5 comments about The Upstairs Room (Trophy Newbery).

1. The writing is a bit choppy and hard to read at times. The story itself is great. There is quite a bit of bad language though. So I can't recommend it to younger children.



2. All throughout Germany was hiding, running, working, and the worst of all death in the unbelievable concentration camps. Could you imagine living through the terro of hiding from Hitler and the Nazis? Well that is how a young girl Annie spends 2 to 3 years of her life, all described in the wonderful book THE UPSTAIRS ROOM written by Johanna Reiss.
   
   This is a realistic fiction book that describes the real events that people had to go through during the Holocaust. Many of the people who went through the Holocaust had to be separated from their families. That is exactly what Annie had to do. Her sister and father went to a different house for hiding. Luckily, Annie got to stay with her other sister Sini. One thing must have been frightening. The two girls had to bounce around from house to house with people who they had never met before.
   
   Although THE UPSTAIRS ROOM was an interesting book, it is not what I had expected. My standards were higher for my age. Even though this book was not keeping me at the edge of my seat, it was interesting, and it can give people an idea of what life was like living through the Holocaust in hiding. I would like to recommend this book to children 12 and under. It will give younger kids an idea of how horrific their lives could be, compared to what they may have. So always be thankful for what you have, and you will find out why by reading THE UPSTAIRS ROOM.



3. "Obediently i went over to the closet and got on the floor.That is as far as i got". The Upstairs Room , by Johanna Reiss is a heart-wrenching story about two girls forced to go into hiding to escape the Nazis. The kindness and the cleverness of the Oostervelds prevents the girls from being discovered by the Germans. They are separated from their mother , father , and older sister. Annie , a sweet young girl, and Sini , the older of the two , had to give up every part of their normal life and go into hiding with complete strangers. The two girls are close sisters , even though they do fight. The Upstairs Room is set in the 1940's and is in the point of view of Annie, the younger of the sisters. This was a book i couldn't put down! I read it from beginning to end. Alto some of the book was sad, it made you want to keep reading. The Upstairs Room is RF and is meant for grade 6 and above.



4. The Upstairs room, by Johanna Reiss, is a book about two sisters struggle through out the Holocaust. The two girls have to go into hiding to escape from the Natizs.They are separated from their family, and are not allowed to attend school . The two girls have to stay inside and in their room until it is safe . In my option this book in thrilling and captures your interest quickly. The Upstairs room is realistic fiction, and is at about and 8th grade reading level. Will the two sisters survive? Find out in , The Upstairs Room.



5. I recommend this book, The Upstairs Room to anyone who likes a good book. This book takes place during the Holocaust. I think this book is the best, I have ever read. It was full of excitement, and history. It tells about a little girl and her sister who have to go into hiding with different families. If you read and like the Diary of Anne Frank you will love this book. The diary of Anne frank was a true story and this is also a true story it's based on the girls life.

5 comments about The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers.

1. I read this book in two days, only because I had to sleep sometime, otherwise I might have done it in one day. I then gave it to my mother, who is 84 years old, and she read it in two days as well. The way the author writes of such difficult circumstances in which he grew up, in such a simple and all-accepting way, is so pure and innocent that it speaks perfectly of the way a child sees his world. The author is not a newcomer on the scene, but I wish I had a lifetime of novels written by him, because his writing is that good. For anyone who loves a really good story without phony embellishment or unnecessary prose, this is a must read. It is just a remarkable book, and I cannot wait to read the next and the next and the next.



2. I received this as a Christmas present. The basic premise is that that author (writing this in his 90's) grew up in sort of a working-class ghetto in England, a mill town. His street was literally divided by half, one side Jewish and one side Christian. Bernstein's story begins before WWI and describes the cautious ways in which the two sides mixed or ostracized in a cautious dance. His drunken father never left enough money for the kind mother and her kids, so mom is forced to forage for spoiled vegetables which she then cleans up and sells from her home. This "store" becomes a communal hearth for the Jewish women, but all is torn asunder when Harry's bright sister marries the Christian across the way. A family gathering for the couple after they have a baby brings the two sides somewhat together. Very reminiscent of Angela's Ashes . . .



3. So far am and about 1/4 through the book - dull and boring - but I'll stick with it. Anne Magnolia



4. This is one of the best books I have read in the past twelve months.
   I wish I knew the author. His portrayal of Jewish life in a small towin in England in the early 20th century is riviting. I think that one of the things that really appealed to me was his homage to his wife, and how his sadness at her passing served as an inspiration to move on and write this. I am looing forward to his sequel.



5. I put this book down a few times--when I fell asleep reading it. I really wanted to like this book. I got it on special order from my bookstore. The story is just not alive. The book is totally without humor. The characters who appear as neighbors in the book are hard to differentiate. The dialogue is wooden. Events seem to live in a timeless, de-natured way in the author's memory. They do not unfold in the book. There is a lack of energy about the whole thing. It is just not very interesting. The book is in no way like Angela's Ashes. If Harry Bernstein had been sixty-six instead of ninety-six would this book have been published based on its merits? I am sure it would not have been.

