No comments about We Only Know Men: The Rescue of Jews in France During the Holocaust.

No comments about Deception: Growing Ip in an Amish-Jewish Cult (Growing Up in An Amish-Jewish Cult).

1 comments about Eternal Strangers.

1. After having read Shanghai Diary, I was waiting with great anticipation for Ursula Bacon's next book "Eternal Strangers." It did not disappoint. When I read a book in one and a half days, I consider it an excellent read and that's exactly how long it took me to read this book. It takes place before the years Ursula spent in a Shanghai ghetto as a young girl with her family escaping the horrors of Hitler's Nazi machine. It focused on the early years of her parents and extended family living in a beautiful, idyllic area of Germany where life was good until the unthinkable happened; leaving everything you possessed except for a small suitcase of clothing for the sole purpose of survival. Possessions became meaningless in their flight from evil. When I finished the book, I became immobilized for awhile in the solitude of my room contemplating today's current situation in the Middle East. Could a holocaust happen again?
   
   If you are interested in this period of history, this book takes you right there. You feel the strain of a family maintaining a normal life but at the same time fearing the daily anxiety of being hauled off by the Gestapo.
   
   I highly recommend this book to be reminded of the horrors of evil. We must not forget!

1 comments about Fortress of My Youth: Memoir of a Terezín Survivor.

1. Renée was 13 years old when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia. Born of Czech-speaking Jewish parents who lived in Josefov (Josephstadt), she had been baptized as child, but of course the Nazi race laws applied to the entire family (except to a much loved non-Jewish step-grandfather). For the next three years restriction followed restriction. During that time Renée kept a diary, which has certain elements in common with Anne Franks', recording all the passionate feelings of an adolescent girl, eventually cooped up with edgy parents in their home (which they had to share with a Yiddish-speaking family from Ruthenia), rebelling against her fate, fantasizing about being in love. She did in fact have a passionate and touching, mainly epistolatory, friendship with Jarmila, a non-Jewish girl two years older than herself whom she had met on a train. For sometimes Renée and her mother ran the risk of defying the Nazi restrictions on Jews leaving their neighbourhood and visited the grandparents in nearby Mnichovo Hradiste (Münchengrätz): in their house they could temporarily put their worries to the back of their minds and even sing and play - music had always meant much to the family.
   
   More and more people were being ordered to report for deportation. The Nazis took the Ruthenian family without their two small children, aged four and 18 months, and fourteen-year old Renée took over the mothering of them. But then in December 1942 it was the turn of Renée and her family: they were deported to Theresienstadt (Terezin).
   
   We know that the Nazis presented Theresienstadt as a `model camp' to visitors from the Red Cross. Did these take in the atrociously overcrowded accommodation, with well over 50,000 inmates in buildings that had been built for one-tenth of that number, so that each inmate had less than 1.6 square meters of floor-space? Did they take in its nature as a transit camp, from which thousands of people were transported to death camps to make room for thousands of newcomers? Did they notice the filthy conditions that prevailed in most of the camp? The tormenting infestation of bedbugs and lice? The carts which wheeled away the 100 to 150 dead each day (nearly 30,000 died there)?
   
   And yet, in the midst of all this, there were remarkable affirmations of life. The Nazis left the detailed running of the camp to its inmates, and even gave permission for some children to be accommodated in separate buildings, which were run by the most wonderful men and women who made it their mission to stimulate and educate these children (often to a higher standard than they would have experienced at school), to give them as positive an attitude to life as was possible under these circumstances, to make them be as clean and tidy as possible, above all to inculcate into them a strong ethical sense, so that, for example, they would help each other and share the few small food parcels that were initially admitted from the outside.
   
   As part of the `model camp' image, the Nazis permitted the inmates to stage concerts, choral works in the beginning, then instrumental music on instruments that had been confiscated. Famous musicians among the inmates insisted on the highest standards from ensembles who rehearsed after ten hours of hard labour in the fields or workshops and whose composition was constantly changing as the result of deportations. Renée herself took part in performances of Smetana's The Bartered Bride (with its opening chorus Let's rejoice, let's be merry) and The Kiss, and Verdi's Requiem.
   
