the New Testament gospel accounts, Schonfield states they are inconsistent, late, and contain many inaccuracies. Yet he uses his own translation of the New Testament (The Original New Testament) mixed with more widely accepted translations to support his theory.
   
   Schonfield asserts Jesus came to believe he was "the expected Messiah of Israel" (14, 16) after immersing himself in the Old Testament traditions. Jesus then plotted and schemed to fulfill the messianic prophecies, persuaded this was "imposed upon him through the demands of the Old Testament." (51) Counter to the major theme of John's gospel, Schonfield states Jesus was not and did not believe himself to be divine. However, Schonfield uses this gospel liberally in support of his assertions throughout the book. He believes the gospels themselves are corrupted legends and traditions written after A.D. 100 by a Gentile offshoot of Jesus' original Jewish followers after Josephus' works were published. We therefore have no access to the "inside story" of Jesus (218). If the gospels are so corrupt, why use them as support?
   Schonfield's belief that the gospels post date 100 A.D. is misplaced. The number of attested manuscripts far exceeds any other ancient work; they exhibit remarkable internal consistency and historical reliability. Even reputable liberal scholars now admit that the whole of the New Testament was written before A.D. 70. Josephus' writings are part of the support for the A.D. 70 date. But Schonfield uses them to claim they were written after A.D. 100. In this regard, the weight of scholarly evidence is not in Schonfield's favor.
   
   An underlying current in this book implies religion is not rational because it requires faith (57). One sees this clearly on page 58, on which the author states there was no virgin birth and Jesus was not God. But no basis is given for this claim. Rather, the old modernist position "all religion or matters of faith is myth" is employed in a reverse "God-of-the-Gaps" argument. Yet by the author's claim, Jesus was a deeply religious man convinced by his Jewish faith that he was the Messiah. This is circular reasoning. Further, Jesus had such faith in the prophecies and scriptures of his religion that he put his life on the line to fulfill them. Following this flawed line of reasoning, Schonfield picks and chooses from both Old and New Testaments to support his position. He discounts the Gospels as untrue, but turns around and quotes one (usually John) out of context to support his assertions. The overall effect is scattered.
   
   Last is the "Plot" itself. Jesus was able to plot his way to crucifixion and "resurrection" in the form of a risky plan. He was to be secretly revived after his "death," then assume his rightful place as Messiah. In chapter 12 Schonfield describes the sequence of events surrounding the crucifixion. According to Schonfield, Jesus carefully orchestrated every event with the help of a few assistants. Jesus never intended to actually die on the cross. With exquisite timing he intended to be there no more than three or four hours. He planned to be drugged into unconsciousness briefly while someone ran to a waiting Joseph of Arimathea, who would then run to beg a supposedly agreeable Pilate to allow Jesus' body to be removed from the cross. Joseph would then run back with word of Pilate's approval to the waiting man, who would then return to Golgotha, be believed by the Roman soldiers who would promptly remove the unconscious Jesus from the cross before he suffocated to death. This theory breaks down because the process of crucifixion Jesus endured would have led to his suffocation even if everything went perfectly. The distances involved are too great, and Jesus' physical condition on the cross too deteriorated for survival. By being drugged unconscious, Jesus would suffocate quickly because he wouldn't be able to push himself up to take a breath. The unanticipated wrinkle in Jesus' plan was a Roman soldier with a spear, which he used to pierce the pericardium sac surrounding Jesus' heart, thus ensuring death prior to removal from the cross.
   
   When Schonfield wrote this book, many were seeking a "true Jesus" as an antidote to a church they felt had not succeeded in keeping up with the shifts in cultural moods. The Passover Plot attempts to bridge the gap between old traditionalism and new post modern seekers whose questions the church was slow to answer. In the end, this book raises more questions than it answers.

No comments about My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq.

4 comments about Roosevelt and the Holocaust.

1. Before I launch my tirade, I should say that I feel Mr. Beir has done some excellent work and painted a historically accurate picture of President Roosevelt's actions before and during WWII.
   
   He then goes on to make excuses for why Roosevelt "couldn't" help the Jews when they so dearly needed it.
   
