5 comments about The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir.

1. I started reading this book and could not hardly put it down. I think I read it in 3 days. Benjamin Jacobs was sent to a concentration camp along with the rest of his family. Benjamin and his father ended up at Auschwitz. Had it not been for Benjamin's dental training and given a little bit of preference over the other inmates, the pure hell he was put through would have surely ended in death. The love story between him and Zosia is touching. Unbelievable how anyone could survive just a nightmare. This is truly the part of history most of us would like to rewrite. Great book.



2. I found out about this book after reading another book that the author co-wrote. It is called The 100-Year Secret and it deals with a portion of the material that is contained in The Dentist of Auschwitz. The author spent almost five years in various camps, riding in closed railroad cars in summer, open railroad cars in winter, on death marches in the dead of winter, and on "hell ships," that were mistakingly attacked by the RAF and he, along with his brother still outlived the Nazi monsters that created this world for them. How Jacobs managed to survive his voyage through "man's inhumanity to man" is at the heart of this amazing story of survival. I promise you will not be able to put this book down.



3. I couldn't put this book down. Benjamin's story needs to be made into a movie: are you listening S. Spielberg? This is a remarkable book of unbelievable odds of survival. Ben escaped death so many times, but, the ending of this book is the most tragic episode of his story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a perspective and gratitude adjustment; when you read about the suffering of Jews and the fortitude of the survivors, you come to realize how petty and spoiled people can be in their own minds. Each time I read about a survivor, I feel a renewed sense of the gratitude I have for my life. My mother is also a survivor of Auschwitz, but each survivor's story is unique. Read and realize gratitude.



4. "The Dentist of Auschwitz" is a spellbinding novel about a man that lived through the holocaust of World War II. The trials and tribulations of Benjamin Jacobs as he survives through labor and concentration camps will move you. Had it not been for the author's dental instruments that he brought with him, he would most likely not be alive today. Be thankful that he is alive and can tell accounts of his intriguing survival because this book is a very interesting and trivial tale. It is a very well written novel that I could not put down. I would recommend this novel to anyone and everyone.



5. I purchased this book for a history class. Great price and a good read. Good source of first-hand experiences at concentration camps. Differs a bit from the usual horrid details in other books, but explains some of the lighter sides, if I may, concerning the relationships between captives and captors.

4 comments about The Choice: Poland, 1939-1945.

1. I was impressed with the author's descriptions of the lives led by Jews in Poland prior to and during WW II.In that respect the book is well written,however there is a big missing piece.What is missing is the story of the escape from the German work camp and the ensuing two years in hiding.The auther took us up to this point and then gave us no detail about the years in hiding or how she found the farm family that allowed her to hide in their chicken coop.
   The book had a tendency to be a bit long on philosophical observations with added poetry and short on narrative story.
   Much was left out as she skipped around from 1939 to present.



2. Ms. Eber is able to take you right into the horrors she faced, both as a child and as an adult. She's unflinching in her own self-examination as well as in recounting the events she witnessed. As a writer who struggles with capturing painful emotions and memories on paper, I have the utmost respect for this author's courage, not only for living, but for putting it all into words. She has a gift and we are fortunate that she's shared it with us.
   Namaste.



3. I was captivated by the author's courage as she tries to recreate with honesty, the events happening around her during the war. Although she can sometimes see only colors or shapes, she doesn't fill in what might have happened, only what she can remember. It was a joy to read of her family's reunion in a honest way, without celebratory prose. What a view she creates of the real-life drama in sometimes a matter-of-fact way. She neither paints herself as heroic or courageous, just as a girl trying to live against terrible odds.



4. Irene Eber is a remarkably good writer and consummate historian you met in the film "Shanghai Ghetto". Her autobiography of a family's transition from German middle class happiness to unspeakable horror is poignantly related in this highly readable narrative. It is the most touching glimpse of this appalling episode I have found to date.

No comments about A Time to Speak.

4 comments about Tales from a Child of the Enemy.

