No comments about In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture.

4 comments about Not by the Sword: How a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman.

1. Micheal Weisser is the Cantor (and de facto Rabbi) of a congregation in Lincoln, Nebraska. He's had a rough childhood, been in prison for a while, but now he's a devoted husband, father, and step-father, and part of a growing community.
   Weisser is aware of the hate groups in Lincoln, but when he gets nasty calls from a member of the Nebraska KKK, he tries a radical method. He approaches the racist bigot as a friend. This bigot turns out to be a lonely diabetic whose now half-blind. He joined the KKK because nobody else offered him friendship. Larry Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the KKK, quickly sheds his racist ideologies. Slowly, Trapp, Weisser, and others start reaching out to racist kids in an effort to neutralize all the hate groups that are recruiting them.



2. I was in Junior High in Lincoln, NE when this story happened. I spent most of my time junior high and high school discussing Larry Trapp and the Weisser family. I was fortunate enough to have Cantor Weisser speak at a candlelight vigil I held during my senior year in high school. This is an amazing book.



3. I was a member of the Congregation in Lincoln ten years ago, and knew Larry Trapp personally. This book is a great insight into how I remember the situation, and to that great deed of Cantor Weisser. I recommend it fully to everyone out there. It will help you understand the emotion and meaning Larry Trapp added to our lives.



4. The first part of this book is a frightening portrait of a dangerous, unstable neo-Nazi. After reading what the book reveals about the personalities of some of these people, racially mixed families might pause before visiting certain parts of our country.
   Cantor Weiss's ability to show tolerance and kindness to KKK member Larry Trapp is extremely moving and awe-inspiring. One of the things I learned from this book is that Weiss's capacity for forgiveness actually has deep roots in the Jewish tradition.

2 comments about To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land, an Oral History (Palgrave Studies in Oral History).

1. The book reads like your grandpa talking directly to you, so it is realling interesting although it rambles a bit. But this man had an incredible life and it is a fascinating window on the plight of Jews who escaped the holocaust through Shanghai. DEspite all he and his family went through, he can still spike the story with humor. It's hard to put it down and it really makes you think. Highly recommended!



2. Samuel Iwry, a Jewish scholar, gives a remarkable first person account of his experiences fleeing Poland, going across Russia to Japan, then to Shanghai, and ultimately to America, in flight from the Nazis, beginning in 1939. Examples are use of forged documents, crossing a border surreptitiously, waiting in Vilnius for opportunity, detention in Shanghai (with 20,000 other Jewish refugees), and travel to the U.S. (where he settled in Baltimore and became a professor at Johns Hopkins). Highly readable and suitable for adults and young adults.

5 comments about Schlepping Through the Alps: My Search for Austria's Jewish Past with Its Last Wandering Shepherd.

1. A chochem is, in Yiddish, a wise person. Sam Apple, the writer, is a lot wiser than Sam Apple, the character he creates, a woody allen-ish hypochondriac awkwardly trying to write a book about a wandering Jewish Austrian shepherd. Apple also scores a literary triumph in his portrait of the one-of-a-kind Hans Breuer, the shepherd.
   
   Post-modern in its best sense, the book makes wonderful and surprising connections between the search for justice and reconciliation in post-war Austria, the history of domesticated animals, Yiddish song, sexuality and the fine points of herding 675 sheep through mountains, forests and small towns.
   
   I sat down to read for a few minutes and stayed in the chair for most of the day, following the hapless Sam as he tries to live the life of an alpine shepherd with Hans, Hans' estranged wife and devoted girlfriend, his sons and various eccentric friends like Austria's giant champion scythe-wielding grass-cutter. More is revealed when Sam spends time in Vienna meeting politicians, survivors of the Shoah and anti-racist activists, including the beguiling Irene, a welcome romantic interest whose fling with Sam forms a revealing counterpoint to Hans' tangled love life.
   
   Through these varied landscapes, Apple's voice is funny, knowing and refreshingly humble. He gracefully mixes and blends the
   Jewish, picaresque, storytelling tradition of Sholem Aleichem and S.Y. Agnon with the irreverence of Phillip Roth and the eye for quirky detail of Bruce Chatwin He's a young writer whose first book jump starts what I imagine will be a surprising and exciting career.