   Roosevelt was and is Beir's idol - he freely admits this - then he lists in great detail all of the things that Roosevelt DIDN'T do to lessen the suffering and death of Jews in Europe - EVEN when the chance to do so was dropped in his lap. (The case of the S.S. St. Louis)
   
   Beir makes the excuse that Roosevelt's number one job was winning the war and that he couldn't use up his political favors to save any of Beir's own people. Roosevelt was a man who did what he wanted and didn't really seem to care if it was legal or not. He enacted unconstitutional social(ist) programs, tried to take over the Supreme Court when it dared oppose him, and in one of the most dastardly events of US history - stole American's gold when they needed it most. (Executive Order 6102)
   
   Roosevelt had ample opportunity and demonstrated his ability to act when he desired.
   
   Roosevelt WAS a masterful politician - and a man who had no problem doing what HE felt was right. He is completely undeserving of Bob Beir's defense of his lack of action to mitigate one of mankind's most shameful periods where "civilized" countries allowed 6 million innocents to be ruthlessly and cruelly murdered.
   
   Bob Beir had no problem finding plenty of blame to go around for all of the other players in this tragic period of history. It's just plain shameful that Beir couldn't be as honest when assessing his idol's actions.
   
   Read this book for the history. Toss Beir's personal assessment of Roosevelt in the trash.
   
   A note on that last chapter: True as much of it is - it belongs in another book. Beir is an expert at identifying anti-Semitism - except when it is practiced (or at least apathetically allowed to flourish) in the administration of his hero, FDR.
   
   5 stars for the history.
   -3 stars for the intellectual dishonesty perpetrated by the author.



2. This may be a decent work, if you can get past the first 50 pages. Mr. Beir, in an attempt to work in his absurd views on current events into an absurd personal history, makes for a sometimes infuriating read. In discussing the Japanese Internment camps of WWII, he decides to inject his revulsion regarding our modern "Internment" of Arab Americans. Wow, I must have missed that story in the News! Next, in detail, he describes his (disgraceful) life of privilege in the WW2 Navy. Plum assignments in the lap of luxury in backwater ports in Scotland and England, Hobnobbing with the influential at exclusive parties, all attributable to his being well connected, and all of this while our young heroes are actually fighting and dying in the real war. The final insult is his Ship ride back to the States in the closing days of the war, when he somehow "wangles" himself a luxury stateroom on the Queen Mary, all the while apparently uninterested in the hordes of REAL soldiers aboard, who are quite literally returning from Hell after saving the World. Well, I guess they'll be just fine in Steerage....Anyway, he has important people to see in Washington DC.....



3. At its heart, this book details a series of interconnected journeys. The journey of its author, Robert Beir. The journey of a president, FDR. And the journey of an incomparable event, the Holocaust.
   At its heart, this book resonates with a personal sense of intimacy and poignancy. Robert Beir lived through the Great Depression and WW II era. Beir lived through the age of a pervasive and deeply ingrained anti-Semitism. He lived through General Eisenhower's deeply disturbing tour of a German concentration camp, with the piles of charred bodies, "too grisly for the American mind to comprehend," to quote Eisenhower. He lived through President Truman's decision to use atomic bombs on Japan. His memories speak to the hope, fear, destitution, exhilaration and incredible patriotism of the age.
   They also serve as an introduction to a large, and currently contentious, historical question. Roosevelt's and America's legacy regarding the Holocaust. Here you will find a historian on a search. This is not a pro-Roosevelt book, unwavering in its support. Nor does this book attempt to castigate the president. Instead, and quite remarkably, this book becomes an investigation with the goal of truth in mind.
   How many histories strive for such a fundamental goal? How many succeed? Here is one.



4. Roosevelt and the Holocaust is a masterpiece! It is a beautifully woven narrative, one that is as much a pleasure to read the second time as it is the first. Robert Beir's book is unique in the way that it creatively and effectively combines personal experiences with an examination of Roosevelt's policies during the Holocaust. Part autobiography, part history, part internal dialogue with Beir's hero, FDR, the book is ultimately a personal journey. But don't just take my word for it. Here's what two preeminent historians and authors of best selling books on FDR had to say about Beir's book.
   
   "Among the many books on FDR and the Holocaust, this one occupies a uniquely powerful position. Having long considered Roosevelt his personal hero, Beir found it painful to confront the question of whether Roosevelt was indifferent to the plight of the Jews. Yet, in this moving story which is both a personal memoir and a scholar's quest, he provides an honest look at his hero, his country and himself." Doris Kearns Goodwin (author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt - The Home Front in World War II)
   
   "A penetrating examination of one of the most haunting problems from World War II, vividly analyzed by a participant in that war, reflecting both his concern over FDR's blind spots and his understanding of the broader problems that Roosevelt faced." James MacGregor Burns (author of Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox and Roosevelt: Soldier of Freedom)

3 comments about The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir.