   So there were exhilarating experiences in Theresienstadt (and I was reminded of the title of another such memoir - A Garden of Eden in Hell - see my Amazon review). They included intense personal, often sexual, attachments between these adolescents, only too often violently ending when one of them was selected for further deportation. Renée herself experienced this: there was passionate love between her and a young man called Milan, who would leave Theresienstadt on the same transport as her father.
   
   Renée's father and Milan were on one of the last transports out of Theresienstadt. She and her mother were due to go on one soon after, but by a miracle they were spared. And then there were no more transports. Only a few people, mostly women, were left in Theresienstadt to cope as best they could that winter until the Russians arrived to liberate the camp in May 1945.
   
   It was a desolate return home - so many people had perished: her father and her beloved grandparents among them. Jarmila had been arrested, but released because she was dying of tuberculosis: Renée managed to see her on the day she died. Milan had survived the death march from his concentration camp, but did not marry Renée. When the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia he had emigrated to Chile
   
   Renée's mother had managed to re-establish the family business, which was lost for the second time when it was taken over by the State. Renée herself went to university. She had accidentally left a letter from Milan in a library book, in which Milan had made flippant remarks about the East and about his `capitalist' activities in Chile, which nearly cost her the right to sit her final examination. But the letter remained on her police files and would cause more problems in later years. She still lives in Prague - but she certainly could not have published the last chapter of her book if the Communists were still in power there.
   
   A most memorable addition to the memoirs of Holocaust survivors.

1 comments about A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer.

1. Music could always transport Alice Sommer into an autonomous paradisical world. This helped her when the real world turned hellish under the Nazis; and the central part of the book is about those years.
   
   She was born in 1903 into a Jewish, acculturated and German-speaking family in Prague. She started playing the piano at a very young age, and at 21, made her debut as soloist with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1931 she married Leopold Sommer and their son Stephan (later to be called Raphael) was born in 1937.
   
   With the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939 their lives changed swiftly, with humiliating restrictions being imposed on Jews day after day. And then the deportations began. First, in July 1942 her 72-year old mother was deported from her Old Age Home to Theresienstadt (and from there to the Treblinka death camp). Then a year later, in July 1943, it was the turn of Alice, Leopold and Stephan, then aged six, to be sent to Theresienstadt.
   
   The physical conditions there were grim, but a few months before the Sommers arrived, the SS had decided to turn it into a `show camp= for observers from the International Red Cross - and so the deportees were provided with musical instruments (which had been confiscated from Jews) and were allowed to arrange their own entertainment. Alice gave many recitals, and the descriptions of these are very moving. Stephan, who was musically even more precocious than his mother had been at that age, was quickly roped in to rehearse and perform in Brundibar, the opera specially composed for the children in the camp.
   
   As defeat for Germany drew nearer in the autumn of 1944, the SS, possibly fearing an uprising of the able-bodied men in Theresienstadt, decided to send them to the extermination camps. Alice=s husband was among these: she never saw him again. She learnt later that he had survived the death-march from Auschwitz to Dachau - only to die there of typhus.
   
   But Himmler still wanted to preserve Theresienstadt as a `model' camp and to produce it in his defence at the end of the war. Alice had to work an eight hour day in barracks where slates were broken up to make insulating materials, work which was particularly hard on her hands; but in the evening she would often perform in the concerts that continued to be staged.
   
   In May 1945 Theresienstadt was liberated and in mid-June Alice and Stephan were able to return to Prague and to continue their music al lives there.
   
   But after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, it again became dangerous to speak freely. In March 1949 Alice decided to move with her son to Israel, where she was to live for the next 37 years. There her musical career as performer and teacher continued, while Raphael in due course became a cellist of world stature. After his marriage in 1966, he and his wife were based in London, and there Alice joined him in 1986.
   