2. There are two stories here. Which one dominates your reading will depend in part on your tendency to optimism or pessimism at the moment that you read. The grim story that hangs over everything is the fate of the Jews in Austria. There were a quarter million Jews and people of Jewish parentage in Austria in the 1930's. After the Austrians decided to kill or expel their Jewish neighbors, there were almost none. Today, the Jews of Austria number about 10,000-most of them in Vienna.
   The comedy is the story of Hans Breuer, a folk-singing grand-child of the radical sixties. In the middle of the world's most developed economy, he makes a living as a shepherd: a Jewish shepherd.Sam Apple, the author of this book, plays with the nature of the shepherd's life, the mercurial personality of Hans Breuer and the odd business of being Jewish in a country where killing Jews was a bit of a national sport.
   Having spent a great deal of time in Vienna, I can tell you that Apple gets a great deal of this right. He certainly gets all of it funny, or at least wry. He concentrates on lingering old-fashioned anti-semetism and ignores both the small philo-semetic counter-trend and the more genteel neo-jew-hating of the left.
   Apple spends a great deal of his time talking about himself and so the book is also partly a memoir. The self that he reveals is game for the adventure of being a shepard for a while, but also comically neurotic and thereby a bit unattractive.
   On one of my last trips to Austria, I went to a Hans Breuer recital. It was at a bar in the countryside. Half the audience was out from Vienna, the other half local people having dinner. Breuer seemed to think he was in a concert hall and between songs went back in the kitchen to silence the cooks. It was an awkward moment, but one that seemed to fit.
   
   Lynn Hoffman, Author of The New Short Course in Wine



3. I read this enchanting book when it first came out and could not put it down. Reading it for the second time, I can't help but wonder, "why isn't this a movie?" This rare, heartwarming story told with such humor and wit could easily translate into another media form. It's definitely time to replace "The Sound of Music" with a new travel guide through the Alps. After all, a shepherd, a nice Jewish boy, and a beautiful girl could make the hills come alive again. Hollywood, where are you?



4. To paraphrase comic Jeff Foxworthy, if you find this engaging travelogue entirely humorless... you might be an Anti-Semite. (Reading it might be a good self-test.) Although Jewishness and Anti-Jewishness are portrayed throughout, Mr. Apple's writing is so genuine and fluid that anyone with an appreciation for English will enjoy its exceptional quality. While comparisons have been made to Woody Allen, author Sam Apple might better be described as the Hunter S. Thompson of Generation X. Perhaps "Rolling Stone" would do well to engage him to cover the upcoming Presidential election--and those uncomfortable with Jewishness (Jews and non-Jews alike)--would find it less frightening to enjoy a bright new literary light. Meanwhile, try this one: reading through it is no schlep.



5. Sam Apple, author of Schlepping Through The Alps: My Search For Austria's Jewish Past With Its Last Wandering Shepherd, first encounters Yiddish folk-singer Hans Breuer at a concert and slide show in New York. Breuer, as Apple points out, is not just your ordinary run-of-the mill Yiddish folk-singer, rather he is truly a wandering Jew and as he reveals in his book, "If you ever happen to be hiking the Alps and you see a man singing Yiddish songs as he watches a dog chasing a sheep in a raincoat, no need for concern."
   
   Apple, who grew up in Houston and now makes his home in Brooklyn, was quite intrigued by this forty-five year old Austrian shepherd. The result was a one thousand word article that eventually has being turned into a witty yet insightful book, wherein much of Apple's research was accumulated while traveling in Austria as an apprentice to Breuer.
   
   During their first encounter in New York, Breuer mentioned to Apple that he wanted to bring Yiddish to the uninitiated in the Austrian Alps. When asked if he wanted these individuals to remember their Yiddish neighbors, his reply was: "I want to make them confront for the first time in their lives this culture that their uncles and fathers destroyed." With this in mind Apple decided to voyage to Austria and find out for himself what it was like to be a shepherd in the twenty-first century and to make sense of Han's Jewish identity or as he states, what it really meant for him to sing in Yiddish. He also wanted to learn about sheep, Yiddish music and anti-Semitism.
   
   Apple's engaging narrative is what Yiddish speaking readers would probably classify as a good "meinsa," something akin to an old wife's tale only this story is actually true. Apple beckons us to follow his meandering through the Alps following a herd of sheep, a shepherd, his mistress and young lamb herders, while picking up along the way various shepherding tips from his mentor and learning about Austria's past and present political landscape.
   