1. Marjorie Perloff's memoir was a complete pleasure from start to finish - it was a lucky accident for me that I came upon this gem.
   
   Absolutely delightful - charming in all ways, along with being particularly outstanding in combining the author's areas of professional expertise as a first class literary critic with her memories of an earlier Vienna and the traces that remain. This is not meant to slight at all her sharp remembrances of the events of growing up and the succinct clarity with which she describes them.
   
   Her memoir has many sections that point the reader to new areas for exploration: the Neue Gallery in NYC with its scintillating art collection (Schiele and Klimt), Arnold Schoenberg's writings and music, and the brilliant Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, just to mention a few.
   
   The other reviews do a thorough job of providing more details about this book. I'll add that Ms. Perloff, the complete professional, includes an excellent index, helpful notes to accompany the text, and thoughtful illustrations that augment the memoir. A quote from the book jacket's inside cover is particularly apt: "This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading thinkers, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal."



2. 
   I picked up a copy of The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir, by Marjorie Perloff because the idea of a memoir about Vienna intrigued me, and because I've always been enthralled by the critical mind of this noted and innovative literary scholar. After I'd read it, I ordered some more copies to bestow on friends, most of whom have no particular interest in Vienna whatsoever.
   "Why are you giving me this book?" one of my more suspicious friends asked me. "What is there about this book that sets it apart from all the immigrant narratives, from all the nostalgic recounting of `old Vienna,' from all the other autobiographies that people turn to when they begin to realize that time is passing and whatever they don't set down will be forgotten?" The central distinction is this: Perloff doesn't just record her own experiences or those of her family and friends, she uses those experiences - the experiences of her extended family, experiences of other famous emigrants from Vienna, together with information about books, museums, websites, as well as restaurants, street guides and all kinds of other information - for other purposes than telling about her self. She's not seeking her own `roots,' but draws on those roots to examine some of the important and pressing questions that only a critic of the world with great experience, perspective and expertise can ask.
   What Perloff is exploring with her delineation and examination of the civilization in which her family was nurtured and from which it was expelled is far more complex than just where she comes from, or even what really were the negative effects of the Holocaust. She is asking what are the functions, the potential and the limitations of civilization: what should we value in culture, what should we discard, what can we know, what can we improve, and what are the individual limitations. At one point Perloff quotes Wittgenstein
   if we think of the world's future, we always mean where it will be if it keeps going as we see it going now and it doesn't occur to us that it is not going in a straight line but in a curve, constantly changing direction. (33)
   The lessons from history are not imperatives for the future, and therefore every detail must be examined, and it is the role of the artist and the critic to perform this examination, and to edify . Therefore Perloff delineates the achievements, on all sides, of her family - their successful careers in Austria and elsewhere, their connections, their accomplishment throughout - but she also notes their failure to perceive and/or act within Austrian society to counter or prevent what was to come. Except for some foreign bank accounts that came in handy for the family after their escape in August of 1938, there seems to have been little understanding of the dangers inherent in the historical situation. If Grandfather Schuller was allowed into Italy because of a welcome from Mussolini to his former negotiator, it was not political foresight that made Schuller prepare an escape route for a Jew, but belief in Austria transcending personal considerations that saved him.
   The technique of postmodern pastiche is everywhere, but it is not here an indication of the eradication of values. Perloff is an expert at weaving together associations, websites, museums, biography, memoir, gossip, lunch, poetry and making sense of them all. This pastiche is born from the sensibility of the multicultural, world-wise individual, comfortable everywhere in the universe. Perloff, in opposition to the refugee, the outsider, really believes in a society, but it is an ur society, which incorporates and transcends the differences. Her criticism of European disdain for American society, and American naiveté as to European society, is an attempt to bring the two together.
   More than anything else, there is a love story in this autobiographical account -- it is a love story with America, that country that whatever its cultural limitations in comparison to the hoch kultur of Vienna, gave her and her family shelter and opportunity to thrive to such an extent that politics could be safely and comfortably ignored. Written after September 11, when the US is besieged not only by enemies without but also by the intelligentsia within, this book serves as a reminder of perspective. So that although it begins with the story of Arnold Schoenberg who despite his appreciation for the United States, never found in it a lasting and appreciative audience, it concludes with Adorno, who longed for the taste of European culture and returned there after the War.