5 comments about Parallel Journeys.

1. Although this was a book about great sorrow and despair, the strength of the human spirit shines through in the heart and mind of Helen Waterford. What was also astounding was the thoughts and emotions of Alfons Heck. What a horrific time--more than the mind can comprehend...and what a truly amazing journey of the souls that brought these two people together.
   
   I highly recommend this book to everyone. I just finished reading it and passed it along to my daughter.



2. The world must never forget the holocaust. Today some people espouse a theory that the nearly 12,000,000 deaths (6,000,000 of them Jews) at the hands of the Nazi party never happened. This sad, but honest, tale traces the lives of two persons who lived through that era. Helen Waterford was a Jew who experienced the atrocities first hand. Alfons Heck was a high ranking member of Hitler's youth. Both lived to tell their tales. Both met each other after the war. Both told their tales together. This book alternates chapters between the two principle characters so the reader can witness this period through eyes on both sides of the ideological conflict. This is really two books in one. Either story will challenge the mind and heart. Either one of the stories is an important read, but both placed together in this manner makes for a 5-star book. Our local middle school uses this classic in some of the literature classes. You will be richer for having read this book.



3. WOW, what a book i would say. It's a very moving book about the memoirs of Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck during WWII.This book should be in high school history not to say only for high schoolers but 12 year olds and up.



4. This book is not your usual book. It details the lives of Ayran Alfons Heck and Jewish Helen Waterford.
   
   Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth and fought-and even met Adolf Hitler. After the war he was depressed about the things that he and his countrymen did to the Jews and moved first to Canada and then to the U.S.
   
   Helen is a Jew who spend part of the war hiding with her husband. They were eventually caught. Helen's husband did not survive, but Helen did, eventually moving from Holland to the U.S. with her daughter Doris.
   
   While in the U.S Helen read some of the things Alfons wrote about and contacted him leading to a friendship and career as they travel telling their stories to students all over the place.
   
   A very moving book!



5. Seriously this book is impossible to stop reading once you pass a certain point. I stayed up 'til seven in the morning reading this book. Mind you I started reading that night around ten or eleven at night. It is seriously that captivating. This book tells some very important and over-all relatively unknown facts about the period surrounding WWII. It is an intriguing and captivating book that I believe every human being high school age and older should read. I also think it should be added to high school curriculums.

5 comments about The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: A True Story.

1. This is the best book I have read in a long time. I loved the author's technique of prefacing each chapter / theme with an ancient folk tale. This connected the wisdom of the past with the challenges of today. I found the author's style engaging and attractive (there are not many books I have trouble putting down). The teachings about life and God were profound. My only grateful regret is that I did not make notes while reading. I will now have to do that upon reading the book a second time - after I get it back from the people to which I have loaned it. My advice is don't borrow this book but buy your own copy. Then, when you read it, have a pencil nearby. There are many statements that are so life enhancing, that the reader will want to remember those passages and refer to them, when, in their turn, life grants a portion of challenge and sorrow.



2. I did not at all like this book. The author tries way, way too hard to come across as folksy yet profound, and in the end his tone is possibly the most annoying I've ever read. Which makes it even less forgivable that he constantly uses the tritest of clichés both in characterization (he compares meeting his wife to a Joan Baez pop song) and in metaphor (he really actually uses "like grit on sandpaper").
   
   There's a number of short included stories. These stories are mildly interesting on their own, and definitely provide a welcome break from having to hear the author, but lose effect when they're forced into such a corny, played-out "illustrative text" format.



3. I had picked up this book at a book fair a while back and it sat on my book self for months. One afternoon I started reading it and I was completely capitivated by the beauty, insight and inspiration contained in this bright treasure. The book speaks to your soul. It is also funny, wise and instructive. Ben Izzy gives us an opportunity to learn from his strength and challenges. When life hands you lemons you have options on what to do with them. Ben Izzy explores and discovers the ability to make lots of lemonade. This book was so moving that I wanted several special people in my life to have it and be able to read it again and again. Everyone that recieved a copy was equally knocked out. All I can say is do not pass this one up. This book will warm your soul and inspire you.



4. This book intersperses short stories from around the world with the author's struggles coping with partial muteness. Rather than being preachy or sentimental, the author entertains us by providing international tales that foretell lessons he learns in his own life. The author's advice re: happiness reminds me of Theodore Roethke's beautiful lines:
   
   "I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
   I learn by going where I have to go."
   
   I did not provide this book with five stars, only because I felt the author's relationship with his friend Lenny was co-dependent and deserved less attention. Of course, that relationship leads the author to a large part of his self-actualization, but I would have liked to hear more about his wife--she shines in every small aside about her. If you want to be entertained and read a story about an author coping with an illness (that affects his ability to speak) in his own unique, admirable way, this is the book for you.