   During the course of his apprentice with Breuer, Apple learns about Austria's post-war anti-Nazi legislation that led to the sentencing to death of several Nazis and the conviction and incarceration of thousands of low-ranking Nazis. However, a few years after the enactment of this legislation, a general amnesty came into effect and all but a handful of the worst offenders were free to live happily every after. In fact, the government's constant line about complaints about Austria's behavior during the Holocaust was that if you have one take it to Germany.
   
   Quite telling of Breuer's psyche is that he associates the Austrian countryside with fascism and anti-Semitism. When he encounters people along his shepherding path, he believes that they are all staring at him with cold eyes, aware that he is not one of them. Apple notes that Breuer enjoys being a living part of a dying tradition, where Yiddish and shepherding are relics of another time- nonetheless he takes great pride in both. Moreover, he is not quite sure how much of his own romanticizing of wandering and Jewishness has drawn him to Breuer. However, what he observes about Breuer's shepherding is "the rejection of modern society in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In his Yiddish songs I inevitably listened for the millions of missing Yiddish voices that should have been singing along."
   
   Apple does an excellent job of capturing the flavor of the Austrian Alps with its little villages and inhabitants who seem to either have collective amnesia pertaining to their past or consider themselves blameless. Although he never does find as many anti-Semites as he originally feared, Apple does provide his readers with some serious insights, spiced up with enough lively and sometimes humorous commentary that will unquestionably keep readers turning the pages all the way to the end.
   
   Norm Goldman, Editor Bookpleasures

No comments about Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and Their Flight through France and Italy.

5 comments about Rodinsky's Room.

1. More a story about the author than the subject, ignore Sinclair's part.
   This book is actually a projection of Rachel Lichtenstein's search for a particular type of Eastern European, Jewish past. It begins with a tale of an room, undisturbed since its solitary occupier - the Rodinsky of the title - mysteriously abandoned it in the late 1960's. Rachel Lichtestein begins the tale by trying to rediscover her Jewish origins, and discovers Rodinsky's abandoned room above a desolate synagogue in a part of the East End of London which was a Jewish area in the first half of the Twentieth Century.
   
   While the narrative moves along Rachel's attempts to find out more about the life and circumstances of Rodinsky, however it becomes clear that she is overtaken by her imaginings and projects her increasing interest in cabbalistic thought and Jewish mysticism. Her search in London is rather mundane, however the book comes alive when she travels to Poland to visit abandoned Jewish villages in the borderlands of the present-day Poland and Ukraine. It was from this area that a significant number of the East End Jews arrived, following pograms in the late 19th Century. The impact of the devastation of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide is still palpable in the area, especially to Rachel and her companions. There are interesting insights into the devastated folk culture, in particular the Golem - a fictitious, menacing ogre, and the lamed vavnika, a collection of righteous, learned men, whose identities are secret. Their presence and their anonymity, prevent the world from being destroyed. It's a highly evocative tale of vengeful Deities, secrecy and scholarship. Rachel associates this with Rodinsky's fevered,multilingual note taking, and this is where the story is at its most tenuous.
   The balance of the story is a straight-forward description of the twists and turns involved in Rachel's quest to piece together Rodinsky's last movements and, finally, his last resting place. Her motivation is to offer a prayer - Kaddish - over his grave, as she has done for others in Eastern Poland, is very moving. Usually Kaddish is offered by the deceased's next-of-kin, however both Rodinsky and the victims of genocide had no one to pray for them and Rachel feels the weight of this desolation. The book can be very deflating in terms of the cycle of woe which befalls the Jews - the Polish pograms of the 1890's, the genocide of the Second World War, and there are mentions of subsequent anti-Semitism in Poland of the 1960s. There is a hopelessness about the fate of the Jews in the storytelling which is belied by the energy of the storyteller in her research and in her real life. This does not gel with my experience of Israel/Palestine, which I know to be a highly energetic, cosmopolitan, diverse and troubled society, whose energy is its most appealing characteristic. That being said, the part of the story told by Rachel, while being somewhat incredible, is sincere and well told.
   
   Have you ever experienced a bore at a funeral? Someone who is so intent on telling his/her own story with only glancing references to the deceased? For a reason, which is inexplicable to me, the story of Rachel's quest is periodically interrupted by irrelevant chapters by Iain Sinclair which completely break the flow of the narrative. He mentions `waiting for Godot', Bob Geldof, Harold Pinter, his own writings, the writing of some of his obscure friends, other Jewish legends, other people who are dead or missing - all tangentially related to Rodinsky or Rachel. Why? Sinclair shows up at the launch of the book and its readings, but he does not carry or contribute to the story. I can only surmise that Rachel was not confidant in her abilities to get the book started without him, but surely an experience editor should have intervened at some point in the books creation and dropped Sinclair;s contribution. As it is, the book can be quite usefully understood without bothering with Sinclair's pieces - indeed each chapter's author is listed, so perhaps the editor is making some effort at guiding us through the dross.
   