   The book ends with the saddest thing that can afflict a loving mother: in 2001 Raphael Sommer died of a heart attack while on a concert tour in Israel. Alice was then 98, and coped with this grief as she had coped with so many other crises in her life, drawing some comfort from music (she still plays the piano in her Hampstead home for three hours every day). Never did she give way to bitterness; she always remained life-affirming; her philosophy eschewed hatred, whether for Germans or for Arabs. Her 100th birthday drew tributes from people from many lands. This moving book is one of them.

4 comments about Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan.

1. Having read many accounts of existence during the Holocaust, I recommend "Scroll of Agony" because it pulls the reader in on so many levels.
   The reader can learn about the system the Nazis used to try and fragment Jewish morale, culture, health and lives by attempting to suppress every aspect of Jewish life. What a powerful and understated diary!



2. Chaim Kaplan begins by blaming Poland's 1939 defeat on the "incompetence" of the prewar Polish government (never mind the fact that Nazi Germany was powerful enough to roll over most of Europe, and that it finally took several powerful, industrialized nations--combined--many years to subdue Nazi Germany). He also misrepresents the Poles as ones who were basically sympathetic with Hitler and who were only forced to change their minds when Hitler conquered Poland. In actuality, many prewar Polish politicians (e. g. Pilsudski) warned of the evils and dangers of Nazism. Then again, positive opinions of Hitler were common all over the prewar world. And just as some prewar Poles didn't mind Hitler so long as he was anti-Semitic but not overtly anti-Polish, so also some prewar Jews (especially German Jews) were ready to support the Nazi movement and its Polonophobia if it would only outgrow its anti-Semitism and behave more like the old-style German aggressive nationalism.
   
   Kaplan implicitly refutes those who say that there was no Polish Quisling only because the Germans never wanted one: "You will not find one single public-spirited citizen among them [the Poles] who is willing to be the conquerors' representative, to talk to his people and make them realize that they cannot change reality and must accept the yoke of German rule--like Hacha in Czechoslovakia and Quisling in Norway. We could also add Petain in France, that stupid old man who willingly said Kaddish for his country." (p. 206).
   
   In early 1940, Kaplan rejected the notion that the Nazis would be able to stir up the Poles to large-scale violence against Jews (p. 101, 114), but he realized that isolated attacks may occur because: "No nation lacks hooligan elements, and the conquerors have paved the way for them." (p. 114) and because: "Terrorists and troublemakers are not lacking among any people, and at all times and places they can be found in sufficient numbers." (p. 101). He characterizes the Easter 1940 events as follows: "The conquerors have begun a new political operation. Gangs of young toughs, Polish youth (you won't find one adult among them), armed with clubs, sticks, and all kinds of harmful weapons, make pogroms against the Jews." (p. 134).
   
   Kaplan comments: "The conqueror tramples upon both `inferior' races, but the Jews are on the lowest rung and the Poles on the next to lowest." (p. 81). At other times, he comes close to juxtaposing the victimhood of both peoples: "Nazi pride is unlimited. The Poles and the Jews are classed together as if they were both `natives' of African jungles. Both were supposedly created only to serve the conqueror." (p. 73). Kaplan includes the following amazing statements: "At heart, the conqueror hates the Poles more deeply than the Jews. Once the head of the Warsaw district, Dr. Fischer, said, `The Poles we hate instinctively; the Jews we hate in accordance with orders.'" (p. 204).
   
   Kaplan presents evidence that, in many ways, Poles were initially victimized by the Germans more than Jews. Consider the summer of 1940: "Today, Aryans were seized for work!...When pedestrians disappeared from the streets after the hunt began, they stopped the trolleys and took the male passengers off, whether they were Poles or Jews. After personal interrogation the Jews went home and the Poles were imprisoned. How good it is to be a Jew!" (p. 179). At other times, Poles wore the Jewish Schandeband to avoid forced labor (p. 150). Poles also sent their children to Jewish homes overnight to prevent the children from being seized by Germans for forced donations of blood for German soldiers (p. 152). In spring 1941, Poles hid in the Jewish ghetto during German mass executions of Poles (p. 254).
   