5. This book found me the day I was attending the wake of a good friend. I was feeling miserable of course and decided to start this book minutes before I got out of the car at the funeral home to take my mind of off my grief. I read the prologue and was hooked to this story. It has changed my outlook on life and on the death of my friend. It is great how the author takes each folktale and applies it to his life. This book is full of many life lessons and I am truly inspired to look through the curses in my life to find the blessings like Joel ben Izzy did. I have just bought this book and plan to read it to my High School World History classes this fall. I think this is a must read book for everyone. Give yourself a gift and read this book!

5 comments about The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family.

1. Setting aside the technical aspects of the research and the depth of this book, it alters how you feel about the German Jewish experience. Even though most of us will never experience the kind of wealth and privilege that accompany the Warburg family - it is expertly portrayed in this book - you're feelings about the German Jewish experience will change. The book is about a family and their achievements and tragedies that are dramatically effected by the events of the 20th century. For everyone interested in connecting with the feelings of your ancestry and understanding a piece of the financial history of modern America, this is a compelling book. It will help you take on depth, compassion, understanding and an abiding sense of sadness and tragedy at what happened to the Jewish families in Germany. It also leaves you with a sense of wonder at the durability of this family and their accomplishments.



2. This great novel-like biography makes one almost feel like a member of the Warburg family (which Chernow correctly determined was a family worth reading about). On the side, this book also provides a nice history of Zionism and gives a seemingly accurate flavor of the early twentieth century experience of German Jews (and more generally of accomplished immigrants to America around the turn to that century). Chernow's verbal precision makes his writing a pleasure to read, but also limits the pace - so set aside a lot of time and enjoy!



3. They were minor Court Jews. Money-lending was created by anti-semitic barriers. Court Jews identified with authority figures. Ancestors moved to Altona, an area under Danish rule. It was near Hamburg. In 1773 a Warburg moved to Hamburg.
   
   The Warburgs were nearly incestuous in an attempt to keep the banking riches in the family. They suffered from manic-depression and schizophrenia. The Warburgs engaged in empire building by courtship. The Hamburg ethos was sombre and middle class. The Warburgs and Schiffs made a matrimonial alliance in 1895. The Warburgs were strategic, as it turned out, but they did not engage in arranged marriages.
   
   Paul Warburg, the husband of Nina Loeb, was never at home on Wall Street. He became a great theoretician of central banking. Felix Warburg, to the consternation of his father-in-law, Jacob Schiff, built a Gothic mansion on Fifth Avenue. Lillian Wald's settlement house on Henry Street was founded by the Schiffs and the Loebs.
   
   Aby Warburg of Hamburg, a private scholar, established the Warburg Library. Aby was a pioneer of interdisciplinary study. Paul Warburg, located in America, worked after the crash of 1907 for banking reform with Nelson Aldrich. The Aldrich Plan of 1911 called for a National Reserve scheme. Many of the ideas survived in the Federal Reserve Act. In 1914 Paul Warburg began to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. Felix Warburg headed the Joint Distribution Committee for Jewish charities.
   
   After the First World War Aby experienced periods of madness and luciditiy. Max Warburg traveled to America to meet with government leaders to explain the need for the reduction of reparations and the hyper-inflation troubling Germany. Erwin Panofsky and Ernst Cassirer were professors at the university in Hamburg that Aby and his brothers helped to found. Aby was treated at the clinic of Ludwig Binswanger. Freud took a personal interest in Aby's case. Aby left Kreuzlingen, the clinic, for good in 1924. His breakdown had dated from 1918. Aby died in 1929. His associates Gertrud Bing and Fritz Saxl brought out the first two volumes of his collected writings in 1932. Kenneth Clark has stressed his importance to art scholarship.
   
   Felix supported Jewish farm settlements in Soviet Russia until they were taken over by the state in 1930. Paul Warburg had never believed in perpetual prosperity. Paul's advice had cushioned the Warburgs in the crash, (they had moved out of stocks). Paul issued public warnings in March 1929 foreseeing the crash and the Depression.
   
   In Germany Max, in Hamburg, treated the fortunes of Felix and Paul as bank reserves. Paul lost his fortune upholding the Warburg honor. Max had been tempted to overextend by his imaginary safety net. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY published Jimmy Warburg's poetry. He was Paul's son. Paul had tended to be straitlaced. Paul died in 1932. The Warburgs did not believe they would be driven from Hamburg. In 1933 the Warburg Library was moved to England. Kristallnacht ending Max's stay in Germany. He and his family ended up in the United States. His brother Fritz was detained and his passport was revoked. Finally he and his wife were permitted to leave for Sweden. Max's daughter Lola was one of the people in England devising the Kinder Transport program.
   
