3 comments about The Cat With The Yellow Star: Coming of Age in Terezin.

1. Author Susan Rubin presents the true story of survivor Ela Weissberger, born Ela Stein, whose family's Holocaust journey ends in Terezin, the Nazi camp famous for the art and music that was sustained there by the inmates and that was used by the Nazis to fool the Red Cross into believing they had given a model town to the Jews. Beginning at age 11, Ela survives physically by working in a garden, emotionally by bonding with the other girls in Room 28, and artistically by performing in the children's opera, Brundibar, a story of triumph over a bullying organ-grinder. Ela plays the role of the cat. Later, as an adult, she attends performances of the play around the world, telling her story and explaining how "music, art, good teachers, and friends" were her resistance against the Nazis. She also keeps in touch with the surviving girls from Room 28. Although a story about a child, the book does not shy away from describing the round-ups, deportations, transports, disappearances, disease, and starvation witnessed by Ela. Because of these harsh but accurate details, the book is not for younger readers. The abundant photos, color reproductions, and exhaustive source notes and references (a source is given for each and every quotation) make this book an outstanding resource for students of Terezin and the now-famous Brundibar. This book is a good companion to Brundibar by Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner as well as Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin. REVIEWED BY SUSAN BERSON (DENVER, CO)



2. A couple of years ago, Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner collaborated together to bring the world a picture book by the name of "Brundibar". Based on the opera that the Jewish children of the Terezin concentration camp had to sing, the book was filled to brimming with good intentions and sadly lacking in any and all factual information. It was more a labor of love than a book meant to enlighten children as to the significance of its content. When "Brundibar" came out, it felt as if it was reliant on a book that had not yet come to exist. Where oh where was the children's work of non-fiction that would tell younger kids what Terezin was, why "Brundibar" was important, and what it all meant? Three years later, Holiday House publishes Ms. Susan Goldman Rubin's, "The Cat With the Yellow Star" and a gap in children's collections everywhere is filled. And quite frankly, no other book could have felt quite as satisfying as this.
   
   The story of young Ela Stein begins on Kristallnacht in Sudetenland, after it was annexed to Germany. Ela was eight when that terrible night occurred, and she and her family soon ran away to Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1942, Ela was sent with her mother to Terezin from their home. A converted fortress, the camp was a place where Ela and the other children who lived with her in Room 28 would secretly study, learn art, and cast themselves in the opera Brundibar. In the show, Ela was cast as The Cat and the Nazi leaders of the ghetto decided that they would use the children's show as an example to the Red Cross of how well they treated their Jewish prisoners. Of course, of the 10,632 children sent to Terezin, only 4,096 survived. Ela was one of those survivors and the book shows how she grew up, met her friends from that time period years later, and has participated in Brundibar productions ever since. The end of the book shows a magnificent series of shows performed by children and Ela's presence at them over the years.
   
   The title is a rare creation: A children's book memoir under fifty pages. As with her other 2006 publication, "Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter", Ms. Rubin is particularly good at writing factual biographies for younger readers. She knows that you can pen a book without growing overly reliant on chapters of fifty pages or more. As such, a lot has been left out of "The Cat With the Yellow Star". The book makes the assumption that kids reading this will already be familiar with Hitler, the Holocaust, and The Final Solution. "The Cat" concentrates primarily on Ela's tale, and explanations will not be forthcoming for those kids that don't already have some of the basics of this story down. A person could learn so much from this book too. The fact that in 1945, "the Nazis turned Terezin over to the International Red Cross" as a way of liberating the prisoners amazed me. Ela's mother even stayed on when her daughters left because she had been hired by a female Russian officer as a maid. Rubin carefully culls all the information she has been given, then keeps the book moving seamlessly from page to page. You may not be able to remember all the names of the girls as Ela befriended them, but you care for them just the same.
   
   The level of documentation in terms of pictures, photographs, records, and images in this book is also astounding. Paintings created by the children of Room 28 are reproduced here and are sometimes able to shock because of what they leave you to figure out on your own. For example, there is a watercolor created by Ela's friend Helga called, "Arrival In Terezin" that shows families walking past a guard into the camp. Look closely at the picture and you'll see that everyone in the picture is smiling pleasantly, as if this were just a Sunday stroll in the park. Why would Helga present the people in this picture this way? Was it because she worried that the guards might see it and hurt her if they thought it was anti-Nazi propaganda? Was she just automatically making the smiles without thinking about it? Pictures of this sort raise all kinds of interesting questions suitable for debate amongst child readers. Of course, it would have been nice to be able to get a little more information from some of them. There's a photography of the "special ghetto money" printed specifically in Terezin that shows an old man with a beard holding two stone tablets with Hebrew writing on them. The bills themselves even have small stars of David on them. Why would the Germans have taken this level of care in creating money for people they were just intending to kill anyway? Was this a part of the Nazi effort to fool the Red Cross into thinking that people were being taken care of? Maybe just a little more info here and there wouldn't have been out of place.
   