   About 140,000 Poles lost their properties, along with a comparable number of Jews, during the German creation of the Warsaw ghetto (p. 212; see also p. 266). (The occasional postwar Polish killings of Jews over properties, much exaggerated by Jan Thomas Gross in his recently-published FEAR, must be understood in the light of the atmosphere of complete disregard for property rights that had recently befallen both Jews and Poles.)
   
   Katsh, the editor, credits a Pole, Wladyslaw Wojcik, for preserving Kaplan's diary for posterity and for later discovering the second Ringelblum Archive (p. 14). Kaplan himself credits the Poles for smuggling food into the Warsaw Ghetto (p. 304, 316), and, in general, for not falling for Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda: "We thought that the `Jewish badge' would provide the local population with a source of mockery and ridicule--but we were wrong. There is no attitude of disrespect nor of making much of another's dishonor. Just the opposite. They show that they commiserate with us in our humiliation. They sit silent in the street cars, and in private conversation they even express words of condolence and encouragement. `Better times will come.'" (p. 82). Also: "Common suffering has drawn all hearts closer, and the barbaric persecutions of the Jews have even aroused feelings of sympathy towards them. " (p. 114). Later, Kaplan repeatedly credited Polish messengers for scouring the entire General Government to ascertain the fact that, up to that point, 40,000 "resettled" Lublin Jews were definitely no longer alive (p. 286, 291, 309).
   
   In his entry for July 22, 1942, Kaplan is candid about the fact that, even at that late date, Warsaw's Jewish officials continued to insist that Warsaw's Jews would never be deported (p. 319). And, in common with many Jewish chroniclers, Kaplan criticizes world Jewry for its indifference to the fate of Polish Jews (pp. 76-77). During the deportations of Jews to the death camps, Kaplan lambastes the Jewish ghetto police "...whose cruelty is no less than that of the Nazis..." (p. 324), and says that: "It is the Jewish police who are cruelest toward the condemned." (p. 326).
   
   Kaplan writes: "Nazism is not original. They took everything from Bolshevism, only that they expanded its rottenness." (p. 329).



3. This is the 4th Warsaw ghetto diary I've read and the 3rd I've reviewed. If I had to do it over again, I'd pick this one first. The author was a teacher and more than just a recorder of events. He was a gifted writer and master storyteller who was never deluded for a moment about what was going to happen and who never lost sight of the universal perspective. He writes in a wry, almost sarcastic style that makes his point effectively as he blasts the Nazis, Polish and Jewish collaborators, corruption in the ghetto, etc. He had me asking myself deep questions as I was reading. He constantly refers to the Nazis he encounters as stupid people. It shows how dangerous stupid people can be when given power. At one point, he says cruelty is a sickness that can affect whole communities and even entire nations. You see from his writings how contagious a sickness it is, and the more that violent, sadistic, atrocious behavior is permitted, the more it occurs. He vividly shows what can happen when people lose their sense of outrage. He knew what was going on at Sobibor and Treblinka and that the people being "resettled" were not coming back. He never trusted the Nazis, saying only evil can come from evil people. Who can argue with that when you are talking about people who lied up to the minute they closed the door of the gas chamber behind you? The last line in the book is "If I am taken, what will become of my diary?" He was not afraid of dying, but afraid that all his effort would be wasted. Well, it wasn't wasted. If only one more person reads this book on the basis of this review, I'll feel I have done my belated bit for a man who had real guts and unfortunately didn't live to see the ultimate survival of his people.



4. Kaplan's comtemporaneous recording of the destruction of the Jewish community in Warsaw, starting with the Nazi invasion of Poland is most gripping and compelling. It is most interesting because it was written without the "benefit" of other purported historical accounts or the need to explain why the Nazis acted as they did. Although Kapaln has a perspective and knows he is writing for history, his maniscript is mostly reportorial. When he is providing his opinion, rather than telling what actually happened that day, Kaplan let's the reader know.