3. Marjorie Perloff, the noted and prolific literary critic and comparativist, has written a thoughtful introspection about the intersection of her life with the complexities of the fading Vienna of the 20's and thirties. It's a dizzying array of contrasts and passages: not only her (and her family's) adjustment to American society of the 1940;s and 1950's, but the passage of Arnold Schoenberg, and the contrast of John Cage and Schoenberg. Perloff sheds a personal light on the ambivalences towards Jewishness and the imperatives of conversions. The photographs of girls in dirndls and her prestigious grandfather in morning suit are stunning reminders of the power of illustration and the evocation of period. Though this is memoiristic, Perloff remains a literary critic and there are efforts to re-address Adorno and Gombrich (for example)in terms of their own refugee pasts. Marjorie Perloff changed her name from Gabriele to Marjorie, her school from PS 7 to the fashionable Fieldston, her academic address from Catholic University ultimately to Stanford. The book is about what change means, how it reiterates, to someone whose life was abruptly forced, by the Anschluss, into a totally new mode of looking at the world and thinking about it.

1 comments about If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew.

1. As any anti-Zionist knows, raising opposition to Israel and Zionism immediately draws accusations of anti-Semitism, or if the dissenter is Jewish, accusations of self-hatred.
   
   It is precisely these attempts by Zionism to squash all criticism of Israel -- especially criticism by Jews -- that Mike Marqusee takes head on in his latest book, If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew. Starting with the papers of his late grandfather and Marqusee's own personal experiences being raised as a Jew in post-war America, the book beautifully weaves together a broad, yet intimately personal, history of anti-Zionism and radicalism in Judaism. Equal parts biography, autobiography, history, and commentary, Marqusee powerfully strips Zionism of its fundamental claim to represent and speak for all of world Jewry.
   
   Central to Marqusee's task is the re-appropriation of Jewish, anti-Zionist, and leftist history -- a history that is consciously buried by the Zionist establishment. In this process, he shows the strong connections between history, how we understand the present, and the frameworks we can utilize in determining the future.
   
   Marqusee weighs in on an impressively diverse and rich array of subjects including (but far from limited to) the Jewish workers' Bund, Jewish Enlightenment philosophy, political struggles within the New Deal coalition, the parallels between Zionism and right-wing Hindu nationalism, "left-wing anti-Semitism," discussions with Muslims about Zionism, Jews in the Middle East, and the parallels between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
   
   These discussions and explorations all radiate out from Marqusee's narrative center: the life of his maternal grandfather -- Edward V. Morand (aka EVM) -- a Jewish leftist active in New York politics in the 1930s and 1940s.
   
   Despite being involved in virtually every left-wing cause of his time, EVM increasingly became an ardent Zionist -- forcing him to unconsciously sacrifice many of his radical principles. Marqusee is particularly horrified by EVM's political positions in 1948 -- the year of Israeli "independence", or al-Nakba (the catastrophe), as it's known to Palestinians. Marqusee writes: "In the midst of [Israel's] one-way process of destruction, displacement and plunder, EVM's constant cry is 'no retreat.' He seems to have entirely lost his former distaste for war and militarism...In this war, there seems to be only one kind of victim, Jewish."
   
   Marqusee attributes EVM's political twists and turns, in part, to "[a] failure to imagine the people on the receiving end of your dreams. It's a failure rooted in Western and white supremacy, a network of unexamined assumptions that has proved much more ineradicable and insidious than anti-semitism. EVM's writings of 1948 resound with it, and offer inadvertent testimony to the racist character of the Nakba and Nakba denial."
   
   These political contradictions and hypocrisies are exactly what led Marqusee himself out of the Zionist trap.
   