   Not that Ms. Rubin ever skimps on the quality source material. The Acknowledgments alone are worth the price of admission. Ms. Rubin's Source Notes are of equal interest, to say nothing of the excellent list of Publications, Articles, Videos/DVDs, Sound Recordings, Interviews, and Internet Sites all clearly presented and beautifully aligned. If I'm going to get picky I might suggest that Ms. Rubin could have placed her four sentence Author's Note at the beginning of the book (where it would have put everything to follow in context) rather than at the end, but that's neither here nor there.
   
   All in all, this is a truly impressive piece of work. It pairs rather nicely with Kushner and Sendak's, "Brundibar" (which only makes sense in conjunction WITH this book, to be frank) as well as the recent Jennifer Roy title, "Yellow Star". "The Cat With the Yellow Star" really makes an effort, though, to show how life in a concentration camp wasn't the be all and end all in Ela's life. She made friends, left, created a life of her own, and is still speaking about what happened to this very day. This book is a testament to her strength, and it tells an important story to an audience that might otherwise never hear it. Certainly worth eyeing, at the very least.



3. Susan Goldman Rubin's work does much to broaden young readers' understanding of the Holocaust. Again she succeeds with this sensitive and passionate non-fiction book on a little known Holocaust era figure. While Rubin was researching for her award-winning book, Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin, she attended a performance of Brundibar, the children's opera staged at Terezin. In the elevator, she recognized Ela Weissberger as a woman who as a child had played the cat in the Terezin production. From that chance meeting, after years of communication and collaboration, this book evolved.
   Using photographs, along with full-color drawings by the children of Terezin, Rubin presents a poignant, matter-of-fact account of what it was like for Ela to be a Jewish child living with fear, yet able to escape for hours at a time through the power of friendship, music, art and learning. Rubin, who also wrote The Children of Terezin (2000) for older readers, never glosses over the daily threat of transports and the fact that some of the prisoners did not survive. But she also documents that, even in that traumatic time, devoted adults and determined children could forge close bonds, using art and music to help them endure and even grow. Includes numerous interviews with Weissberger and others, detailed source notes, print and non-print resources, and an index. Ages 9-12. Reviewed by Rita Berman Frischer

5 comments about Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story (Schocken Paperbacks on Judaica).

1. I never heard of Ruth Gruber before, after reading her adventures Hollywood should make a movie of her life, not for theatres, but HBO, or Showtime. Theatrically it would be a financial flop. But for cable a success.....



2. Ruth Gruber has witnessed so many of the great events of the 20th century. Lucky for us, she can write and photograph with real skill. You will not be disappointed with this book.



3. A ground-breaking photojournalist, Ruth Gruber did the work that many considered only men could handle; traveling about the world, writing and documenting with her exceptional photography skills stories that needed to be told.
   
   I was fascinated and impressed by Gruber's tenaciousness as well as her courage in going to those bleak, wild places to find compelling stories. Her contacts in the government for sure helped, but it was Gruber's own legwork that really got those jobs done.
   
   One of the most poignant aspects of her career was seeing how Jews who had survived the Holocaust were treated; it was like being back in internment as they tried to get to Israel, and she did well to document their plight.
   
   In sum, a great lady, who did it all magnificently.



4. "Witness"
   By Ruth Gruber
   Review by Phyllis Johnson
   Landing assignments her male colleagues hadn't, flying to the Soviet Arctic and then to Europe, seeing an exodus from a country ravaged during the Holocaust, Ruth Gruber was quite a photojournalist. She writes her memoir in "Witness" and serves as an inspiration to anyone spending his or her life tracking down a story, particularly one that may change someone's life for the better.
   A life full of adventure and passion for human justice is evident in her 257 page book published by Schocken Books. Sometimes smuggling a notebook in her bra, she ran the gamut from studying Eskimos in Alaska to talking to exiled prisoners in Soviet Gulag.
   Photos, black and white images, showing the Soviet Arctic and Alaska documented images of rustic living and reflections of the soul. She wrote of seeing the Aleuts in harm's way of the Japanese, then photographed their exodus. Her photos also show the exodus from the devastation caused by Hitler during the Holocaust in World War II..
   A master at capturing intense emotion found in hardships, she knew how to get down in the trenches to get the best possible photos to tell a story. She went behind the scenes, sometimes dubbed as a simulated general to avoid a worse fate if captured as a spy.
   Later, she got stories from the refugees onboard an army transport and then pulled into the NY Harbor on August 3, 1944- the same day Anne Frank's family was betrayed. Ruth was accompanying to the United States 1,000 refugees invited by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt while day and night Adolph Eichmann was rushing cattle trains carrying 750,00 Jews into the death camps at Auschwitz.
   She records her travels to Europe, the Holy Land and the Arab World, and how she came to be witness to the Nuremberg Trials. Seeing the plight of the Jews trying to come home to Palestine, she interviewed both Arabs and Jews, and followed the journey of Iraqi Jews to Israel. Seeing compassion in a lawyer and social activist named Phil, she was moved to marry him.
   Ruth Gruber's account of the ongoing struggle for those seeking justice and fair treatment in life is both vivid and poignant in her book, "Witness."
   