   Through Rachel's recounting of the story, it is obvious that the room, abandoned by Rodinsky in the 1960's, has been used as a powerful metaphor by both writers and photographers since it's `rediscovery' in the 1980's. It becomes clear from the photographs of the room that various photographs have rearranged the `undisturbed' room to fit their own needs for a story over the years. I think Rachel is also guilty of the same transference, it is possible that Rodinsky saw himself as an autodictat, in splendid isolation or it may be that he was a disturbed, isolated and frightened man who lived and died in extreme poverty and loneliness. Once it becomes clear that Rodinsky's actual personality and possessions are not knowable at this remove, the story could have focussed more on the social life of the Jewish area of the East End, the story could have included social progression, increasing affluence and assimilation; instead I believe the narrative explores Jewish tragedy and isolation, the necessity to acquire and disseminate knowledge so as to leave a record which may survive the inevitable disasters that will be visited upon the population.



2. I just finished teaching *Rodinsky's Room* and was amazed to see the variety of misreadings posted here as reviews. Among the many contemporary works of historical recovery or revision, *Rodinsky* stands out because of its alternating -- and often warring -- authors, each of whom has a different purpose in recovering Rodinsky's history, as well as a different form and style through which to accomplish this recovery.

   Sinclair, the experimental London novelist and essayist, draws on a pastiche of languages and approaches: the short, grotesque sentences of crime novels; classic gothic imagery of the uncanny; filmic montage and surrealist juxtaposition; gossip and rumor and arcane whispers. As he follows Lichtenstein's quest for Rodinsky's history, Sinclair questions traditional ways of fixing history that overexpose, erase, or create a fictional simulacrum of the past. While he is quite aware that his early writings on Rodinsky were the stuff of romantic urban legend, he is also insistant that heritage trusts and yuppie preservationists are no better than the City developers who want to erase the multiple layers of time sedimented in Spitalfields. The latter erase history, while the former use urban myths to increase property values.

   Lichtenstein's style, while more straight-forward than Sinclair's, is comparable to Paul Auster: a clean, seemingly transparent surface, with a plot built on unexplainable coicidences. If Sinclair is obsessed with the Room as a set for his own fictional musings, Lichtenstein wants to demystify the room, unfix energy from a fetishistic attachment to Rodinsky's objects and redirect it onto the human story of David Rodinsky.

   And to those reviewers who see Rodinsky as ultimately an ordinary man or a mentally disturbed recluse, I can only ask: did we read the same book? Rodinsky apparently taught himself several ancient languages, was at work on a treatise on the origins of language itself, definitely studied Kabbalah, and maintained himself in near obscurity in the closely-knit Jewish community of Spitalfields. Lichtenstein also debunks the mental illness theory: the behaviors that seemed "crazy" in London would have been totally normal in the Polish community of his grandparents. The very complexity of Rodinsky's identity is used to evoke the heterogeneity and brilliance of a Jewish immigrant community the history of which is currently elided in the pursuit of parking garages, office blocks, and silk weaver garrets.

   Ultimately, *Rodinsky's Room* is thematically similar to works like Sebald's *The Emigrants* or Amitav Ghosh's *In an Antique Land*, works that explore the porous boundaries between fiction, history, and myth, works that seek to protect history without romanticizing it or cutting it off, museum-like, from the plurality of possible fictions.




3. Having lived in London, where I came to know the Spitalfields neighborhood where the book is set and heard much about the "urban legend" of David Rodinsky, I expected to enjoy this book. Reading Liechtenstein and Sinclair's evocative impressions of Spitalfields took me back, but otherwise "Rodinsky's Room" was a disappointment.

   The perceptive reader senses the truth behind the mystery of David Rodinsky early on: Rodinsky was neither a genius nor a scholar, but a man of limited intelligence who lived most of his life with his protective, reclusive mother. After losing his mother, the sheltered Rodinsky couldn't make a life for himself in an unfamiliar world and was ultimately institutionalized. The authors find witnesses and documents who tell the truth about Rodinsky, but against all the evidence they dutifully record in the book the authors persist much too long in the belief that Rodinsky was some kind of inspired cabbalist mystic.