   Eric Warburg, Max's son, saw Hamburg again in 1945. It had been half destroyed by saturation bombing. Eric and his son Max did resume banking careers in Hamburg. Unconnected institutions under the influence of other members of the Warburg family existed in London and New York. The book is fabulous. It is a family saga describing an array of interesting and very brave people.



4. This was a great book to read and a very interesting story about one of banking's oldest and greatest families. It was wonderfully written and has numerous insights on what it takes to be a success. Ron Chernow seems to have an eye for picking out the important little details as well as giving the reader a great sense of the big picture. Also some great history lessons about WWII. It gave me a view of the war which I hadn't seen before from Jews who were at the top of the economic scale. The history lesson was worth the entry fee. Highly recomended!



5. I didn't think a book about the Warburg Dynasty could be all that interesting: How wrong I was! I enjoyed every page by this delightful author who can turn the most mundane item into juicy reading material. I savored every page. Excellent; may I also recommend "Titan" by Ron Chernow? It, too is an amazing biography filled with insight and powerful revelations about the world's richest man.

5 comments about Rena's Promise.

1. I just started reading this book yesterday, and I must say I am completely intrigued! I do like this type of memoir reading and I love to read about the atroscities of the holocaust. This book is a very easy read and it really captivates you; I haven't wanted to put it down yet!!



2. This is an incredible story of sisters in a concentration camp. I've done a great deal of research into the Holocaust, but never have I come across a book quite like this one. It literally changed my life. I found myself thinking about it for days afterwards, little things reminding me of Rena's story--eating a potato, walking outside with a coat on, seeing a young child playing. I found a distinct connection with Rena, even asking myself if I could do what she did.
   Rena is an astonishing woman who is responsible for her sister surviving Auschwitz. The critic got it wrong when s/he said that Rena's promise was made to her mother to protect the baby; Rena's promise is to her sister, that if her sister is to die in that terrible place, she will not die alone. Rena went through a terrible ordeal to keep them both alive, and to attempt to recount it here would be a great injustice to Rena's story and spirit.
   Read the book. It will change your life.



3. I came away from Rena's Promise with a new found respect for people who have experienced racial discrimination. Rena Korneich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam did an excellent job of reconstructing Rena's life prior to the Holocaust and what happened as the Allied Powers were beginning to win. Although I never read a novel about any historical issue, Rena's Promise seemed to portray an acquire example of many historical events within that time period. Even though I came away from the novel very pleased, it did possess some limitations. In my opinion the pictures within the book should be at the end of the novel because it takes away from the suspense of surviving her terrible ordeal. If this was put into thought, then the reader would have enjoyed her escape or her survival even more. I also enjoyed the author's use of diction because the reader is able to learn Polish or German words while they are reading, although they may have been hard to pronounce. Nevertheless this is an excellent book about a courageous young lady who went through some horrendous events during the Holocaust, although it was a little far fetch.



4. I had to pick holocaust memoir book for a college report and while all my classmates did memoirs of men I wanted something different. I found this book at my local bookstore & wasnt too sure about it but decided to try it anyway. I fell in love with it. Her discribtions make me feel like I'm with her in her horror. I felt her emotions as I read the book. I would spend many nights up late reading wanting to know what was going to happen next.



5. In my personal opinion, I don't like the Holocaust. When I was assigned to read this book, I just wanted to die. When I was reading it, everything seemed so repetitive. At 4 a.m., Raus. Raus. Then you stand in line to get counted, afterwards you receive your food, and back in line to go work. I'm pretty sure that this is what was really going on at the time and that made me really like the way the story was written. One could really get engaged in the story because of this. The way the author wrote made the readers get into the lives of the workers.
   At the beginning of the story, the reader is reading about an interview that is taking place with a reporter and a holocaust survivor, which is a dead giveaway that the prisoner was going to survive every tragic event that would occur. There can be no surprises because we already know that the main character will always live to tell the tale. There are also pictures of the main character and her sister side by side at a very old age in the middle of the book. By the time the readers get to this point of the novel, the main character's sister seems as though she will get killed at any moment and it is at a very climactic point of the story, but the pictures ruin it all.
   There are also some events in the story that seems a little suspicious and unbelievable. Throughout the entire novel, there is a scarce amount of food, but Rena, the main character, is always giving her food away or sharing it with everyone. Rena always remained looking fit and healthy, even though there was a lack of food intake.
   Being as unbiased as I can be, the book does have its good points. If you are a holocaust fan, you would thoroughly enjoy this story because you really feel like a prisoner. The repetition and the boredom they felt, you will feel. Reading how gruesome the murders took place, your stomach will cringe. The sadness they were going through, you will empathize.
   Personally I didn't like the book, but this was already known because I don't like the holocaust in general, but I still would recommend this novel to anyone. This book was very educational with footnotes of facts that acted like a timeline as the story went on. It is an easy read and very easy to become captivated. If you are a Holocaust enthusiast, I highly recommend this for your collection. If you are like me and don't care for the Holocaust, then this is a book you can do without.