   Review by Phyllis Johnson, author of "Being Frank with Anne" -poetic interpretation of Anne Frank's diary. (Community Press- end Nov 2007 release)



5. I have just listened to an interview with Ruth Gruber with Sara Ivry on the 'Nextbook' site. Gruber is ninety- five years old. Her voice is weak but her mind is absolutely clear. In the interview she tells about how she got her start in journalism with the International Herald Tribune, and how on assignment with it she witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Germany. She also is asked about the heroic endeavor in which she helped bring one - thousand orphans to America. She also tells of her witnessing the brutality of the British in boarding in waters outside Haifa the ship 'Exodus' that was packed with Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
   Gruber in her thirty years as a correspondent traveled wide and far. The one - hundred ninety pictures in this book are in themselves a stunning testimony to her dedication in witnessing the vagaries of the human drama.
   However what comes through most strongly is those chapters of her life in which Gruber was not simply witness but active rescuer of others. When asked which photograph made the strongest impression on her. She said it is one from the Shoah in which there are three small children, two brothers protecting their small sister. One brother is smiling happily
   but the sister who is the youngest of the children has the saddest eyes Gruber has ever seen. She feels the child looking out from those eyes towards the parents who are not there and who will never be seen again.

No comments about Dealing with Satan: Rezso Kasztner's Daring Rescue Mission.

3 comments about Anne Frank: a photographic story of a life.

1. I just finished this book a few minutes ago and I just picked it up an hour ago. I re-read some parts, and I loved it! I loved the pictures, I had never seen most of them. I never knew there was a picture of one day old Anne or her and her sister Margot when they were young like on pages 12 and 13. Well written!



2. I bought this for my daughter's recent 10th birthday. She had been asking questions about the Holocaust and I thought the best way to answer was to give her an "introduction", so to speak. She has not put this book down in over a week -- she brings it with her everywhere, along with a few other books on random subjects.....so is the short attention span of a 10-year-old. Who can better get the attention of a young girl, than something written by another young girl, right? This book will whet her appetite for future class assignments on the subject in years to come.



3. "I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart." ~Anne Frank
   
   The DK Biography of Anne Frank is a combination of her life and the setting in which she lived. Kem Knapp Sawyer explores Anne Frank's life in Amsterdam and then shows how her life changed as she was forced to hide in the secret annex. She explains the frustrations Anne felt as she was locked in just a few rooms and how her emotions often overwhelmed her and how her situations brought on depression.
   
   Anne Frank's story has always fascinated me because it represents the risks human beings will take to protect the innocent and it also shows how individuals can endure great hardship in order to see a new day of freedom. Through her diary we can understand the world of a child hiding from death itself.
   
   There are pictures of the diary, pictures of the large bookcase that concealed the entrance to the hiding place and what Anne could see from the attic window. The author also explains how there are three versions of Anne's diary and how her diary was eventually published with original and revised diary entries.
   
   As the author notes, we can't always escape suffering and cruelty, but we can try.
   
   ~The Rebecca Review

5 comments about Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz.

1. I give this book five stars because of its historical value. This work not only gives insight into the mind of the leader of perhaps the greatest death factory ever built, but also allows a clearing-up of some errors that have accreted in the decades since that horrible time.
   
   Hoess rejected God and the Church (p. 52-53, 57, 59, 72, 192), having rebelled against his father's wish that he become a priest. Like Himmler, he became an Artaman (pp. 202-203; a communal movement resembling the 1960's US communes, albeit Teutonic-centered) before switching to Nazism for his substitute religion.
   
   Hoess wrote: "Until the beginning of 1942 the main body of prisoners was Polish." (p. 128). Many Poles were murdered secretly (the cause of death listed as natural), "...because of political and security reasons..." (p. 224).
   
   During the Auschwitz Carmelite convent controversy, attempts were made to belittle the victimhood of Auschwitz Poles through the premise that they, unlike most Jews, were not generally killed upon arrival at Auschwitz. Hoess, in contrast, rejected any such dichotomy (if anything, praising the slow-death genocidal methods--as perfected by the Communists): "The Gestapo delivered the prisoners to the camps to be exterminated. It made no difference to them whether it happened by firing squad, gas, or by the horrible conditions in the camps. It was part of their plan not to improve conditions in the camps...Thus, the concentration camps were changed deliberately, and sometimes unintentionally, into large-scale extermination centers. The Kommandants received extensive composite reports from the Gestapo about the Soviet concentration camps. Escaped prisoners had made reports about the conditions and organization of these camps down to the smallest detail. They emphasized that by using forced labor methods the Soviets were annihilating entire nationalities." (pp. 168-169).
   
   Holocaust-uniqueness advocates sometimes claim that the genocide of the Polish intelligentsia, unlike that of Jews, served a rational purpose--the elimination of resistance. Actually, the latter was, at most, a hoped-for byproduct of this nation-destroying act: "I want to add this, that the general opinion at SS headquarters was that the total annihilation of the Polish intelligentsia would also destroy the resistance movement. [SS Major] Thomsen was an ardent defender of this theory." (p. 322).
   
   Initial plans to kill all Jews gave way to the sparing of some of them for forced labor (p. 34).
   