   In a very candid section, Marqusee relates an experience that is no doubt familiar to many Jewish anti-Zionists: the first time he was accused of self-hatred. He describes hearing an Israeli soldier speak to his Sunday school class just after the 1967 Israeli war that began the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The soldier was going on about how "the Arabs are better off now, under Israeli rule. You have to understand these are ignorant people. They go to the toilet in the street." Marqusee responds: "Now something akin to this I had heard before. I had heard it from the white Southerners I'd been taught to look down upon. I had heard it from people my parents and my teachers described as prejudiced and bigoted. So I raised my hand and when called upon I expressed my opinion, as I'd been taught to do. It seemed to me that what our visitor had said was, well, racist." The young Marqusee was immediately denounced. Angrily, he went home to share this experience with his normally supportive parents. At the dinner table, he added to the story, putting forward his opinion, heavily influenced by the anti-Vietnam War movement, that, "'It was wrong for one country to take over another, or part of another, by military force'...Suddenly [my dad] barked, 'Enough already!'...Like my Sunday school teacher, he made me feel that I'd said something obscene...'I think you need to look at why you're saying what you're saying,' he said...'There's some Jewish self-hatred there.'"
   
   In the end, Marqusee answers the question set out by the title, "'If I am not for myself...', then others will claim to be 'for me'...[I]n defining myself as an anti-Zionist Jew, I am for myself, and at the same time and without contradiction for others...I find in anti-Zionism emancipation both as a Jew and as a human being...Jews today can no more escape the question of Zionism than they could the question of anti-semitism in earlier eras. The problem today isn't that Jews are in denial of their Jewishness or of the threat of anti-semitism, but that Jews are in denial about Israel, Zionism, the Nakba, the occupation, the wall...The people who call us self-haters want to steal our selves from us -- appropriate our selves for their cause -- and speaking as a self, I'm damned if I'm going to let them get away with it."
   
   The task of anti-Zionists is to explain the role that Zionism serves in the US imperial project while also breaking the notion that Zionism has anything to do with Jewishness. As Marqusee puts it: "[T]he Zionist dominance of the diaspora, and especially the diaspora in America, is a mutable, historical phenomenon -- not the inevitable expression of 'Jewish self-interest' -- and the continuation of that dominance is by no means guaranteed."
   
   Easier said than done, right? In addition to reclaiming history, we have to understand that Israeli war crimes and the logic of Zionism itself can shake even the most veteran of Zionists. Just look at Marqusee's dad's own development -- the same dad that first called him a self-hater: "[I]n the end, the Zionists tested his humanity beyond endurance. After the news broke about the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, he phoned me from New York. 'Ok,' he said, 'you were right. They're bastards.' He started to make contributions to Palestinian causes and to raise the issue among his friends."
   
   The struggle against Zionism's dominance over Jews and Palestinians won't be easy, but Marqusee has made an important and captivating contribution to that fight. If you've ever had trouble arguing that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism or if you just want to get a sense of the rich diversity of Jewish history and its relationship to radicalism, then you should pick up this book. I just bought a copy for my dad -- the first person to call me a self-hater. If Marqusee can convince his dad, then I guess I'll hold out hope for mine as well.

5 comments about The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.

1. Written in the first person, this book describes in vivid detail the horror of day to day life in a Nazi concentration camp. It's one man's eyewitness account of the camps, the death and degradation he faced on a daily basis, and how he clung to his humanity ~ and his life ~ against such unbearable odds.
   
   Most telling ~ though not really very surprising, given the vast power differences between prisoners and their guards ~ was his recollection of camp politics. He managed to survive by taking advantage of a guard whose friendliness toward him turned into sexual interest.
   
   This book is not for the faint of heart. The scenes of horror that play out ~ the executions, the torture ~ are not graphic in their description, but the stark, terse language in which they're conveyed, married with the sense of hopelessness you read between the lines, speak more to the brutality of the Nazis than a thousand descriptive paragraphs ever could.
   
   But this was probably one of the best books I've read on the Holocaust. I wish it were required reading for every person, everywhere, as a testament of the human spirit in adversity and a warning to us all. Perhaps then we could begin to move past our differences to a more peaceful co-existance.