   How refreshing to be able to read an historical work, without the "spin" that now accompanies most works about the Nazi occupation of conquered lands and the extermination of the Jews of Europe. This book is must reading for both serious scholars and those who are interested in the subject matter.

5 comments about Kindertransport.

1. IT IS A GOOD READING BOOK WHICH ALSO HELPS OUR KIDS TO REFLECT ON THE SACRIFICES MADE BY SO MANY PEOPLE DURING WAR WORLD II,IT IS A VERY TOUCHING STORY ON HOW PARENTS PUT AWAY THEM SELVES FOR THE BEST FOR THEIR KIDS.



2. I recently took an intensive class about teaching the Holocaust and ordered this book for both research purposes and to use in my classroom. Drucker's story of being separated from her parents and sent to a country where she didn't know the language or customs is powerful. Drucker was one of the "lucky" ones. Not only did she survive the the horrific consequences of the Holocaust, but her parents also got out alive. I recommend this book for middle school students and even 4th and 5th graders.



3. "Why is there a tree on top of the House?" asked Olga in the winter of 1932. Kindertransport is an autobiography about a girl named Olga. Olga has a mother, a father, and a brother. Olga is the youngest in her family. This book is about Olga and her family going through tough times. During this book Olga's family gets separated, Olga moves from family to family, and many more horrible things happen to her. Olga and her brother get sent away to England because it is too dangerous to stay in Germany when Hitler is becoming Chancellor. This book takes place in Germany, during World War II.
   In Kindertransport the chapters move quickly from one to another; sometimes you have to go back through the chapter to catch up on what you were reading the day before. Some advice that I would give to someone that wants to read this book is to be prepared for anything. There are so many different moods in this book that you will end up crying, laughing, feeling sad, and feeling like you would have wanted to be back in the time of Hitler, so you could have tried to stop him.
   I think the most important theme for Kindertransport is that, no matter what happens to you or your family, you can always get through the tough times without them. I think that is the theme because Olga went through hard times and didn't have her parents there to support her when she really needed it. Olga survived without her parents for so long, is because she had a lot of faith, and, new that she would see her parents again some day.
   I would recommend this book to people that like to learn about history and to people that don't know very much about Hitler and World War II. Also this book gives you another look at World War II because you get to know what happens to the children, not what happens in Germany, or what happens in the concentration camps.
   I would give this book about 4 stars because this book is amazing, exciting, and very funny. But the bad thing about the book is that it goes way too fast from one chapter to another. I would have given this book 5 stars if the book went slower through the chapters, and maybe had a little more detail in some chapters that a lot happened in them.



4. I had read a large variety of books,and i find this autobiography great,and in a way,it moved me. It's difficult to believed a girl of 10 or 11 years old to enter a new country on her own,especially when she hardly knew anyone from the country(other than her brother,Hans).I would say,this book is great, after Anne Frank's and several other biographies/autobiographies...

   If you read the book with great thoughts,you can feel the hatred and pain, of how young and old Jews were treated.It's a sad thing to know 15 million soldiers lost their lives on battlefields,and 32 millions ordinary folks lost their life...

   More than 50 years have passed...and the then little Olga's life have long changed...It's really almost impossible to believe the Olga today and the Olga years back...She had not only retrieved confidence,knowledge, but also witnessed one of the world's darkest storm...




5. Kindertransport is a fun book to read if you like a holocaust book. If you don't mind death camps then you will like to read this book. It give you info on the holocaust, and how they were treated. It is a wonderful book.

No comments about My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith.

4 comments about Hello, America.

1. After reading dozens of Holocaust memoirs, it is nice to see a continuation of how survivors adapted to life thereafter, especially as immigrants in America. There is so little said about how survivors adjusted to their new lives, since most of their stories end at the end of the war. After reading her first two books (which are a must to understand her perspective), I was left wanting to hear what happened next after reading this one. I loved the way she wrote about her mother with humor and her I was surprised at how some people she met in America were so ignorant of her plight and culture. It was very informative.



