No comments about Let Freedom Ring: A History of the Jews in the United States.

4 comments about Hidden in France : A Boy's Journey under the Nazi Occupation.

1. Not a typical survivor book filled with hate, but more an accounting of the many good people who step up in horrific situations. An easy entertaining read, the chapters seem to flow, hard to put down until finished. Very easy to get involved and caught up in the events that happened. The author has a good memory for details of a traumatic time in his and the world's life.



2. Simon Jeruchim, the author of this memoir,was twelve years old when his secure world came to an end. With amazing recall,he relates how he came to hide in a small hamlet in Normandy. He worked on a farm, a harsh life for a small Parisian boy. Hardest of all was not knowing about his parents and small brother. He went dutifully to church and hid his identity from everyone. By nature optimist, he was looking forward to the end of the war and reunion with his family. He was reunited with his brother and sister, but his parents did not survive, unfortunately. This book is a beautiful example of a boy's courage and determination to stay alive.



3. this book was given to me as gift. i have a deep interest in matters pertaining to the holocust, and i was told that the book held a different perspective from other publications regarding the nazi era. and it surely did.....the author made no attempt to judge the nazi and the french in that era. all he did was relate this fascinating story, and i drew my own conclusions.

   the book traces his journey, as a parentless jewish boy,keeping a step ahead of the nazi and french, and extermination..a brave human being. . mr. jeruchim is a talented artist, as evidenced by the wonderful pictures which he drew, and are included in the book.

   ...




4. Simon Jeruchim takes you into the horrible world of escaping and hiding from french collaboraters and the Nazis during the second world war. His narrative is so compelling that you practically relive his day to day existence. His recount of the compassionate gentile families who hid him and his siblings is written staight from his heart.

1 comments about Diaries of Theodor Herzl.

1. As an Israeli, I have grown up with Herzl'a name. Streets and towns are named after him, and his picture is everywhere. But of the man himself, all I knew was the famous slogan "If you want, you can make it happen", and the attributed saying "In Bazel I have created the Jewish State". Reading the diaries revealed much more.
   
   Herzl was a complex figure, torn between his Jewishness and his love of German culture. He said in his diary "My only wish was to become a member of the Prussian nobilty". Realizing that as a Jew he cannot fully become German, was for him a great blow. The solution he found was to create a state that is modelled after united Germany, but that is run by Jews, and where Jews are not oppressed just because they are Jews. He intended to be the Chancelor of this state, just like his hero, Bismark. Herzl hit on something very meaningful with the Jews in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, where antisemitism was extremely overt. Judging from today's prespective, his mission was very successful - a Jewish state was established 52 years after he published his manifesto - The Jewish State (1896).
   The diaries reveal a man dedicated to the cause, extremely self confident, and a good judge of character. His identity conflicts are clear, although he was not fully aware of them. HIs writing is fluent and absorbing - Herzl was a talented journalist.
   This book is important - to anyone interested in Zionism, Israel, and national movements.

No comments about A Village Named Dogalishok: The Massacre At Radun And Eishishok (Library of Holocaust Testimonies).

5 comments about Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors.

1. This book is great! Although the conditions of the Jews were horrible, I enjoyed reading this remarkable story. It is more like three stories, becuse three young survivers each tell about their time in Auchwitz. Their names are Rachel, Frieda, and Tola. I enjoyed this historic book and you will, too!



2. This is a great book! I read it for the first time about a year ago, and it is still one of my favorite books! It is very helpful for school projects!



3. Kinderlager was a great book. It dipped into all the senses. In the book the feelings of three different people were expressed in three different books. The books were all about the time they spent in the Holocaust. In some way or another they all met up with each other in the labor camps. The book explains these peoples' experiences and grieving in great detail. The reason why I liked this book so much was because it was real. Just knowing those people really lived through those harsh conditions... it made the book more effective. I recommend this book to anyone don't miss out on the chance to read it!



4. This book is one of the few such non-fiction works thataccomplishes several goals while still reaching an audience that, inmy opinion, spans in age from the old to the very young. The graphicaccounts and descriptions may seem too harsh at first for youngreaders, however, the subtle tone and easy language turns a tragicstory into a recognizable tale of pain, perseverance, and ultimatestrength. I've been around these stories my whole life, and though Ifound it very hard as a child to read such accounts, I would recommendusing this book as a tool to teach children about the past so they canbetter direct their future...I hope you read my mother's story andhelp your children understand what happened, what can happen, and whatshould never happen again.



5. This book was a finalist for the 1999 Society of Midland Authors Annual Book Awards contest in the category of children's nonfiction.