   Hoess discussed the Jewish Sonderkommando in considerable detail. Those Jews temporarily got to save their lives by dutifully assisting in the deception, gassing, despoiling, and cremation of their fellow Jews. He also observed Jew-against-Jew behavior by some Jews who had no hope of postponing their own deaths. As they entered the gas chambers, they told Germans the addresses of fugitive Jews back home. Hoess commented: "I cannot explain what motivated them to reveal this information. Was it personal revenge, or were they jealous because they did not want the others to live on?" (p. 160).
   
   In common with many Germans, Hoess attempts to rationalize his exterminatory conduct by equating it with the Allied bombings of German women and children. He estimates German civilian casualties in the several millions (p. 171), which is at least a 20-fold exaggeration.
   
   As for lebensraum, Hoess belatedly concluded that Germany could have achieved it peacefully (p. 182).
   
   Hoess suggested that crude propaganda such as Der Sturmer had hindered the development of scientific anti-Semitism (p. 140). He also came to believe that the extermination of Jews only brought hatred against Germany and increased Jewish power by discrediting anti-Semitism (p. 183).
   
   This volume isn't limited to Hoess' memoirs. The entire Wannsee Protocol is printed in translation. It is obvious that the choice of Poland as the site of the German death camps was based solely on practical considerations (minimalized transportation) and had nothing to do with real or stereotyped Polish attitudes towards Jews: "State Secretary Dr. Buehler declared that the government of Occupied Poland would welcome it if the final solution to this question would be started in Occupied Poland. His reason: transport plays no important role here and the deployment of workers during the operation would not cause any problems." (p. 380).



2. My opinion is based on the comparison with the orginal publication in German, which I purchased in 1960 to provide essential information for the subsequent psychiatric evaluations of several thousand Holocaust survivors.



3. After Dachau was liberated, Army intelligence interviewed a woman at the camp who claimed to have been Rudolf Hoess' mistress while at Auschwitz. What details they could check were confirmed, and her interview became part of a Seventh Army report issued a few weeks later, a report that has been republished as Dachau Liberated: The Official Report (ISBN: 1587420031). For those who want to understand the infamous Hoess, that interview of "E.H." provides a much-needed check on his obviously self-serving autobiography. Here's a short passage from her interview:
   
   "According to my recollection, on December 16, 1942, about 11 p.m. I was already asleep, suddenly the C.O. appeared before me. I hadn't heard the opening of my cell and was such frightened. It was dark in the cell. I believed at first it was an SS man or a prisoner and said, "What is this tomfoolery, I forbid you." Then I heard "Pst," and a pocket lamp was lighted and lit the face of the C.O. I broke out "Herr Kommandant."
   
   Hoess didn't mention this clandestine affair in his autobiography, but details she gave fit with his account and with conditions at Auschwitz.



4. There is another autobiography of Hoess titled "Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess". I would be interested in reading that account but am curious how that could differ from "Death Dealer". Given the circumstances the man at the end of his life did not have a whole lot of time to write different autobiographies. My guess is the two books are essentially the same.
   
   As for Death Dealer itself it is not often one reads an account of the concentration camps from the "other side". I had read other summaries that portrayed Hoess as a mid-level cold-hearted bureaucrat whose account of his SS career was pretty much emotionless and he treated his activities in the same manner an accountant or a department store manager or a mechanic or (pick a career) would describe their career. I thought before reading the book that whatever one may say about him he would at least not grovel for forgiveness and would defiantly flip his middle finger at the world before climbing the steps of the gallows. After all, when he wrote his memoirs in 1946 and 1947, there was little suspense over what his fate would be. So sugar coating his past was not going to change his future.
   
   Although there may have been some shred of decency in the man one could not escape the feeling that he recognized himself as a war criminal only because his captors called him a war criminal. In other words his "mea culpa" would probably not score high on the sincerity scale. The victorious Allies were the new authorities over his life and if they considered him guilty and a war criminal then he was guilty and a war criminal. Whether he personally thought so or not was not relevant. And that was pretty much how he conducted his life. Whoever his authority was pretty much controlled his life. He was the commandant of the most notorious of all Nazi death camps because his superiors made him the commandant. He killed because he was told to kill -- just as he was to die because he was told he had to die.
   
   He admitted the horrible conditions of Auschwitz -- and other camps. It was not Hoess' fault. His superiors -- starting with Hitler and Himmler -- put impossible demands on him and did not provide adequate resources. The conditions were horrible and only got worse as the war progressed due to the lack of resources due to the stranglehold the Allies put on Germany. It was not Hoess' fault. The inadequate resources included inadequate officers, staff, and guards who committed many atrocities for which he had little or no control. It was not Hoess' fault. The inadequate resources included inadequate building material, latrines, barrack space, food, water, sanitation system, and medical supplies. It was not Hoess' fault. The concentration camp administration reflected the ideals of Thomas Eicke, the founder of the concentration camp system. It was not Hoess' fault.
   
   Although the man blamed others for the nightmarish hell of Auschwitz and other concentration camps he accepted responsibility because it was engrained into him that the commandant is responsible for all activities within the concentration camp.
   