   The Rodinsky story is an interesting one, but Liechtenstein and Sinclair are not the right authors to tell it. Sinclair veers between disjointed autobiographical ramblings (none of which bear any apparent relevance to Rodinsky) and repetitive efforts to psychoanalyze Liechtenstein, asking over and over, "Why is this woman so interested in David Rodinsky?" While she writes more coherently than Sinclair, Liechtenstein comes across as flighty, self-absorbed and ludicrously naive; the story of Liechtenstein's rediscovery of her Judaism, the real heart of the book, gets old very quickly. Also, one does not need to be a former Londoner to notice Liechtenstein's factual errors (many of which don't even involve London; for example, she places Massachusetts' Brandeis University in California), the large number of which led me to question the publisher's editorial competence.

   Despite its many shortcomings, I can recommend "Rodinsky's Room" as a well-written memoir notwithstanding its content. However, readers looking to learn something about David Rodinsky's milieu - the disappearing Jewish East End - should look elsewhere.




4. Lichenstein and Sinclair have taken a fascinating and perplexing mystery and have raised it to the status of urban legend. On many levels, their collaborative attempt succeeds admirably: Lichtenstein skillfully (with some elements of a suspenseful detective story) presents her search for David Rodinsky, whose room was rediscovered, virtually untouched, two decades after it had been abandoned, and Sinclair places the story in its many cultural contexts. Yet, in other ways, their narrative falls short: more questions are raised than answered by their book, and Sinclair's contributions occasionally suffer from a parochialism that makes his discussion difficult for the general reader. As Sinclair himself admits, "The more the mystery of Rodinsky was discussed and debated, the dimmer the outline of the human presence."

   The book alternates between chapters by the two authors, and Lichtenstein's contributions are far more straightforward. She weaves her investigation into Rodinsky's identity with her own quest for her Jewish identity and ancestry, and I found her chapters to be far more compelling. Unfortunately, Lichtenstein seems a bit out of her depth when discussing Rodinsky's writings. She confesses she doesn't have the background necessary to understand or translate most of the scraps of papers and journals found in Rodinsky's rooms, yet both she (and Sinclair) repeatedly refer to Rodinsky as a talented linguist and scholar (or a cabbalist). This claim would have been greatly supported by reprinting or summarizing some of the texts left in the room, but we are given only four examples of Rodinsky's apparently prodigious output: two grammatically inept notes to his aunt (including one notable for its venom), the translation of a page of Chinese characters that turns out merely to say "I am David Rodinsky" over and over, and a journal entry on the study of the Assyrian language that could have been written (stylistic errors and all) by a college freshman. Was Rodinsky truly a scholar and a linguist, or was he just a reclusive dabbler? The evidence presented in the book is hardly convincing either way.

   Sinclair's nonlinear meditations are also absorbing; he finds parallels to the mystery of Rodinksy in a broad range of literary themes and cultural myths, and he aptly illustrates the East End neighborhood where Rodinsky spent nearly all his life. Although he is a wonderful stylist, Sinclair seems to be writing for his fellow members of the East End literati (and for the critics) rather than for the general reader. Time and again, he mentions London-based semi-celebrities without any introduction whatsoever; I can't imagine many American--or even British--readers knowing most of the people and friends Sinclair mentions. If, before you begin this book, you can't identify Steven Berkoff, David Gascoyne, James Fox, George Melly, John Harle, and dozens of other similarly obscure artists and writers, you will know even less about them after you finish reading Sinclair's chapters. Even better-known writers like Kathy Acker and Arthur Morrison deserve some sort of identification.

   Furthermore, Sinclair's chapter placing Rodinsky's story within the context of the mythology of the golem seems far-fetched; the parallels just aren't there. Indeed, most of those who knew Rodinsky clearly find this comparison odious ("There must be no talk of golems, cabbalists, interdimensional voyages, invisibility," says one. "Rodinsky was a man to be pitied, an inadequate [who] unfortunately attained nothing . . . due to his low IQ.") But such objections hardly keep Sinclair from attempting to substantiate this analogy for nearly 30 pages.

   Nevertheless, in spite of my rather significant reservations, I found this book overall to be an affecting celebration of the life of a man who otherwise would be one of the many reclusive loners and social outcasts who disappear in the world on a daily basis.