2. Livia Bitton-Jackson continues the story of her life after Auschwitz in "Hello, America," the third installment of the trilogy she began with the powerful "I Have Lived a Thousand Years." The year is 1951 and the narrator, whom everyone calls Elli, is ecstatic when she and her mother sail into New York Harbor. Elli wonders, "America, will you be my home? Will you embrace me as a daughter yearning to belong, an equal among equals....?" Although she never attended high school, she yearns to go to college and become a teacher. She also eagerly anticipates a long-awaited reunion with her beloved older brother, Bubi, whom she has not seen in four years.
   
   Elli has painful memories of the past. She recalls with an ache in her heart the last glimpse that she had of Papa in the old country when he was taken away by the authorities, never to be seen again. She cannot forget the harrowing years that she and her mother spent in Auschwitz and in the DP camps. However, her troubles do not end in America. Bitton-Jackson recounts the difficulty she has dealing with a frosty female representative of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, as well as an employer who tries to take advantage of her. On the plus side, Papa's brother, Uncle Abish and his wife, Aunt Lilly, give Elli and her mother a warm American welcome.
   
   Elli is a greenhorn with an uncertain command of English when she first arrives in New York. She even believed the ship's captain who transported her to America when he jokingly told her that she would need a passport to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. To her, America is a puzzling and overwhelming place, and she is particularly appalled by the conspicuous consumption and waste that she sees all around her. Elli doubts that she will ever feel completely comfortable in this extravagant country, but little by little, she begins to relax and adjust to her new surroundings.
   
   In this fast-paced book, Bitton-Jackson tells about her first jobs, the new friends that she makes, and her tentative steps towards romance. "Hello, America" is suitable for young adults, ages twelve and up. Although it is not strictly necessary to read the books of the trilogy in order, it would be helpful to do so in order to get a complete picture of Livia Bitton-Jackson's fascinating journey.



3. This book goes into territory very very few Shoah memoirists have--what the person's experience was like after leaving Europe and arriving in America. I'm glad Mrs. Bitton-Jackson decided to make her memoirs a trilogy, covering all of the important years and events of her adolescence and early years as an adult--the Shoah, the experience of going home after liberation and then beginning the long slow process of leaving home once again, this time of their own choosing, and finally what it was like when she and her mother joined her brother and some other relatives in America. Too many Shoah memoirs never go this far.
   
   Elli has long dreamt about what America would be like, and finds that, while in many ways it really is the land of her dreams and fantasies, it also has a side she never knew existed. She and her mother begin finding out that America is not like Europe, that you can't just leave a basket of groceries unattended on the street while you're in another shop, that you're not supposed to greet anyone on the subway, that it's dangerous to hitch a ride, that they are now expected to keep their tragic pasts to themselves, that people in America throw things away and buy replacements instead of repairing them, and that people just don't want to hear about what they went through or that they were in the camps. The rabbi-director of the school Elli eventually is allowed to teach at has some words with her on one occasion because she told her students the truth about the number on her arm (in age-appropriate language) instead of saying that it was her phone number. She also finds out that relations between the sexes in America are different from Europe's way of doing things, and several times misreads and misinterprets sexual/romantic advances as joking or just a guy trying to be her good friend. It really shocks her to find out how lightly many American young people treat sexual intimacy, and that some American men feel intimidated upon finding out that she's very smart in addition to very attractive, feeling that a blonde can't be both a bombshell and an egghead.
   
   My only small complaint about this book is that it kind of seemed to end without a full sense of closure and resolution, like there could have been another chapter or two to fully wrap up this chapter of Elli's life. And it was a surprise to me that Elli and her mother initially live with her aunt Celia and her husband Martin when they arrive in America; it was never mentioned at all in either of the two previous books that Celia, who appeared briefly in the first book, had survived, or that her husband had survived as well. It seems like a bit of discontinuity there, that something that important, two of their immediate relatives also having survived, should at least have been mentioned in some detail beforehand, so we would have known when they found out these two were still alive, how they found out, and when they got in touch with them again.