2. This is a must read for everyone who wants to discover the whole truth abut the concentration camps that the devilish Nazis set up during WW2. It's also a must read for every gay man in the world because it documents an important chapter about how gay men were so ill-treated (starved, beaten, horribly tortured, dishonorably killed) during ww2 and afterwards. I'm just sorry that the author didin't identify himself, because if he was living today I would try to find him and thank him for telling his story. It also documents the horrible descrimination that the gays suffered after 1945 until the 70s and how differently they were treated than the jews. These had the holocaust horror recognised immediately after the war was over, but no such luck for the few gay men who survived the camps (mostly Sachsenhausen and Flossenburg). Don't miss this book if you're setting up any kind of document, museum, documentary about gay people in the 20th century. I'm so touched by the men who died in those camps, I just can't believe how much they suffered....I've been at Sachsenhausen 2 months ago, and they had a sign in memory of the gay people that have died there, but I didn't realize the horror in it's full scope. All this just makes hate more and more anyone who defends the nazis and that deny the holocaust. I hope the nazis who did these crimes burn and suffer in hell for all eternity for everything they did. But I think it won't be enough punishment.....



3. The dirty closeted secret of the Nazi Holocaust is and was the persection of gays and the subsequent systematic effort to exterminate them. This book is an eye opening account of an actual gay survivor of this 20th Century atrocity. It is absolute MUST reading for anyone who wants to understand aspects of the Holocaust, or for any gay man or woman in America today. Eye opening and brutal, this book will provide the reader with a glimpse of history not often told.



4. Such a good book. It gives a different perspective on the Holocaust. It's a page turner...I couldn't put it down once I got past the first few pages. Everyone one should read!



5. A sodomy law had been on the German law books since 1871, a law known simply as Paragraph 175. Only a few people were ever sentenced under this obscure law until June of 1935 when, after the rise of Hitler and Nazism, the Nuremberg laws were enacted and the consequences of Paragraph 175 strengthened. Where once before, you had to be caught in the act of same sex relations, now simply receiving a letter or the spreading of idle gossip would have you sent to a concentration camp.

   "The Men with the Pink Triangle" is one anonymous man's account of the harshness and cruelty faced by gay men at the hands of the SS and the ruling Nazi party, as well as by the other prisoners -- criminals, politicals, emigrants -- who viewed "filthy queers" as lower than the rest of them. They were distinguished by the large, pink triangles sown onto their prison outfits, making them easy targets for taunts and punishments. Also, homosexuals labored through the worst of the work details and "volunteered" for medical experimentation, which usually resulted in their deaths.

   Some advantages also appeared for gay men. The "Capos" who were in charge of the prisoner barracks, often made lovers of some of the prisoners, giving them some protection and better rations and clothing. As is says in the book: "Homosexual behavior between two 'normal' men is considered an emergency outlet, while the same thing between two gay men, who both feel deeply for one another, is something 'filthy' and repulsive." The anonymous man used this to his advantage and survived the camps and the threat of being sent to the front lines.

   Ths is a moving and powerful story about survival and about the right to be who you are, during one of the darkest times in world history. Highly recommended.

5 comments about My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin.

1. I usually make a point of not re-reading other Amazon reviews before writing my own review of a book I've just finished, but in this case, for some reason, I strayed from my usual practice...
   
   I'm surprised that few of my fellow reviewers have mentioned how amusing Peter Gay's book is - this is the one aspect that drew me in when I finally got around to reading "My German Question" - his description of projecting anti-semitism on a German money changer when returning to Germany as an adult. I found his self-deprecating self-analysis very funny and very entertaining.
   
   Many people, including non-jews, who pay attention to such things, feel ambivalent about modern Germany. I myself, an erstwhile German Literature scholar, have said things in anger that could probably get me arrested (I have since been told that it is actually illegal to call someone a Nazi in Germany today), to a native who had taken my seat at the Hofbrauhaus. One of the minor disappointments of my life was to discover that Germans today are not obsessed with the question of German collective guilt - that Germany exists only in the novels of Heinrich Boell, from what I can tell.
   
   I agree with those who have noted that Gay has a tendency to tell us that times were tough, without really describing what specifically was tough about it, in detail. We read a lot about his strategies for coping with his isolation as a Jew in Nazi Germany, and I found this very interesting, but I missed seeing more description of what it was exactly he was coping with.
   
   The book makes a very interesting companion to Wolfgang Samuel's "German Boy" and especially "Coming to Colorado" which I also read recently. It's ironic that both Samuels and Gay should end up in Denver, of all places.
   
   One minor frustration with this paperback edition: the book is tall and thin, an annoying form factor that I did not enjoy holding. I probably would not buy this book if I had picked it up browsing in a bookstore, and I put off reading it after ordering from Amazon simply because I didn't like the shape. In the end however, I'm glad I overcame this deterrent!