No comments about Memories of Babi.

No comments about Jacob's Gift.

No comments about On Long Winter Nights: Memoirs of a Jewish Family in a Galician Township, 1870-1900 (Harvard Center for Jewish Studies).

1 comments about Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto: His Life and Works.

1. This book chronicles Luzzatto's life and provides excerpts of his various works. This text is not deep. It is written to a high school level. It is also written from a Hasidic perspective. Hasidic doctrine is interpreted into Luzzatto's writings. Particularly the doctrine of Tzadik and Hasid. It is somewhat of a stretch since kabbalistic brotherhoods had been structured with a similar master/student relationship since Judaism's encounter with Islam. (They are modelled on sufi brotherhoods.)
   
   Luzzatto was mentioned by the Baal Shem Tov as well as the Vilna Gaon as a source of wisdom. This makes him a significant figure in both post-Sabbatean messianism (found in some streams of Hassidism), and as a source of philosophic arguments for belief in Judaism.
   
   The main failing of the book is that it is not well footnoted, so it lacks any utility for further study. Furthermore, the book does not deal with the problems of the historical narrative, given that our primary source are the collected writings of Luzzatto that were preserved by Bassan, his teacher, and found in the archives at JTS, edited and published by Simon Ginzburg.

2 comments about War in the Shadow of Auschwitz: Memoirs of a Polish Resistance Fighter and Survivor of the Death Camps (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust).

1. "War In The Shadow Of Auschwitz" by John Wiernicki.
   Subtitled: "Memoirs Of A Polish Resistance Fighter And survivor Of the Death Camps". Syracuse University Press, 2001.
   
   In the dry September of 1939, Janusz Wiernicki was a young cadet who had just completed his freshman year at the Military Academy in Lwów, Poland. If the weather had been wet, the German 1939 invasion would have been slowed down, but it was a dry September. The first 88 pages narrate the rapid defeat of Poland and the shock experienced by this young boy as his entire world disintegrates.
   
   His options rapidly diminish. He can not stay at the "manor" of his family; (the Irish would consider his family part of the "Landed Class"). In the woods, he becomes part of a loose organization of Polish Army guerrillas ...Resistance Fighters ... who, it appears, spend their time wandering aimlessly from place to place. There is one "fire fight" where both Germans and Poles take casualties, but, interestingly, most of the time, Janusz is assessing the charms of the various young ladies he encounters. Youth will overcome!
   
   Janusz Wiernicki goes home on leave to visit his relatives and is arrested by the Gestapo as he is just about to return to the Resistance Fighters. Janusz was not successful in hiding his second set of forged identity papers.
   
   The remainder of the book, some 169 pages (or 66%) deals with the witness of Janusz Wiernicki to the inhumanity of the Nazi Germans towards the Poles, towards anyone Slavic, towards the Jews, towards Nazi defined "Untermensch". The author recounts how enforced starvation in the prison camps made food the chief subject of discussion, with the complementary issue being the avoidance of rigorous labor which would hasten starvation. Perhaps Wiernicki survived because his Grandmother was able to send him food packages.
   
   In one instance, Wiernicki used his Grandmother's food to procure a pair of contraband binoculars. Then, the author recounts how he used the binoculars to watch as Hungarian Jews were offloaded from the trains, sorted into the immediate death line and into the line where they would live for a short while more, and the horror of seeing families being sent, left to death, while some were sent, right to life. This eye-witness account is horrifying, but is the heart of this book.
   
   As the war winds down, Wiernicki and his fellow inmates are made to trek from Auschwitz to Buchenwald. At the very end, (of the book and the war), Janusz runs away from the line of prisoners trudging along. The German guards shoot but miss him. He runs and runs. He describes taking a pistol from a young German soldier, a dead young soldier in the side car of a motorcycle. Then he meets with a vehicle bearing the white star of the American Army. Witness.



2. A non-Jew, author John Wiernicki was a Polish partisan and political prisoner who vividly recalls his experienced during World War II and the horrors of being incarcerated in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was in 1943 that Wernicke as a Polish underground fighter was captured and beaten by the Gestapo, then shipped to Auschwitz. A Gentile, Wernicke's chilling memoir graphically details "life" in that infamous death camp, along with his personal battle to survive both physically and morally in the face of the utter evil that was the Nazi "Final Solution" for its enemies. Especially in the face of current efforts at anti-Semitic revisionism, War In The Shadow Of Auschwitz is a critically important and welcome contribution to the growing library of Holocaust Studies, as well as being recommended for World War II European theater reading lists and reference collections.