   This may be as close as one may come to reading an account of the "other side". Although one's opinion of the Holocaust may not be altered by Rudolf Hoess he does share insight that one normally does not see about this dark chapter of the history of humanity. Most people know what it is like to be over tasked and under resourced. But most people do not know what it is like to be over tasked and under resourced in his particular career field.



5. On April 16, 1947, Rudolph Hoess, the infamous Kommandant of Auschwitz was hanged in his former concentration camp for, "crimes against the Polish people." While awaiting trial, Hoess, who knew he would pay for his crimes with his life, sought to renew the spiritual connection he had eschewed as a youth. Accordingly, he recounted his time in the SS for his captors. His story is also that of the darkest side of the Third Reich.
   
   The book begins with a discussion of the, "final solution," of the Jewish Question. He tells how he was ordered to establish a camp at Auschwitz for the purpose of eliminating, "enemies of the state." Details of camp construction and experiments to find the appropriate gas he describes without emotion. Yet he relates questions asked by young SS soldiers and inmates as to how small children could be an "enemy." His "party line" response fooled some, but never himself.
   
   Hoess also describes the victims he tried to destroy. Jews had "strong family ties;" gypsies were, "childlike;" the Jehovah's Witnesses were worthy of emulation. The SS was challenged to have the same devotion to the Fuhrer as they had to Jehovah. In chapter 22 he describes the gassing process as only he could do. His primary concern was to dispatch his victims quickly and efficiently without displaying emotion that would affect young guards. Here, he admits, he hid behind an iron mask. Particularly interesting is the story of a young, extremely attractive, Jewish girl who fought back even as she was undressing for the gas chamber. Resistance was rare but in this case, effective, very effective!
   
   The book describes his early life and the events that caused him and many others to blindly follow the SS motto: "Fuhrer, you order. We obey!" Hoess gives a detailed description of the hierarchy of the SS. Men, who had been portrayed as super-human, are shown to have been far short of that ideal. Alcoholism and suicide rates were high; competence was low! Still, operations continued despite all difficulties because, "Orders were orders!"
   
   Death Dealer is a first person account of the operations of the most infamous death camp in history. After sending an estimated 2.5 million people to their deaths, the Kommandant, ended his life by doing one decent thing: he left his memoirs so no one could deny this ever happened. For that, the world owes Rudoph Hoess, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, a debt of gratitude.

5 comments about Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate.

1. This book enlightened me about many historical connections, above all, about Henry Ford's strong influence on Hitler, and his acceptance of honors from him. The author offers very fine understanding of the American scene that fostered Ford's views, and also the reaction to Ford's publications of major antisemetic works.
   
   Unfortunately, the American scene has recently showed uncomfortable parallels with Ford's views. The antisemetic campaign about the "war on Christmas" makes "Henry Ford and the Jews" all the more relevant in 2005.
   
   Hendrik Hertzberg, in a recent New Yorker article about the ongoing phoney war on Christmas, made a direct connection to Henry Ford and his antisemitism. He wrote:
   
   ... Christmas itself, in something like its recognizably modern
   ... form, with gifts and cards and elves, dates from the early
   ... nineteenth century. The War on Christmas seems to have come
   ... along around a hundred years later, with the publication of
   ... "The International Jew," by Henry Ford, the automobile
   ... magnate, whom fate later punished by arranging to have his
   ... fortune diverted to the sappy, do-gooder Ford Foundation.
   ... "It is not religious tolerance in the midst of religious
   ... difference, but religious attack that they"-the
   ... Jews-"preach and practice," he wrote. "The whole record of
   ... the Jewish opposition to Christmas, Easter and certain
   ... patriotic songs shows that." Ford's anti-Semitism has not
   ... aged well, thanks to the later excesses of its European
   ... adherents, but by drawing a connection between
   ... Christmasbashing and patriotism-scorning he pointed the way
   ... for future Christmas warriors.
   --- From "Bah Humbug" www.newyorker.com, posted 2005-12-19



2. I think I was the last person in the United States to become aware of Henry Ford's anti-semitism.

   I make it a practice to study one person a month and I decided as a business builder, Henry Ford was worthy of my attention and study.

   I found this particular biography and thought, "OK, this has a completely different approach, let's try it on."

   I found Baldwin's passion and zealousness for his topic and his particular slant to be very powerful. As is frequent in such writing, it also became a barrier because every action Ford took became, through Baldwin's eyes, a matter of Ford being the Personification of Evil.

   I am not condoning Ford's thoughts, beliefs or behaviors. I am believing that not every action he took was a result of some undercurrent of Anti Semitism.

   That said, this book is worth a read due to the level of research Baldwin has done both in this biography and the biography of one of Ford's friends and role models (and less rabidly Anti-Semitic although there was some there) in Thomas Alva Edison.

   I just had this thought: I wonder how many business leaders remain staunchly racist... yet it has gone deeply underground in this age.

   I wonder how many business (and political leaders) continue to harbor less than transformed thought?

   Something to think about... and continue to stand against.