1. TALES FROM A CHILD OF THE ENEMY by Ursula Duba compels us to realize that the past is a state of mind. She carries us back into her childhood in post-war Germany, and then quietly returns us to the present. There, through our own time, Duba again carries us back, this time further and deeper and into the psyches of those who were witness to the inhumanity of the Third Reich. We realize that the events of another time and another place envelop and profoundly affect the way our present is seen and tolerated by certain individuals, people whom we might very easily know. We come to realize that their struggle, their understanding, and their insights can have profound influence on the world around us. That this is true, especially for those of us who presumed that our realtionship to the events of WWII and the Holocaust were non-existent or at least, very distant, is stunning. We are inescapably drawn into Duba's mind and heart by the deceptively conversational tone of her poems, by her easy description of events and issues which so quickly become as familiar to us as the events in our own lives. The lives of others and the "then" which has impacted so strongly upon them today, becomes a part of our own lives, our own now



2. In reading Duba's book, my first inclination was to be suspect of this German gentile who had the audacity to portray the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, but as I read the sequence of story poems that, like blocks, built a picture of the complex, multi-layered experience of all the participants, I began to soften and ultimately came over to join her in viewing the experience from her vantage point. Duba is brutally honest with herself, requiring me too, to examine my prejudices and stererotypes. Her courage to face herself and to face up to others gave me the encouragement to examine my experience, to face down some of my haunting demons and the manadate to speak out. - Second generation Holocaust survivo



3. This beautifully written gem should be required reading for anyone who feels they understand the Holocaust. Ursula Duba is brutally honest in her portrayal of "civilized" behavior in difficult circumstances. This book will take your conscience on a difficult trip by showing us that we are all responsible for protesting injustices in the world around us.



4. This book belongs on the same shelf as Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" and "Schindler's List." Duba really gets inside her characters -- victims, perpetrators and those in-between. Her poems will leave lasting impressions and have readers returning to the pages many times.

5 comments about Hope and Honor.

1. This is the best book I've read recently and I heartily recommend it.
   
   The first and most harrowing part of the book deals with General Shachnow's childhood and miraculous survival of the Holocaust. The protagonist of the story is primarily Shachnow's mother -- an extraordinary, quick witted and determined woman. It is mainly due to her efforts and incredible daring that both her children (one of whom was a mere toddler) survived, while pretty much everyone around them perished. Her strength through the war and the heartbreaks and challenges of the family's post war experiences were to me the most touching and heartrending aspect of the book. Shachnow does a fine job at crediting his mother's extraordinary sacrifices and bravery, but also touchingly describing her weaknesses and eventual failures.
   
   The second part of the book, which in some ways is just as touching, deals with the Shachnow family's move first to post-war Germany and then to the US. The immigration experience was particularly rough on General Shachnow, who arrived in the US as an unschooled and traumatized teenager, but managed, through toil and faith to complete high school successfully. Shachnow's parents fared less well. They seemed unable to transition to the new culture and its demands. Shachnow speculates that his mother had used up all her strength and ingenuity to survive and therefore found herself unable to cope with the new world. Shachnow tells us how the graceful heroine of the Kovno Ghetto turns into a nagging, selfish and small-minded woman, whose behavior inhibits her and her husband from succeeding in their new life. In one of the saddest parts of the book, Shachnow describes his break from his family following his marriage to a non-Jewish girl -- an event that his family treated with neither wisdom nor grace.
   
   The final part of the book is devoted to General Shachnow's military career, starting with his enlistment as a private at the end of his high school studies. His rise to the rank of general is described with humility and is of much interest, though, like other reviewers, I wish it was more extensive.
   
   This is an extraordinary book. In part it made me cry (the touching love between the brothers and the terrible heartbreak of Sidney's parents experiences in the US) and in part it made me wonder. But most of all -- the book inspired me. This is the story of the incredible power of love to save lives, to give meaning to existence. It's the story of familial ties and their challenges. This is the story of the ultimate inevitability of success to those who are sufficiently persistent. And finally -- it's the story of true patriotism and leadership. It's a must read.
   
   I heard the book on CD (Blackstone Audio), read by the excellent Brian Emerson.



2. This is a fascinating tale of survival in Lithuania, and the grit and hussle that Shachnow brought to the US as a teen-ager to rise to the rank of major general in the US Army Special Forces.



3. Excellent book. I have read MG Shachnow's military bio, heard stories about him from other soldiers, and met the man on more than one occasion - but the book brings to life with vivid details the trials and tribulations of a real-life hero. This true story is more captivating than any fictional character and story could be.



4. This is an extraordinary story of strength, courage and love under the most trying conditions imaginable. After surviving the Holocaust as a boy in Nazi-controlled Lithuania, Sidney Shachnow eventually emigrated to the U.S. with his family to start a new life. Risking his life in defense of freedom as a career soldier he truly gave back so much to his new homeland. As such Gen Shachnow's story serves to remind us of the real meaning of American patriotism, which, sadly, in not taught in schools the way it formerly was.
   
   This book makes an equally valuable contribution to American literature as Gen. Shachnow made to the U.S. Army. Unlike so many celebrity autobiographies, which are little more than self-agrandizing fluff-fluff, this book presents the story of Gen Shachnow's life in a painfully honest manner. From cover to cover it is the forthright story of a real man and a real human being, warts and all. That Gen. Shachnow has no trouble being as open as he is with his readers further attests to his bravery and character.