4. HELLO AMERICA by Livia Bitton-Jackson is the sequel to I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS: GROWING UP IN THE HOLOCAUST. HELLO, AMERICA begins right where I HAVE LIVED A THOUSAND YEARS left off...with her and her mother standing on the ship seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. The book shares her experiences (good and bad) of her new life in America. Of course, she is surrounded by an unfamiliar and seemingly strange culture and language. As she learns English (and the culture), she begins to feel more and more at home in America although life is not always easy. She finds that most Americans just are not interested in hearing about the Holocaust or recognizing her pain and anguish. In fact, some Jewish-Americans seem not to care about the experiences of those in the holocaust. This is what she finds so unbelievable.
   
   The book shares her experiences working, shopping, dating, and learning the culture--for example, she learns that the streets are not always a safe place--as well as her emotional experiences as she still deals with the aftermath of surving the Holocaust while other family members and friends did not.
   
   Probably the most memorable scene of HELLO, AMERICA is when she is sharing her experiences as a first grade teacher in a Hebrew school. The principal--a rabbi--calls her into his office to discipline her for daring to mention the fact that she was in a concentration camp. She explains that the child saw the number tattooed on her arm and asked where it came from. He tells her that she should have lied and said that the number was her telephone number. She is outraged, offended, and shocked..."In my pain and bitterness I wonder, do all Americans, Jews and Gentiles who were untouched by our tragedy and don't even want to hear about it, feel like him? Do they also prefer to believe that the number tattooed on my arm in Auschwitz is nothing but a harmless New York telephone number? Do they also prefer to place me, and all of us with numbers tattooed on our arms, beyond the pale of their world?" (141).

5 comments about Lovesong: Becoming a Jew.

1. I am a multiracial woman who discovered her Jewish roots when her mother explained that she was Jewish and that I was named for my Jewish family from Eastern Europe as a teenager. I am now finding my way back to Judaism and my heritage and I've encountered the same hostility with African-Americans to the point I no longer associate with the local community.
   
   Its very hard to be multiracial, black, and Jewish. But like Lester, in the end, I just had to find the courage to be myself.



2. Mr. Lester is a great writer, and has the gift of objectivity about himself and his family, which is rare. His search for the way to connect to G'd is painfully slow, but joyful in its culmination.



3. I thought this book was excellent. When I saw this book in the library, I didn't even realize that he is the author of one of my favorite books-To be a slave. I picked up the book because I'm a comparative religion major and I learn best from autobiographies and memoirs-they make me feels like I'm experiancing the religion first hand. Though I was able to reinforce what I knew about Judaism with a visual picture from his words, I was even more impressed with his writing style. I usually read books that will help towards my educational goal only. But this book is a good read, just for its writing style alone. The way he describes his experiances, you get a clear understanding of what he's saying and feel like you know him and converted to Judaism yourself. After reading, I had an urge to visit a synagogue and a trappist monastery ( 2 places he beautifully describes in the book) and I will. I just finished the book today (Wed). I started the book on Friday night and with 2 kids and alot of work managed to finish it so quickly. I don't have spare time to write reviews but I felt compelled to write this one. I have respect for people who reveal themselves so candidly: those who use the pen to strip themselves of a false image. I recommend this to anyone interested in religion especially writers.



4. Lester explores writes a revealing and deeply personal memoir of his spiritual searching and arrival at the Jewish faith. I west extremely moved by his candor as he describes his efforts to harmonize the various facets of his identity, as well as his honesty about the pitfalls he faced on the way.

   Jews believe that those who choose judaism are not converting, but comming home. Lester's work is wonderful in that it lets the reader join him on this home coming. He willingly reveals the pain and the joy of this personal awakening.

   A wonderful read for anyone who struggles with faith and a great message that there can be light at the end of that tunnel.




5. I read this after I lost my father. This book was oddly comforting and beautifully written.