3. Neil Baldwin's "Henry Ford and the Jews" is a compelling look at how a genius at one thing --- the mass production of a good automobile --- could become such a dangerous buffoon when it came to another thing --- the mass production of an idea. At some point, our title character ceased to be just "Henry Ford, automaker" and instead became Henry Ford, wealthy and powerful symbol of international antisemitism. Baldwin's portrait of Ford in all his horrible glory is fascinating.



4. This book by Baldwin gave a searing history of automobile icon
   Henry Ford.Baldwin very capably shows one of the pioneers of
   American industry to be devoutly anti-semite.Ford himself was the
   financier behind a anti-Jewish newspaper that was published in
   Michigan.Ford was a fan of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on thew wall in his office.Henry Ford received an award
   from Hitler and showed up in person to receive it bringing with him many guests.Charles Linberg and Thomas Watson of IBM declined
   the same award.Ford was also able to sell Ford products to the
   Nazis receiving a monopoly on the Nazi vehicle market in the military.This book is packed with documented of Henry Ford's
   anti-semite activities.Read this you will become better informed.
   This is a good book. Buy it.



5. This book by Baldwin gave a searing history of automobile icon
   Henry Ford.Baldwin very capably shows one of the pioneers of
   American industry to be devoutly anti-semite.Ford himself was the
   financier behind a anti-Jewish newspaper that was published in
   Michigan.Ford was a fan of Adolph Hitler. Hitler had a portrait of Ford on thew wall in his office.Henry Ford received an award
   from Hitler and showed up in person to receive it bringing with him many guests.Charles Linberg and Thomas Watson of IBM declined
   the same award.Ford was also able to sell Ford products to the
   Nazis receiving a monopoly on the Nazi vehicle market in the military.This book is packed with documented of Henry Ford's
   anti-semite activities.Read this you will become better informed.
   This is a good book. Buy it.

1 comments about As Good as Anybody.

1. This is a good nonfiction picturebook for older children interested in the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s. It compares the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish Jew who fled the Holocaust as a young man and came to the United States, where he was drawn into the civil rights movement, and became one of MLK's allies in the Jewish community. Both men were bright, articulate and charismatic, and they were both motivated by their sensitivity to injustice, which they saw plenty of in their own young lives. The book shows how people from different cultures and divergent faiths can join together for a common good, and transcend the differences that are often used to keep people apart. Although their religious faith is mentioned, it is used in a restrained, tasteful way, making the book accessible to more secular or nondenominationally-oriented readers. Good starting point for a 20th Century civics/history lesson. (ReadThatAgain children's book reviews)

4 comments about Dona Gracia of the House of Nasi.

1. I read this after reading Naomi Ragen's fictionalized version of Dona Gracia's life, The Ghost of Hannah Mendes. The two books are complementary, as Ragen's romantic treatment of Dona Gracia's life adds depth (though not necessarily historicity) to the relatively few facts about her that we actually know and that Roth recounts.
   
   Roth writes in the style of an old-school historian, trying to weave a human tale from sometimes fragmentary records. The footnotes, in which he points out his disagreement with other historians of the Inquisition and of the converso Jews, and sometimes his own changes of mind about the sequence of events, are perhaps the most fascinating part of the book. He is also a master at historical detective work, getting the most he can from the documents available.
   
   At bottom, however, we don't know all that much about Dona Gracia, so Roth's extravagant claims that she was the most important Jewish woman in a millennium or more do not quite ring true. Were it not for that consideration, I would have given this fascinating monograph five stars.



2. Certainly, the title character must have led an interesting life. But I found this book less interesting than I had hoped, just a listing of one event after another. However, I did get some sense of how difficult the lives of Jews were in Southern Europe; even Iberian Jews who converted to Christianity were never safe from Christians who were happy to accuse them of backsliding in order to have an excuse to confiscate their property.
   
   The only way to avoid this problem was to move (as Dona Gracia did) to Muslim lands, because the Ottoman Empire was much less anti-Semitic than most Christian governments. In fact, the Ottoman Empire actually protected Jews in Christian Europe by insisting on decent treatment of Jews with ties to the Empire. One lesson of this book is that Jews never have permanent allies or permanent enemies, only permanent interests.



3. This is the biography of Dona Gracia, a Jewish woman who lived in the 15th century and whose personality is characterized by intelligence, shrewdness, generosity, and religious devotion. Born in Spain, she went to Portugal in 1492, following the expulsion of the Jews. In Portugal she was forcibly converted to Christianity and became one amongst many "New Christians," "Marranos," or "Conversos." At the age of 18 she married Francisco Mendes, the richest merchant in Lisbon at that time. Seven years later she became a widow and successfully took over her husband's business. Determined to reach Turkey where under the protection of the Ottoman Empire she would be able to profess her faith freely, she embarked on a long journey, which took 17 years. This journey took her to London, Antwerp, Lyon, Venice, Ferrara, Ancona, Ragusa, Salonika and finally Constantinople. Throughout her perils she proved to be highly courageous and an excellent businesswoman. She used her wealth and contacts to help Jews escape the Inquisiton, became the self-appointed protector of the conversos, built houses of prayer and teaching, devoted herself to good works, and was know as "the heart of her people."