5. I bought this book based on a very good review in "Vietnam" magazine. The story of MG Shachnow's life from surviving the Holocaust to becoming the #1 officer in Special Forces makes for an intriguing biography.
   
   The first part of the book is amazing and provides for a very personal and emotional description of a young boy surviving the holocaust in Lithuania. I highly recommend this first half - the emotions and details are chilling.
   
   The rest of the book covers his military career in a very general way, i.e. without a lot of depth to his experiences. I wish that the book had been made into two volumes, with even more time spent on his childhood and early experiences afterwards as well as a second volume going into much more depth of his experiences as a soldier. To me it seemed that just as a topic was getting interesting, the chapter ended and a new topic was introduced (and then cut off). I would happily have read a 500 page volume 1 and a 500 page volume 2.
   
   The writing style is adictive and the content intriguing. The only criticism is the lack of depth in his military experiences (the main reason I had bought the book).

2 comments about The Enigma of Anna O. : A Biography of Bertha Pappenheim.

1. This well-researched and engaging biography broadens the awarenesses of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, historians of Europe in the past century and of Jewish history, and feminists. Knowing Anna O.'s enormously influential life trajectory sends a message of which we need continual reminders: someone can suffer from severe mental illness in one phase of his/her life and emerge from the experience strong and heroic, making powerfully contructive contributions.
   And read Gail Hornstein's "To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World:The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann" - they complement each other beautifully.



2. The case of Anna O., the founding case of psychoanalysis, is an endless source of fascination to each new generation of readers. As the work of Ellenberger and Hirschmuller showed, the "prototypal case of cathartic cure" was neither cathartic nor a cure. Both Freud and Breur in writing up the case as a success engaged in deception to an extent that would be regarded as scientific misconduct today.

   Historical revision of the case has resulted in dozens of attempts to review the story in the light of modern thinking, many of them highly worthwhle exercises in diagnosis or historianship. In the process, we are learning something more of the neglected and highly interesting life of the real person behind the case, Bertha Pappenheim, who went on to be a pioneer social worker, children's writer, religious figure and intellectual.

   Unfortunately, readers who are hoping for a dispassionate and intriguing voyage into the life of Ms Pappenheim are going to be disappointed by this book, which teeters between a romantically confused sophomoric thesis and a plaintive attempt at public writing therapy. Anyone who doubts this need only read the emetic acknowlegement, going on for many pages, before the actual text commences. After that, it is a steady path downhill.

   The author appears to have no capacity for independent thought and constantly picks from such dubious sources as "feminist French lacanians" to justify her insistent lament that Anna O. was yet another victimised Victorian female who somehow managed to create psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, social work and goodness knows what else. About the only consistent conclusion that can be drawn from this nursery school thinking is that if feminist historians are going to produce work that is critical, deep and intellectually honest, this is not the way to go about it.

   There are good books on Anna O. and Bertha Pappenheim, for example by Ellenberger and Hirschmuller, and more should follow. This self-indulgent work of second-rate scholarship and third-rate history is not one of them.

4 comments about First Words: A Childhood in Fascist Italy.

1. The media seems to be eating up every book that blasts the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII...here's another attempt to cover up the heroics of the Church during the Nazi era....



2. I could not disagree more with the previous "book critic". This book is not a lambasting of individual Catholics or of the many individual priests that helped to save many Jews. One need only look at Ms. Loy's characterization of Pope Pius XI and his very anti-semetic stance to see that this book in no way sees all Catholics as heartless beasts. What it does show is that with the on-slot of Pope Pius XII's reign, the organized Catholic body-politic did nothing privately or publicly to condemn the atrocities committed against Jews at home or abroad in Nazi Germany. There were over 1200 Jews in Rome alone that could have been "hidden" in the Vatican...but no, the response to that was that Pope Pius XII could have been arrested. Getting arrested seems very tame to Jesus being crucified, does it not? All I can say is that, along with the reading of this very touching book by Ms. Loy, I would also recommend everyone out there supplimenting the reading of this book with Mr. Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope".



3. Rosetta Loy opens this book with her first memories of childhood as a young girl in Rome in the early 30s. She then paints the picture from that time to 1943.

   This book actually tells two stories - first the account of Rosetta's life during that period of time and second the historical facts of the time.
   The entire book impressed me, but two things about this book absolutely AMAZED me.