5 comments about Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork.

1. This book is an intelligent conversion story. The author, Etty Hillesum, begins writing at a time when her life was repugnant; and yet, she is obviously very intelligent and so reading what she wrote during that period is not a waste of time.
   
   Towards the middle of the book, Etty begins to change, and by the end, she is an admirable person - not just because she is intelligent, but also because she is good. It seems that her will changed, which is the definition of conversion.
   
   I would compare this book favorably with "Surprised by Joy", which is the autobiography of C.S. Lewis. "Surprised by Joy" is a great book for Christians. "Etty Hillesum" is a great book for anyone.
   
   
   Shawn T. Miller



2. This book would be one of the five. Its not about the Holocaust, not really. It is about one of the most soulful women who we all could learn so much from about how to approach our days. I cherish this book with all my heart. It came to me in a very weird way however! My parents were viisting me in Seattle when I lived there and while browsing in Elliott Bay Books, my mom handed me this book and said, "When I die I want this book buried with me!" I know, thats kind of a weird sell but she bought me my own copy (along with a separate one for her future plans) and I read it in one evening. I couldn't put it down. While she lived just a short distance from Anne Frank and was writing her journals at the same time, they are equally moving but worlds apart. Etty was in her late twenties while she wrote and her outlook on life is simply among the most remarkable I have ever encountered. I don't think I need to be buried with it but that doesn't mean I don't recommend it extremely highly for both men and women. Its a privilege to be able to recommend it, to know that even while her life was so tragically cut short at Auschwitz, that her journals survived and that maybe just one person more will come to her journals as a result of this review. You know what? I'd like to be buried with this book too. Also include a cupcake.



3. Etty Hillessum's diaries and her letters from Westerbork serve as an outstanding testament to the human spirit and the ability to find the sacred in the most horrific of situations. Although she was not a saint in the sense that Teresa of Avila or Juan de la Cruz were saints, she could properly be considered a mystic and a good example of a modern who had 'enlightened' insights. I find her diaries at once humane and modern in the sense of a liberated 'bohemian' who explored her sexuality and her psyche. As her diaries progress, her inner life (and oneness with God) deepens as the horrors of the realities of being Jewish in Europe during the Second World War becomes more apparent. I highly recommend this book! It will change your life!



4. This is one of the most profound documents ever written. Etty Hillesum was truly a person who had reached transforming union and had the ability to be able to share her experience through journaling and letters. She was unwaivering in her desire to see the beauty and meaning of life in one of the most difficult situations ever experienced on this planet. There are no words to express how deeply this work has influenced my life, except to say that I go back to her writing over and over again. She is a bright light for anyone seeking spiritual growth.



5. In nearly all of our nation's middle and high schools the Diary of Anne Frank is required reading. This present volume ought to be a required follow-up reading for the older student.
   
   This Owl Books publication includes excellent photographs and commentary to bring alive holistically the full presentation of this intelligent and searching young woman's life and vision, whose eight well-preserved copy books reveal to us her soul, supplemented by personal, surprisingly joyful and hopeful and positive do-not-lose-heart letters from a way station on the road to Auschwitz. Together this corpus of writing presents bright light in the deepest darkness and locus of despair. One cannot read these living words on the way to certain death without weeping, and reflecting, at the unreasonable cruelty and inexorable deadly fruit of any total war. One cannot read this without a cry for the end of all war.
   
   Please read this book in a prayerful way. Consider the promising and peaceful lives which were lost, whose voice rings out truly here in this thick volume of her writings, and resolve to work for peace, that we may never study war, no more. Let us work for peace, and pray with the prophet that our swords may soon be beat into plowshares, that all may live in peace to their fullest promise.
   
   This book brings to us the reality of the horror of hateful war, through Etty's human and hopeful and joyous and beautiful voice, ever encouraging those in the deepest despair until she herself is also placed on the road to Auschwitz, a road from which so very few ever returned.

5 comments about Alicia.

1. I just finished another very painful but interesting and shocking memoirs in "Thanks to my Mother" by Shoshana Rabinovici and started this book. It's absolutely shocking and heroic struggle to do everything possible to survive day-by-day and minute-by-minute the Systematic Nazi Plan to annihilate the Jewish People.
   Highly highly recommend to every one who is interested in Holocaust and to everybody to read and to learn what was really WWII about.



2. An avid reader of Holocaust memoirs, I found "Alicia" an unforgettable story of survival.
   
   Only a child at the onset of World War II in her native Poland, Alicia Jurman soon lost both her parents and all four brothers -- murdered, in different ways, for one reason, being Jewish. It was only through a strange destiny that young Alicia kept surviving herself -- once being pushed through a gap in a train window, heading for a concentration camp; another time, falling unconscious and being presumed dead by the Nazis, only to be rescued by an astute and caring Jewish gravedigger.
   