2. Peter Gay's elegant, unsparingly honest testament to the Berlin he knew as a young person is unlike any other memoir I've encountered. One would think, reading some of these other reviews, that Gay should be faulted for not suffering enough. He explains his own passage through childhood in an honest, decent way, and not without humor, either. This quiet, passionate and thoughtful memoir is the work of a disciplined historian whose writing is scrupululously honest and is remarkably free of the usual taint of egotism that characterizes so many memoirs. A valuable document of social history as well as a satisfying read.



3. I first became annoyed with the author for talking and intellectually telling us his story in the manner he does. He was one of the few Jews in Berlin who was able to continue his life with family, friends and others until late in the decade. He tells us but shares little about feelings or what it was like emotionally to be there. What did he feel attending a "Gymnasium" with non Jewish Germans long after most Jews could have. Was there conflict and ambivilance, guilt? The discription of his first return to Germany in the early 60's is gripping. Soon a profound sorrow and rage for this educated and intellectlal man overcame me. He indeed was a victim of the Holocaust as much as any other victim albiet he was lukier than some. As a psychiatrist I've treated many holocaust survivors and their children. He actually explains though indirectly that his ultimate survival as an integrated person lied in his ability to repress, supress and disconnect from much of the horror. I wanted something that he could not give me. I believe he is a hero for writing this book and exposing as much as does to himself and others. It is so easy to become angry with the victim. He has surely suffered his share in life. His survival is his badge of courage.
   Jo Ann Terdiman



4. It is perhaps best to begin by saying what this deeply personal and moving account is not. It is not the memoir of a man whose mother or father "had been hauled to a concentration camp" (p. 22). This is the memoir of "one of the lucky ones" (p.22). It is nonetheless, a tale of a survivor.
   
   It is the story of a man whose hormones forced him, a young adolescent Jew, to look at the hated newspaper Sturmer which portrayed Jews as evilly lusting after pure Aryan girls but which "could not leave sex alone." And while he looked at the images of the dangerous cockroach-like Jew lusting after pure beauties-him-he grew of age. Is it to be wondered at that he did not, as he tells us, lose his virginity until long after university?
   
   And yet, Peter Gay was one of the lucky ones. He only lost two members of his family to the gas chambers. Both were blond and, in my opinion though not Peter's, rather pretty. One of them played Germania in school plays. The Nazis (or perhaps ordinary Germans? Or maybe Poles, Croats, Latvians?) gassed her. Peter, however, was not gassed. He was not even in a concentration camp. Peter was one of the lucky ones.
   
   All he did was live in a world, a Berlin that became smaller and smaller. Not only could he not do certain things but more and more he could not go certain places, be on certain streets, or associate with certain people. Non-Jewish doctors for example. And the radio and announcements and the laws and the newspapers made it plain to him that he, a Jew, was a "blot on humanity" with whom "true" Germans should not associate. Gradually, his world became his immediate family and his aunts and uncles. Gradually, gradually he became a true pariah.
   
   Because he had become a Jew by dictat. For Peter makes it clear that his family was (and took pride in being) an assimilated German family. They did not think of themselves as Jews or as pariahs. To them madmen were running their country: Germany. And they were the true Germans. None of this, of course, impressed the Nazis and since the madmen had the power, they, the true Germans, had to leave. With a sensitive boy who was suffering from depression. A boy who was one of the lucky ones.
   
   And finally this is the story of the lucky boy grown into a man; a man who tries to reconcile himself to his Berlin. A boy/man who wants to desperately say (as did President Kennedy but in proper German) Ich bin Berliner but who cannot quite do so. A man who still roots for Hertha H.S.C. (a German soccer team) and who "regrets architectural adventurism that is working toward effacing the unique atmosphere of [Berlin]" (204) but who cannot quite say that he is a Berliner. A man who insists on being an American in the city of his birth; a man to whom Nazi Berlin clings like shards of Kristallnacht glass.
   
   For, in the end this lucky boy/man is a survivor. Because the Nazis made him a Jew by dictat.



5. As a historian I was recently confronted with a request by one of my students to find memoirs of a young Jewish person who had lived in the 1930s in Germany. Looking for memoirs of that type in English proved to be difficult. Most childhood recollections are anyhow problematic - due to the time difference and the natural lapses in memory. Then I stumbled across Peter Gay's book. After having read the book I decided to go to Amazon to see once again what other people thought about the book.