   1. Roessetta Loy's voice. On the first page she is a young girl tended by a nanny, the reader is treated with the perspective of life at this point in time from the unusual view of a curious and intelligent child. As the book progresses and Rossetta ages the story changes in vocabulary and scope.
   2. Ms. Loy presents the key points of political and legal changes in her church, city and country with simply clarity. This is the first book that I have read on the subject that didn't attempt go overboard on explanations, excuses or "what ifs". Ms. Loy states the facts of legal changes and racial politics of Italy at the time without attempting to question `how', `why', `to what end' and `what if'. Instead the reader will hear these questions echo in their own mind.

   This is a powerful book. It is written in simple style and easy to read. It could be read in a day or two, but if you are like me when you get to the end you will want to read it again.




4. Rosetta Loy's memoir of life in Italy during WWII, FIRST WORDS, traces a little girl's awakening to the meaning of blind hate by the fascists.
   
   A Catholic nation, Italy should have followed Christ and turned against the hate-filled fascist state. However, Pope Pius XII offered no Christian model to emulate. Instead, this quasi-holy, German-sympathizer avoided confrontation, closed his eyes to atrocities and was still recommended for sainthood after the holocaust.
   
   Rosetta Loy watched as Jewish friends disappeared. Afterwards, she researched how Italy reacted to the obvious carnage. After her research, she points an angry finger directly at the Pope and his minions.
   
   This book is a warning to Bush-Cheney and other fascists in the USA today. Your unprovoked wars, your stereo-typing of Mexicans as illegals so as to camouflage your wars in Iraq and your neo-con pugnacious attitude around the world are doomed.
   
   Even Karl Rove re-writing history won't save your souls after your hate-filled, arrogant, bigotted, fascistic acts.
   
   Even a child can see the fascists underneath your fake smiles.

3 comments about Remember.

1. This book reminds us what it's like to be a young solider in the mist of a horrible war. You can relate Paul's experience to the young men of war today. The illustration are a work of art but my favorite photo is of Paul sitting on the grass holding 2 bottles of wine with this big mischievous smile. We are letting our history slip away, need to show our children the horrors of war, concnetration camps, death camps,and that the holocaust was real not only for the Jews but for many.



2. I just finished reading it, and what a poignant experience it was! Joan is both articulate and eloquent, and her narrative flows naturally and gracefully. That's no small accomplishment, and her easy style makes Paul's story accessible to people of all ages, even the very young, without ever coming across as simplistic. I think Holocaust education is mandatory in most public schools today, and this book could be a great introduction for young readers. It's appropriately somber without being scary or hopeless, and the young GI, Paul, is not only a real person, but an appealing personality and role model. Although forced to deal with mind-boggling evil, he doesn't despair, and finds an even greater resolve to do the right thing because of his experience with the dark side of human nature. "Remember..." is an important book in many ways, and I believe it could have a very wide readership and attract the interest of a major publisher.



3. The Holocaust needs to be remembered and should be mandatory for the school children of today. This book would be a great way to introduce the Holocaust to people of all ages, even the very young, without ever coming across as simplistic. The author's quality of writing shines through and the artwork by Chellie and Joan have wonderfully illustrates this very moving story.
   
   The artwork really complements the narrative, and I like the use of graphite and charcoal, as it reminds me of the great German artist Kathe Kollwitz, who died in 1945. Though Joan and Chell don't render with the edginess of Kollwitz, their softer style seems more appropriate for the tone of the book. My favorite illustrations are Chell's Train to Nowhere (p. viii & p. 70), Joan's In the Army Now (p. 7), and her interpretations of photos from the Warsaw Ghetto, p. 65 through 66. Usually I prefer to see drawings done directly from life, because working from photos taken by other people often means we're seeing the photographer's composition and visual choices, not the sketcher's, so an important element in the artistic process is missing. There's also a tendency for drawings made from photos to be over-worked, and to lose certain freshness in translation. But Joan's photo-inspired work avoids those pitfalls and is truly INSPIRED. Her drawings reflect her individual style as an artist, and her passion for her subject matter makes them particularly expressive and vibrant. Well done!!

1 comments about My Brother's Voice.

1. What a great read! Mr. Nasser's incredible and heart-wrenching experiences during the Holocaust are presented to us as a testimony to the powers of love, faith, and the will to survive. It is refreshing to read an autobiography that not only describes the cruel and unjustified treatment from the SS but also the kindness of some Wehrmacht soldiers, not merely the every-man-for-himself stories prevalent in many Holocaust books but how helping other prisoners lifts the human spirit. In other words, Mr. Nasser's book gives us not only the dark aspects of the Holocaust (and they're very dark), but reminds us intelligence, attitude, and hope can lighten the heaviest of loads.