   Yet even when a person is at her lowest, she can always find others even worse off. It would have been easy for Alicia to say she had nothing left to give; yet even during the most destitute and desperate of times, she shared food and supplies with other Holocaust survivors.
   
   It was also this loving attitude that made Alicia take action after the war, when she noticed a number of starving orphaned children roaming city streets. Only 15 and an orphan herself, Alicia took it upon herself to establish a Jewish "orphanage," moving some 24 youths aged 10 to 15 into a vacated apartment and securing financial help to get their new lives underway.
   
   Still a teenager, Alicia eventually sought refuge in Israel. But, as always, problems arose...
   
   Alicia Jurman is a modern-day hero, guaranteed to inspire readers for generations to come.



3. This eye witness account of the holocaust in Poland is so horrific it would be too depressing to read, if it weren't for the author's lucid, straight forward prose. Alicia Jurman was 13 years old when she fought for survival against literally impossible odds in southeastern Poland and witnessed the destruction of her entire family, friends and neighbors. Her survival was accomplished through truly incredible pluck, strength of character, resourcefulness, and unbelievable good luck.
   We already know (or should know) all about the horrors of the holocaust: the depth of depravity to which the human soul can sink; and we know that to forget this worst of all possible nightmares is to face another genocide in our lifetime (we already have in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia, and elsewhere).
   What distinguishes "Alicia: My Story" despite the unspeakable horror is this horror as viewed through the eyes of a girl who simply refuses to give in and give up. She is an amazingly strong girl who used everything she had to survive. And she tells the story in a matter of fact way that propels the narrative forward and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next.
   If one has never been exposed to what went on during World War Two, this excellent book is the perfect place to start.



4. Raised from the age of five in Buczacz, which was roughly a third Jewish at that time, Alicia was sheltered relatively well from the anti-Semitism that plagued her town, as well as the rest of Europe. She had many friends, both Jewish and Christian.
   After the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, whereby the two genocidal dictators divided Poland between them, Buczacz fell into the Soviet zone. The Soviets began a forced Sovietization drive, and deported thousands of people to slave labour, or their deaths, who they saw as 'enemies of the Soviet Union'.Alicia recalls being offended and hurt, on behalf of her Christian friends, for whose religion she had deep respect, when the Madonna and Child were removed from their customary spot in the classroom and replaced by scowling portraits of Lenin and Stalin.
   Alicia's second-oldest brother Moshe was shot by the Soviets after returning to Poland, from the harsh conditions in Russia, where he had gone for education.
   In June 1941, the Germans broke their pact with the Soviets and swept through eastern Poland on their way to Russia - Operation Barbarossa had begun. The Germans, however, had an even worse plan than the Soviets had had for Europe's Jews: it was known as Endlosung (aka The Final Solution).
   
   Alicia's father was shot, alongside 600 other Jewish community leaders, shortly after the Nazi invasion.
   Alicia, and her mother and brothers were forced to leave their beautiful home, and to settle in the ghetto.
   They lived under harsh laws whereby Jews were forced to wear armbands with stars of David.
   Jews who tried to leave the ghetto or to enter the synagogue would be executed.
   Alicia's brother Bunion was then executed by the Nazis.
   
   While visiting a Jewish family in the town, 12 year old Alicia was arrested by the Nazis along with thousands of other Jews, but escaped from the train to the death camps, together with a band of other young people.
   After Alicia's brother Zachary was shot by the Nazis She swore on his grave that if she survived she would speak for her silenced family.
   This book is a powerful and unforgettable fulfilment of that oath.
   It keeps us engaged and emotionally involved on every page, as we read of her struggle to survive, her irrepressible spirit, her many brushes with death. She never gave up her will to survive nor her humanity for fellow victims of the Nazis, many of whom she helped to rescue, many of whom died before her eyes.
   She witnessed such horrors as babies being shot in their cribs by the Nazis.
   While many of the Polish and Ukrainian neighbours helped the Nazis and joined in the killings, there were always those few that helped to keep their Jewish fellow humans alive, including a Polish family on whose farm Alicia worked.
   After the war, Alicia's struggle was not over.
   She was imprisoned by the Soviets and took part in the secret operation to smuggle Jews to the Land of Israel, across Europe, at a time when the British were keeping the Holocaust survivors out, often with brutal and violent methods reminiscent of the Nazis themselves.
   Alicia was on the ship Theodor Herzl, carrying young Holocaust survivors to Israel, in 1946, when it was rammed by British frigates, after which British soldiers then boarded the ship and attacked the survivors, beating to death six young Jews and allowing others to drown while trying to escape.
   This courageous girl, had struggled as part of the Jewish nation against three ruthless empires.



5. I read a lot of Holocaust-related stories in middle school. As morbid as it sounds, they were so interesting, and so heartbreaking to read. There are quite a few more still sitting in my closet that I could review, but this was my favorite, and probably the one that got me into the topic. A really great story, particularly because it's a true one.