5. Gradually this story of one apparently fairly ordinary old Talmudic scholar and how he became emblematic of the diaspora
   and then of the holocaust. Deceptively simple in the way the
   story is slowly revealed, I found this one of the most moving books I have read in several years. Without any dramatic special effects, the authors make the mysterious occupant of Princelet
   Street at once far less of a mystery and far more of a human being. This is a wonderful picture of Jewish immigration to London's East End, but it also helps us understand the kind of loss and sense of yearning which the immigrants from Eastern Europe brought with them into their new place of exile.
   Anyone interested in Jewish life in London should read this.

1 comments about Albert Kahn: Builder of Detroit (Detroit Biography Series for Young Readers).

1. I bought this as a present for my nephew, along with a field trip of downtown Detroit, where we spend an afternoon spotting Albert Kahn buildings. He loved it and continues to reread this book! It has the right amount of history, a good story and explains basic architectural terms.

5 comments about The Jewish State.

1. This book (pamphlet really) is something more people should be reading.
   Why do people still read mein kampf or marx, but not even mention this? It's right up there with those works in explaining the most important events of the 20th century. Definitely worth your time to read.



2. First published in 1896, this book gave rise to modern Zionism. Given the impact of the Middle East situation on the planet, this book should be read by everyone to better understand the world we live in today.
   
   For me, two things stand out from the book. Firstly, the "internalisation" of anti-semitism (see "Causes of Anti-Semitism" on page 23) whereby Herzl himself accepts (in my view quite wrongly) that European anti-semitism is inevitable due to certain characteristics of the Jews. Secondly, although leaving the question open of whether to emigrate to Argentina or Palestine to create the Jewish state, in either case Herzl just ignores the fact that both countries were inhabited, with people who might not want incomers creating a new state for themselves in their midst.



3. In this review I refer to this edition,from Filiquarian Publishing,only. Without question this document has extreme historical and philosophical importance. Everyone who has an interest in the history of Zionism, Israel, Jewish migration and development, or even just a general interest in sociology or economics should have a copy in their library. But not this edition! It is so rife with typographical errors, misspellings, dropped words and such that it is often unreadable. An hour or two's work by a copy editor would have made a world of difference.



4. This book is the basis of how the state Israel should be created according to the end of the 19th century "Wiener" Theodor Herzl.
   In fact many of his considerings were used to create the zionist state Israel, except his idealistic and visionary view where Palestinians (Filistines originally from the Greek island Philistos) were given "a piece of the cake": jews and Palestinians were considered in his opinion to live peacefully and happy together in this "altneuland" or"aviv".



5. Not the best book to read on the subject, lacked a lot of information and found it to be not very interesting. Have read better ones on this subject.

5 comments about Hide: A Child's View of the Holocaust (Bison Original).

1. This is one of the most graphic novels I have read regarding children/families hiding in the Holocaust. I did not know such atrocities occurred in the ghettos of Poland. I have always thought they were reserved for the concentration camps. This memoir is amazingly well written. The courage this woman had to tell her excruciating story even after she was repeatedly reprimanded by her friends, family, neighbors, and even practicing members of psychiatry was inspiring. It makes me so angry to hear there was such discrimination against survivors attempting to tell their stories, even within the Jewish community of the US. I commend the author for putting her memories to page and allowing the world to see the horror she survived.



2. Naomi Samson's memoir is aptly titled. Not only does it provide an account of a child survivor of the Holocaust, but the author seems able to reach into the past and describe events as her child-self experienced them, sometimes even assuming a child's voice. The result is a compelling, sometimes excruciating read, from its beginning in medias res three years after the Nazis invasion of Poland in 1939 to its conclusion six years later upon the author's post-war arrival in America. Take, for example, this bit of dialogue, ten pages into the book, in which the nine-year-old Naomi is told by her Mother that she is giving up the attempt to hide from the Nazis in Poland.
   
   "Listen to me, my child," she said. "We can't go on like this. We will either die of starvation and the animals will eat our flesh here in the woods, or someone in these villages will kill us. I have decided we should walk to our hometown, Goray, which is eight or nine miles from here, and give ourselves up at the Jewish cemetery. That way we will be buried with other Jewish people."
   