5 comments about Diary of a Man in Despair: A Masterpiece about the Comprehension of Evil (Duck Editions).

1. If, like me, you view the nazi era as a reaction against modernity, this is a book that will cause severe cognitive dissonance.It's Written by a member of the old Prussian aristocracy whose biggest problem with the nazis appears to be their populism. It's laden with classist terms like "canaille" and "mass-man" to the extent that he almost appears to blame german workers for their own alienation which led to the development of nazism. This is not the only dubious historical claim: he seems to believe that ndudstrailisationwas responsble fro the two world wars and not the other way around. Nevertheless, there are enough fascinating insights to make the book worthy of your attention, and it's worth bearing in mind that he wasn't writing with the same sense of historical distanciation that we have. Just remember, the worst thing about the nazis wasn't that they were boorish illiterate charlatans but that they killed 6 million jews and almost brought an end to western civilisation.



2. It is true that Reck has a sense of class superiority to the Nazi's but that does not obscure his central point--he knew they were monsters--and he died for that. Counts for something you know. The invective is superb and more over Reck recognizes real resistance like the Scholl's (were they aristocrat?) and damns the generals assisanation plot as a an opportunistic move. Furthermore The Nazis crimes were pandemic--the annhilhation of the Jews, but also gypsies--and if one is making measurements which seems to me silly--the obliteration of 20,0000 soviet citizens. By the other reviewers logic if the destruction of the Jews is the question by which Germans will be judged, then Stalin becomes a heroe for saving the bulk of Soviet Jewry --sending them behind the Ural mountains--I don't think I want to go that route. It also explains why Israel refuses to make Dietrich Bonhoeffer a "rightious gentile" which is a scandal.
   No The Nazis were monsters such total monsters that any costly resistance derserves honor. This is the best anti-Nazi book theis Jew has ever read.



3. The title is a calumny. As his translator, Paul Rubens, points out, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen was a prophet - not in the vulgar sense of one who predicts future events, but a prophet after the fashion of Jeremiah, William Blake and Dostoyevsky: one who comments on the present from the perspective of the Most High. As such, even when his own death is imminent, Reck most certainly does not despair. Like the three individuals mentioned above, he is angered, disgusted, saddened and horrified by what he sees around him; his journal is filled with images of Calvary, the plague, and the Apocalypse; yet he continually strives to see his own and his country's ordeal as a time of suffering and repentance which must be endured to make way for a new and better world. None of which is to say that his thinking is "mystical" in the sense of being vague or escapist; indeed, the immense value of Reck's diary, both as literature and as a historical document, lies in its brilliant combination of sharp observation and lucid analysis. Although he makes the all-too-common error of lumping in the plotters of 20 July 1944 with the many opportunists who tried to dissociate themselves from the regime as defeat began to loom, Reck's analytical passages offer as clear and concrete a picture of the corruption underlying Hitler's Germany as any historian I have encountered. Telling details of life in the Third Reich - the omnipresent thuggery and tale-bearing, the forced barracks-gymnasium atmosphere, the all-pervasive lies and propaganda - spring out of every page through tartly written anecdotes and vignettes. The peculiar detestability of the Nazi functionaries - frustrated schoolteachers and jumped-up mailmen posing as masters of the world - is described and analysed with perception and admirable loathing. This elderly, conservative, royalist aristocrat - a member of a class who, because they did not support the Weimar Republic, are too often labelled supporters of the Nazis - displays a courage, intelligence, breadth of culture and (I cannot emphasise it enough) a faith which makes his journal as moving a human document as the more famous diary of Anne Frank.



4. It's hard to believe this isn't a work of fiction. This guy is filled with hate and rage and loathing as he watches the German-speaking people descend into madness. Incredible writing, powerful ideas. Get it.



5. I have read this book twice, once in the original edition and then this edition. It is a fabulous book.
   As to the Reck's aristocratic prejudice, this is something he is quite clear about, but he is a democrat as well -- hence he praises the opposition for being just that. Also, the individuals who really bear the brunt of his wrath are the Generals, the Junkers and the Kaiser before him who forsook their aristocratic upbringing, and sold out Germany long before Hitler took power, and then flirted with him as a novelty.
   
   It is hard to understand Reck's viewpoint without at least visiting or living in Germany and especially Bavaria -- which is a bit seperatist. Also, note his praise of the Munich uprising -- a communist uprising -- where people were still treated with diginity.
   
   His anger is with the sort of lowering of standards, the rise of the masses spurred on by hate, and constantly bombarded with propaganda. It is truly a remarkable book and one that has tremendous relevance for these times.