5 comments about Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language.

1. A wonderful book on moving from one culture to another and one language to another--Polish to English. Anyone who has had this experience will immediately identify with the author. Eva Hoffman writes beautifully about every nuance of her family's move as a young teenager from Communist Poland to Canada. Cultures that are superficially similar turn out to be very different and the effect on family life is staggering.



2. Hoffman's description of Poland in the Communist years following World War II is riveting, and so is her narrative of life in the U.S. following her arrival here at age 13. But what impresses me most about this book is its assured writing style, and the author's ability to skip back and forth from one decade and year to another without boring or losing the reader. Hoffman is an unusually gifted writer. I am using her text as a teaching tool for a would-be memoir/autobiographer. Thank heaven her parents survived the Holocaust and brought her to us.



3. I started reading this wonderful book 6 months before I left Brazil towards Israel. After finishing the first Part (Paradise) I just could not keep on reading, and I abandoned the book for a while. After I landed in Israel I re-took the book and was delighted again with the realness of it. A thought occurred to me that the reading was so descriptive of the immigration sentiment that I just could not understand it before immigrating myself.
   
   The book helped me to understand and to organize the infinite sensations that come with the leaving/arriving to another country. How the language affects the way we think and act, how sadness and happiness are mingled into one strange feeling, how we cope and forget without noticing, and how we urge to succeed and prove that we can be part of the new country.
   
   In addition, the book also brought to me new feelings and curiosities about my grandparents, whom also escaped from Poland and Russia in the late 40's. Hoffman describes so well how the old traditions and languages influenced the new live of those who left their country because of prejudice and persecution!
   
   One passage that I am specially fond of: "No, I'm no patriot, nor was I ever allowed to be. And yet, the country of my childhood lives within me with a primacy that is a form of love. (...) All it has given me is the world, but that is enough. It has fed me language, perceptions, sounds, the human kind. It has given me the colors and the furrows of reality, my first loves. The absoluteness of those loves can never be recaptured: no geometry of the landscape, no haze in the air, will live in us as intensely as the landscapes that we saw as the first, and to which we gave ourselves wholly, without reservations." It reminds me of Wordsworth when he writes about Tintern Abbey.
   
   A wonderful life-changing book.



4. I loved this book when it came out and I love it still many rereadings later. This portrait of the Wandering Jew as a young girl begins with Hoffman's childhood in Cracow, Poland just after the second world war; moves to Vancouver, British Columbia when she is thirteen; continues on to Texas and Massachusetts for her university years; and ends in New York, where she becomes a writer and an editor at the New York Times Book Review. It encompasses many themes: the defining power of language; the cost of changing cultures, the construction of personal identity, and the consequences, for many Jews, of the Nazi and Communist regimes. Hoffman was born in the summer of 1945. Like many Jews in post-war, Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, the Hoffmans observed Passover and had home-baked challah, on shabbat but Eva was culturally Polish, reading Sienkiewicz's nationalistic novels, playing Chopin etudes, attending church with her friends, receiving gifts on St. Nicholas's Day. After emigration, she adapts to North American culture, first Canadian, then Texan, then New York. This is a memoir squarely in the Jewish immigrant tradition but one in which the immigrant is a graduate student at Harvard, and relates her situation not only to Mary Antin but to contexts laid out by Sartre and Nabokov, Jung and Freud. Lost in Translation contains stories and essays, phrases to ruminate on, ideas to consider. It is a demanding read that challenges its reader to consider her own autobiography, her own childhood, her own assumptions. Having compiled an international bibliography of Jewish women's non-fiction books with poet Irena Klepfisz (available on my website) , I can say this is one of my favorites.



5. As a senior Literature major, there are many things I am required to read that make my college experience rather painful. This book, however, was not only relevant to the class I was taking but was also the most intriguing book I have read in years, maybe ever. Eva Hoffman's memoir is beautifully written and constructed, and is a must-read for anyone who appreciates great literature.

5 comments about Fear No Evil.