   Indeed, I found mixed reviews concentrating on Peter Gay as the scholar or Peter Gay as the survivor etc. I am German myself and on top of it a history professor who is teaching right now a course on Collaboration and Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Europe. So, the book became interesting to me from several perspectives. While I did not learn anything new as far as his years in Berlin are concerned, his judgments on Germany and the Germans troubled me deeply. Although I could not share Peter Gay's eye for an eye statements - especially concerning the bombing of Dresden and the acts of Zionist terrorists in early Israel (terrorism remains terrorism - no matter what side) - I was once again confronted with my German identity. Since I am born in 1959 I had nothing to do with those times directly - nevertheless my compatriots overall did commit those crimes to humanity. Gay's statements troubled me in the sense that once again I asked myself to which extent could we Germans have prevented this from happening. What could the "ordinary German" - to remain in Christopher Browning's words - have done? The resistance of Gay's friend Busse did not do much either in preventing the Holocaust! So, what could have been the solution?

2 comments about Disguised As Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, And the Creation of the Superhero.

1. I most enjoyed the Superman background. The book assumes knowledge of each of the comic book characters. There is no review of some of the more archaic "heroes."



2. DISGUISED AS CLARK KENT: JEWS, COMICS, AND THE CREATION OF THE SUPERHERO comes from a comics industry veteran who explores the backgrounds of famous superheroes and their creators - who, as it turns out, were largely young American Jewish men from Eastern European backgrounds. The focus on the hero icon in history, Jewish history and culture, and the comics industry as a whole thus makes for a strong recommendation not just for Judaic studies collections, but for any collection strong in either comics or cultural icons and analysis.

3 comments about Echoes from the Holocaust: A Memoir.

1. Mira lived to tell the tale of the holocaust. She's carried the message of strength and forgiveness, of working through the horrors she's lived by bringing the message to all who will listen. This is a strange and different book: on the one hand, so repulsive, so unbelievable, yet, on the other hand, compelling. Several questions ran through my mind: how does a person continue to live with any humanity at all after such an experience; why does one person live, while all the rest die; what kind of magnetism did Mira have that encouraged people to help her?
   I've met Mira; she lives here in my home town of Oak Ridge. She will speak before my class. Perhaps my questons will be answered, and I will know who Mira is after all.



2. Echoes from the Holocaust by Mira Ryczke Kimmelman is a riveting memoir that recounts her life as a child in Danzig to her life in the United States after World War II. Mira describes how the innocence, effulgence, and peace of her youth are shattered once the Nazi troops force her family to leave their home in Poland in October 1939. Embracing her Jewish heritage, Mira tells of how she strives to preserve her identity and pride as a Jew alive by receiving secret Hebrew lessons, attending prohibited Jewish gatherings, and becoming a member of the Zionist movement. Kimmelman refuses to let herself become discouraged when she learns that more than twenty of her family members and friends are killed by the SS officers.
   
   Infused with aspirations, Mira does whatever she can to cope with the persecution she and others receive at the ghettos and concentration camps. After suffering from typhoid, physical torture, starvation, horrendous living conditions, and simple dehumanization, Mira continues to be a burning flame among all the melted candles. All her struggles and lucky moments become learning experiences.
   
   Mira is able to move on with her life, after the end of the war in 1945. She marries Max Kimmelman, another Holocaust survivor, and has several children and grandchildren after. She gives them the names of her relatives and close companions so that her memories of them will live on. Although life in the United States becomes a bit of a struggle, Mira manages to carve out a content life with her husband and family. She continues to encompass her traditions and tell her story of survival.
   
   The memoir is written simplistically, but with very powerful imagery and episodes, that capture Mira's moments effectively. Metaphors, similes, or hyperboles are not necessary to make this memoir memorable. The book is divided into several short chapters that make it an easy read. With cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, this book becomes a real page-turner. An atmosphere of hope surrounds the events Kimmelman depicts and reiterates the idea that Mira has survived for a purpose. No history book can tell a story such as this one. To capture the meaning and depth of the Holocaust, one must go out and read Mira Kimmelman's account.



3. From a priveleged upbringing in pre-war Gdansk, the author and her family are deported first to Warsaw then to other ghettos and camps. The book is written in a frank, no-nonsense fashion and she really states the facts about what happened to her and her family. An amazing book and one that everyone should read.