   There are two importnat factors in the history of Dona Gracia: first, she represents one of the rare examples of fight against repression to the Jews by the use of commercial tactics (the Ancona Boycott), and the first to establish a Jewish colony in Paletine (Tiberias), a self-sustaining settlement for Jews and conversos from an hostile Europe.

   The author Cecil Roth is a well-known historian. He clearly demonstrates his admiration for Dona Gracia, his praises are many, and openly admits to the fact that he has not been able to find any historical proof to the contrary. Despite this embellishment, Dona Gracia remains a distant character, she carries an aura of mystery which contributes to her "divinity." Had the Jewish faith room for "canonization" Dona Gracia would certainly be a downright candidate. Her name stands amongst famous Jewish women, and as her contemporary the author Samuel Usque says, "she is much a heroine as Miriam, Deborah, and Judith."




4. This novel was amazing in detail and mesmorizing in content. It was well researched! I would recommend this to anyone who loves romance, intrigue, deceit and history.

5 comments about The Holy Thief: A Con Man's Journey from Darkness to Light.

1. This book is amazing. The story told is absolutely incredible, but not nearly as amazing as the man who's life is being told. He truly is The Holy Thief and I am blessed to be able to call him my Daddy! He is living proof that miracles do happen!!!!



2. One of the most remarkable stories I have read, as the other reviewers have noted, it is truly inspirational.
   Borovitz grew up in a warm family, but when his Dad died, his world fell apart. Unfortunately, he was also somewhat influenced by an Uncle who was, in reality, a Jewish mobster. Rootless, Borovitz quickly gravitated to a criminal lifestyle, undertaking increasingly more serious criminal acts. Eventually, he is forced to move from Cleveland, his birthplace, to Los Angeles. Once there, he continues his cons, and eventually lands in prison.
   This memoir is well-written. In particular, it describes that one important constant that Borovitz had in his life while growing up was Judaism. His going to Synagogue, the family holiday gatherings - all are described so that the reader feels the deep reverance that Borovitz had, despite his criminal life, for his religion.
   He also writes so well concerning his Change - when he began to turn away from his life of crime, and toward something far more worthy of his abilities - that of Jewish spirituality. I especially commend his description of how this took place; other authors who have undergone similar "revelations" often depict it as sudden and earth-shaking, and that from that 'moment on' each was immediately transfored from a
   low-life loser to a 'saint'! Thankfully, and far more realistically, in my opinion, Borovitz explains that he was changing, but that it was gradual.
   After his transformation, Borovitz completed college and then Rabbinical School. Realistically he hesitated even applying, declaring that they would not accept an ex-con gonif (thief) into their program. However, with the support of his friends, and the fact that G-d often works in mysterious ways, he was accepted with open arms.
   Today he is a Rabbi for a community of people who were like him once, but also like him, are committing to changing their lives.
   If you ever feel like cons, addicts, etc., can't transform their lives - just pick up this book. You will be amazed.



3. Next to the word inspiration in the dictionary should be a picture of Rabbi Mark Borovitz. This is the story of a man whom God chose to send to the deep valley of dispair and addiction so that he would have the experience and wisdom to encourage others to turn their lives around.
   Anyone in trouble or who knows someone in trouble should read(no-devour) this book.



4. Like another reviewer, I don't typically take the time to write a review of books I read. As the wife of an inmate who is changing his life for the better while incarcerated, I seek out inspirational stories of people who have hit rock bottom and have used that experience to reach out to others. I read a short review of this story in Reader's Digest and decided to seek it out.
   I read it cover to cover in a Saturday afternoon. The author is so frank, honest, and REAL. His story gives me hope for my husband's future, and proves that good can come after a life of mistakes.



5. I never take time to post reviews about books, but I had to comment on this one. I couldn't put this book down. I was especially moved by Rabbi Borovitz's definition of love, which you'll have to wait until near the end to discover. But it's so worth the wait. What an amazing story!

3 comments about Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust (NEA Heritage & Preservation Series).

1. 
   Zosia Goldberg traces her experiences in prewar Poland, war-torn Poland, and then wartime Germany (as a mislabeled forced Polish laborer).
   
   Goldberg tacitly attests to the fact that the prewar sympathy of Polish Jews towards Communism (the Zydokomuna) was widespread: "When I was going to school, I had feelings for communism, like all the young ones." (p. 7). She also frequently mentions her Communist-involved relatives (p. 8, 16, 29-30, 33). She absurdly refers to all prewar Polish political parties, excepting Pilsudski's, as Nazi parties (p. 7).
   
   In her ON THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION, Celia Heller would have us believe that prewar assimilated Polish Jews suffered just as much from anti-Semitism as did the much more numerous non-assimilated Polish Jews. In contrast, Goldberg writes: "I did not suffer much, but the Jews in Poland did. Especially if you had a Jewish accent and could not speak Polish, people would always say hurtful things, like: `Dirty Jew.' With my dark eyes and hair, I never heard that I was a Jew. They called me a Gypsy instead--admiringly!" (p. 9). (Of course, this was generally true elsewhere. The relative infrequency of anti-Semitism in the west, compared to that in eastern Europe, owed less to the virtue of tolerance presumably possessed by westerners and more to the assimilated state of western Jewry).
   