1. In this classic, in the tradition of The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, Prisoner of Zion, Natan Sharansky, one of the greatest Jewish heroes of our time, tells of his nine years in Soviet prisons and gulags, because of his desire to live in the ancient homeland of the Jewish people.
   Sharansky was first denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. Seperated from his wife, Avital, a day after thewir marriage, in 1974, Sharansky fought for the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union as well as the rights of other persecuted minorities such as Pentecostals, Catholics, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars and ethnic Germans, which disproves the repulsive charge by anti-Semites that Zionists only care about their own people.
   He worked as a translator for Soviet dissident and human rights champion Andrei Sakharov, and his spokesman.
   Sakharov never stopped fighting for Sharanky's freedom, for human rights and for the Jews of the Soviet Empire.
   Sharanky describes his life in the preface as a Jews growing up in Russia, and his mental liberation from Soviet thought slavery, by his discovery of his Judaism and Zionism. He then details his 1977 arrest, and his nine years of brutal incarceration.
   He never bowed to his captors and refused to have anything to do with the perfidious KGB.
   A variety of mental and physical tortures were used to try to break Sharansky, but he never flinched.
   Always given courage by the word of the G-D of Israel, and particularly guided by Psalm 23:
   "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
   I will fear no evil
   For though art with me..."
   Indeed he did not fear the evil of the Soviet tyranny.
   His wife Avital tirelessly fought for his release as his cause became known in the free world, and fought for by all freedom-loving people.
   The book ends with Sharansky's release in 1986 and his aliyah to Israel, where he was reunited with his wife.
   The book is a testament to the evils of a one party tyranny.
   It is a testament to the eternal endurability of the Jewish people, and their unbreakable bond wit the Land of Israel.
   Unltimately it is a testament of hope and of freedom of the human spirit.
   Today the same Communist ideology that persecuted Sharansky is waging a jihad of intellectual terrorism against Israel and her people.
   But the courage of people like Sharansky and the people of Israel has shown that Israel can and will prevail.



2. Natan is a hero to the human race. He is wise beyond his years and his wife really proved what true love is. No wonder our Oresident sticks to his convictions. We should all be like Natan



3. "[Saul] put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on [David's]head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around... "I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached [Goliath]".
   
   So begins the story of the famous battle between the future King David of Israel and the giant Phillistine during Biblical times. In Natan Shcharansky's "Fear No Evil" (the title taken from one of David's own psalms), the author is less equipped even than young David in battling the ubiquitous and evil KGB, which maintains an illegal presence in the prisons he's held in (again, illegally), accused of spying for western countries. But because of decisions he makes early in his arrest, he is the victor in the struggle waged over his soul by men who would like him to acknowledge he is wrong, who would like him to implicate others in his "crimes" in order for favors from them, or who would simply like him to stop being the delightful fly in the prison ointment he is.
   
   Shcharansky's only weapons during his trial and during his following prison term, consist of his personal integrity, which remains unsullied; his faith and trust in his family and friends; and a tiny book of psalms that he will spare nothing in reminding prison officials he is entitled to. He sometimes has to wage a hunger strike for these things, but always wins. It is true that his wife, who managed to reach Jerusalem before Shcharansky's arrest, is on a worldwide campaign for his release, resulting in no less than two sitting US presidents mentioning him by name in speeches heard by Soviet officials as a political prisoner, as well as global support, but Shcharansky does not learn this until later, and so believes he is virtually alone in the fight.
   
   This gritty autobiography is a lovely example of human survival, and how one can keep his humanity in a horrific place. Shcharansky's relationships with his fellow "zeks" (prisoners) is especially touching, and we're able to get a glimpse of how even the guards in the system have surrendered their souls in this "police state".
   
   A great read for anyone questioning how to survive while it seems suffering and injustice are towering overhead. Very inspiring.



4. Having met Sharansky in Israel (Birthright alumni!), and having had a long time interest in the Soviet Jewry dissident movement - which allowed my own (Jewish) family to emigrate from the Soviet Union in '91 - I had little doubt as to the outcome of Sharansky's imprisonment. As someone who has read a number of books on similar subjects - in particular the Alexander Solzenytsin "Archipelag Gulag" series - I was a bit dissapointed with "Fear no Evil". (Nevermind that Solzenytsin is widely believed to be an anti-semite; I'm speaking of the literary aspect only.)
   
   In contrast to Solzenytsin's breathtakingly vivid literary style and powerful analysis of the core of the Soviet regime and it's criminal code, Sharansky's book read rather like an eagle's eye view of a convoluted social and political order. "Fear no Evil" reads instead like a game of mental swordsmanship, with a self-inflicted narrow focus quite removed from breadth and depth of a much needed analysis on the Soviet system as a whole.
   
   However, Sharansky does not proclaim himself to be a literary guru. This book is a poignant (if dry) portrayal of one man's fight for freedom - both for himself and 2 million of his people. The uncompromising stance taken by the author with the Soviet regime throughout his imprisonment - his life, family and future hanging in the balance - is awe-inspiring in its simplicity and effectiveness.
   
   It has become a cliche in our time that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". Yet the Sharanskys of the world have proven that one need not be a terrorist to be a freedom fighter. Where are such men today?



5. Natan Sharansky's book "Fear No Evil" is a readable account of his time in the Soviet gulag for his dissident activities. The book is detailed and inspirational. Sharansky's courage in facing the KGB is a lesson that we can all learn from.
   
   The book itself reads fast, thanks to Sharansky's ability to make the read interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to gain insight in what life was like for a political prisioner in the USSR; to anyone who wishes to be inspired by ones courage, or to anyone who wishes to just sit down and read a thoroughly enjoyable book.