   "No, no!" I cried. "I will not die this way or any other way! I want to live, Mama. I don't want to feel bullets fired in my head or body! Bullet are hot and they burn a person's insides and it hurts badly until the person is dead!" (10-11)
   
   This example also brings up some concerns I have about Hide. How much can we rely on the veracity of dialogue spoken or heard by a child and then recreated (in a different language, no less) after nearly sixty years? Furthermore, because Mrs. Samson provides little explanatory commentary, the dialogue must bear the burden of providing back story and context. This artifice is effective in that it provides timely information in an unobtrusive way but it tends to further compromise the authenticity of the dialogue. (The mother would not have had to tell her child that Goray was their hometown, and she would probably not have had to explain how far away from it they had wandered.)
   
   These issues can be brushed aside, however, if we consider Hide to be primarily a work of literature, that is, an attempt by an author to express the truth of her life experience through language. Indeed, though the book would have been more historically accurate if it could have contained an exact record of each word spoken, such an account would probably have been less meaningful to us, considering that much of the dialogue conveys the inner feelings of the child Naomi Samson, feelings that were probably never uttered.
   
   As Naomi grows older and the book approaches its conclusion, Mrs. Samson begins expressing her feelings directly, and, once again, the results are powerful, as in the following excerpt in which she describes a train ride through Nuremberg during the time of the post-war trials:
   
   These executioners were given a trial? Why? I felt such anger, such hate, during those moments that if given the chance, I would have smashed their skulls with my bare hands. . . . I tried to compose myself in order to look normal to my sister and my new brother-in-law, Sam. These hateful thoughts inside me bothered me a lot. My father had taught us never to hate. "Hate only hurts the one who carries it inside," he would say. My father was no longer there to guide me. But I was smart enough to realize that one of the ways the enemy could win was by instilling hate inside me so that for the rest of my life I would only dwell in hate and never enjoy my life. Oh, how I hated them for making me feel such hatred! I decided I would force myself to concentrate on pleasant things-good things to make me happy. (162)
   
   Such sections reveal a candor and degree of self-disclosure that one might expect in a therapy session, and, as Mrs. Samspon explains in the twenty-page epilogue that follows, she did undergo years of therapy after the war. That experience may have given her the confidence to present something approaching the raw truth in her memoir rather than crafting a version intended to be more palatable to friends and family. Though it must have been both cathartic and difficult to put such words on paper, Mrs. Samson proved equal to the task, and resisted the temptation to necessarily present herself in a good light.
   
   Ultimately, well-written Holocaust memoirs such as this one cause us to confront the extremes of human life, and attempt to make sense of them. Along with Mrs. Samson we must ask-helplessly, fruitlessly-why did so many innocent people die, and why did so many murderers get away with it? We also have to wonder how any human being could pick up and live a fulfilling life after having endured such horrors as a young child, but Mrs. Samson has shown that such an accomplishment is possible. At first glance, the inclusion of a family photo taken on the occasion of her son's wedding struck me as a Jewish mother's indulgence, but by the time I had reached the end of this slim memoir, the sight of it made me want to cheer. Indeed, the words of the Grammy-winning dinosaur Barney, sung to her by her grandchildren in the concluding scene of the book, have never seemed so touching, nor profound: "I love you. You love me. We're a happy family."



3. This was the best book about the Holocaust and its survivors and what they went through I have ever read. I could not put it down. I am taking a class on the Holocaust and needed a book for a report. Well I found the best book I could ever have found. It is full of suffering, bravery, love, and happiness. So if you want the real story of the Holocaust as it really happened this is the book. I will soon buy my own copy.



4. I couldn't stop reading this book. I was crying. I wanted to shout, to yell, to kick, to k.... I couldn't avoid the thought that if I was put in this hell, probably I wouldn't survive it.

   Born in Israel, I've learned a lot about the Holocaust but never before I felt the horror so strong. For example, Noami's description of the Nazis humiliating her grandparents shocked me stronger than all the many times I watched pictures of the Nazis cutting a Rabbi's sidecurls (PEYOT) hair and beard.

   The part telling how in the US every one refused to hear Noami's story made it even more terrible and hard to comprehand.

   I wanted to thank you Noami for telling your story which I promise to tell to my children.




5. This is one of the best books I have ever read - period. The author is a remarkable writer, and I can't understand why this book isn't number one on the best-seller list. It should be; it is truly that good. I felt like I was there. I got the book from the library, but I'm going to buy one for each of my adult children to read. No book or movie about the holocaust has touched me as much as this one, and I want the author, Naomi Samson, to know that this Irish Catholic and his family will never forget - because of her book. We will never forget.

No comments about Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World.