   Goldberg herself experienced hatred of exceptional virulence not from Poles but from her unassimilated fellow Polish Jews. She comments: "There was a Jew with a big beard who I had never seen before, and I went over to him and asked, `What's happening? Could you tell me?' I could not speak Yiddish, so I spoke Polish to him. I think he understood me, but he got very angry that I did not speak Yiddish, so he spat on me, `Du solst starben zwischem goyim!'...'May you die amongst the goyim!'" (p. 39).
   
   The author provides a telling commentary on German conduct during the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939: "It was a tremendous job to get to Warsaw because German planes were shooting everyone on the road. Everybody was running, and the Germans were shooting the refugees...They bombed the national shrines." (p. 12).
   
   In referring to Poles and Jews under the German occupation, Goldberg writes: "Everybody stole at the time..." (p. 20). This corrects Jan Tomasz Gross (FEAR) and his tacit mischaracterization of thievery as something in which Poles were the sole perpetrators and Jews the sole victims.
   
   From the earliest days of the German occupation, Goldberg had to contend with Jewish collaborators, including the Jewish Gestapo (pp. 23-24, 44), and Jewish informers who betrayed other Jews (p. 48, 133-134). She describes one roundup of Jews: "Along with the German Nazis, there were Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Jewish police." (p. 34).
   
   Throughout her book, Goldberg makes a sage distinction between ethnic Poles on one hand, and the Volksdeutsche on the other. For example, her experience with the Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa) was a positive one: "So the police came, a plainclothes Volksdeutscher. The real Polish police would never come. The Germans would not trust them because the real Polish police would do anything possible against the Germans." (p. 62).
   
   While in the Warsaw Ghetto itself, Goldberg observed the arrival of some German Jews, and commented on their behavior: "One day these German Jews were marching off to work past the SS men on guard. These German Jews were raising their hands, hollering, `Heil Hitler!' and the SS men did not even answer them, did not look at them, did not even spit at them." (p. 24).
   
   For all the talk about Poles and Jews being "unequal victims", it becomes obvious that Germans didn't see the Poles as having any more inherent right to live than the Jews. When in Germany for forced labor, Zosia Goldberg, concealing her Jewishness and saying that she was a Pole, went to a German doctor to treat her hepatitis. His reaction was revealing: "'You are from there?' he said. `All these Jews, these Poles and Jews, they should die. They should all be killed. I don't know why we are using them for workers.' `You are very sick', he then said. `You think I will give you medicine? You are very much mistaken. We need medicine for our soldiers, for our Germans. For foreigners--for Poles and Jews--nothing! The Poles, the Russians, and the Jews--nothing!'" (pp. 113-114).
   
   While a forced laborer at Erfurt, her fellow Polish forced laborers kept her Jewishness a secret and helped her (p. 147). Earlier, while seriously ill, Goldberg had been helped in Germany by a Polish woman who blamed the Jews for systematically cheating Poles (pp. 115-116). This adds to the numerous other accounts of ostensibly anti-Semitic Poles helping Jews.
   
   Goldberg inadvertently touched on the Pilsudski-Dmowski factionalism as to who was Poland's worst enemy: "Pilsudski had made believe that he was with the Germans against the Russians because he wanted the independence of Poland. He did not like the Germans. As a matter of fact, he hated them all. He only wanted Poland to be independent." (p. 119).
   
   Goldberg alludes to the anti-Christian character of Nazism: "While I was in prison, I always prayed regular Catholic prayers, not because I wanted to pray, but because it was forbidden. Prayers were not allowed. It was against Hitler." (p. 110).
   
   Goldberg repeatedly found that older Germans were less likely to practice Nazi anti-Semitic polices than younger ones (p. 50, 67, 95, 99, 121). But one of them opined that she could return to Warsaw, which would in future be part of Germany (p. 67). Although Goldberg doesn't develop this further, her experiences show once again that, while virulent German anti-Semitism is a relatively recent development, German Polonophobia is of ancient vintage.



2. The latest addition to the Mercury House "NEA Heritage & Preservation" series, Running Through Fire: How I Survived The Holocaust by Zosia Goldberg is a welcome and highly recommended contribution to the growing library of Holocaust literature, memoirs, and biographies. Zosia Goldberg was a Polish Jew living within the warsaw Ghetto when she was rejected by a fellow Jew who cursed her in Yiddish and spat upon her to die among the "goyim" (non-jews). Taken that incident as a sign from God, Zosia escaped from the Ghetto and posed as a Gentile in order to survive the Nazi Holocaust that led to the almost complete extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish community. Running Through Fire is a gripping story of narrow escapes, help from unlikely sources, bitter betrayals by fellow Jews, and a dramatic struggle against human folly on the one hand and human depravity on the other. After surviving World War II and the Holocaust, Zosia came to America, married, and then moved to Caracas, Venezuela and worked in the garment business. Returning to America after her husband's death, she now lives in Florida where she was materially assisted by poet, novelist and critic in recording her life experiences for the benefit of future generations.



3. This is an amazing story that depicts the strength of a young woman in an impossible situation who relied on her bravery and intelligence.