No comments about Hope And Honor: Library Edition.

No comments about Self Portrait: An Artist's Memories.

No comments about Otto, the Boy at the Window: Peter Abeles True Story of Escape from the Holocaust and New Life in America.

3 comments about A Jump for Life: A Survivor's Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland.

1. My brother gave me this book because, like Rosemary Trollope, I had attended the Glasgow School of Art, lived in Glasgow and loved the city. Her love of Glasgow and it's people is apparent throughout these autobiographical vignettes. Glasgow, like most cities, is not a place you instantly fall in love with. You have to live there and after a while you grow to love this city and it's people. I lived there many years after she did and though I could not relate to her upper class existence, I enjoyed her stories nonetheless. It's a way of life that no longer exists and she makes no apologies for it; why should she? To think at a time when her family had indoor plumbing and telephones, my family were living in houses with earthen floors and no indoor plumbing. Indeed my Mother's first job as a young girl of 14 was to work as maidservant in these well to do houses. Though she is definately from the other side of the tracks, she tells her story with humour and understanding. Glasgow is a great place to start and reading this book I wanted to go back and start all over again.



2. 
   Originally written in 1946, Cyprys' account is remarkably free of the Judeocentric, German-whitewashing, anti-Christian, and anti-Polish tendencies of today. She devotes almost as much attention to German crimes against Poles as to those against Jews. Furthermore, Cyprys makes it clear that the Germans regarded the Poles as having no more inherent right to live than the Jews. Consider what happened when two Poles were mistakenly herded with Jews into a Treblinka-bound train: "Two gentiles in our wagon tried to explain to the Germans that they did not fit into this society and tried to show their documents. All to no avail. `Even if you are not a Jew, you are a damned Pole', yelled the German, and slapped the older woman's face, barking `Polish swine' and with his rifle butt drove her to the wagon." (p. 95).
   
   Cyprys reported a balanced range of Polish attitudes towards Jews (pp. 118-119, 127, 132), some of which varied within the same family (pp. 142-143). Ironically, she was helped by the obsessively anti-Semitic Mrs. Zosia, who felt sorry for the Jews and who aided them (pp. 220-221).
   
   In his FEAR, Jan Tomasz Gross presents a distorted view of Poles acquiring Jewish properties during the German occupation. In contrast, when mentioning how some Poles pretended to be Volksdeutsche in order to join in the German-sponsored pillage of Jewish properties, she nevertheless added: "The local mob usually guided the Germans to the rich Jewish houses and stores. With the deepest shame I must admit that there were some Jews among the scum." (pp. 25-26).
   
   One inflammatory Polonophobic Holocaust myth is the one about Jews, while being transported to the death camps and with full knowledge of their impending deaths, being forced to endure the sight of indifferent or gleeful Polish onlookers. Against such nonsense, we learn that the death trains had small, barred windows well above eye level, and with nothing to stand on in order to look out of them (p. 96). Viewing (in either direction) was nearly impossible. The author and her daughter were loaded on a Treblinka-bound train. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Cyprys was boosted up and enabled to cut through the bars to jump out and to have her daughter Eva (Ewa) get pushed out.
   
   The oft-quoted Polish remark about Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising "getting burned like bugs", although invariably presented as such, wasn't necessarily derogatory. After all, Poles used the same phrase to refer to themselves in the face of their defenselessness against German incendiary bombing during the Warsaw Uprising! (p. 200).
   
   The Germans strongly promoted alcoholism among Poles. This was done in order to degrade them (Lemkin elaborated on this) and to exploit this dependency as leverage in the denunciation of fugitive Jews (p. 174).
   
   Cyprys elaborates on the semi-collaborationist Polish Blue Police (Policja Granatowa): "There were policemen who would accept neither bribes nor ransoms but, for the sake of their ideology, would hand over the Jews. Looking at this group objectively, however, one has to say that among their ranks there were many Volksdeutsch volunteers. The activities of the Polish police aroused such hostility among the majority of the Polish people, that death sentences were passed on several policemen by the Polish underground organizations and executions were carried out by Polish lads...upon the orders of the Organization a detailed list of all policemen was kept in the Underground offices. These contained, apart from proved misconduct, evidence of their standard of living which ascertained whether a dark blue was profiteering from blackmail or extortion. These lists of evidence were kept till the Warsaw Uprising: I do not know whether they survived the insurrection." (p. 138).
   
   However, by no stretch of the imagination was the Polish Blue Police the main force in the roundups of Jews for their deaths: "On about 5 August [1942] all `workshop territories' were hermetically closed and the Germans and Ukrainians started a ruthless expulsion of anyone found outside these areas--always with the efficient help of the Jewish militia. Wherever a German or a Ukrainian did not venture the militia men would gladly fish out as many as possible of those still hidden in cellars and vaults, only to oblige the Germans." (p. 52).
   
   Most Polish blackmailers (szmalcowniki), "the scum of mankind" (p. 119), took only part of the belongings of their Jewish victims and didn't usually actually denounce Jews to the Germans (pp. 119-120). They sometimes excused their conduct by their poverty and even gave the Jews advice on how better to disguise their Jewishness (p. 140).
   
   Underworld Poles weren't the only ones that fugitive Jews feared: "The Jewish Gestapo men who remained alive were very dangerous. Their eyes were penetrating and Jews pointed out by them were lost beyond hope." (p. 165). Cyprys personally observed them shouting Jewish slogans or singing Jewish songs in order to provoke a telltale reaction in fugitive Jews among the pedestrians (pp. 165-166).
   
   Cyprys alludes to Zegota as follows: "It goes without saying that only a fraction of the Jews in hiding knew about the existence of this committee. Those who were in touch with the patriotic `Polish intelligentsia' or people who worked in the Underground were most likely to benefit. Everything was obviously carried out in the greatest secrecy, using all available means of security." (p. 150). Complaints about Zegota aiding only a modest number of Jews are clearly off the mark.
   
   In fact, Cyprys has a very sage understanding of ALL underground activities: "In reality underground activities were extremely stressful and required a great deal of steadiness and concentration. And because it had gone on for so many years, it was exhausting even to the strongest individuals and led to many casualties." (p. 184).
   
   Cyprys provides a level of detail about the Warsaw Uprising usually done by Polish authors. We read, for instance, about the devastating effects of the German nebelwerfer ("roaring cow" or "cupboard"), and the systematic destruction of Warsaw by Germans AFTER the Uprising.



3. This is a fascinating book about a woman who escaped death innumerable times, helped others, and I won't ruin any of the rest of the story.

No comments about ... And Heaven Shed No Tears (Shoah Studies).

No comments about The Boy Who Would Be Free: Memoirs of a White Slave.

2 comments about Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account.

1. Reading this book has completely altered my perception on the human being, individually, and as a whole. The events that took place in Auschwitz were so horrific and yet they mustn't be forgotten. Any person claiming a reasonable level of education must read this book. It will literally change the reader forever.



2. For Dr. Nyiszli to bear witness to the day-in and day-out horror of Auschwitz, and still be able to write about it, is quite unreal. Working as a pathologist for Dr. Mengele in the confines of the crematorium compound, we read of the horrors of the camp, and how both inmates & guards coped.

No comments about SURVIVING THE JUDAS FACTOR: A CHILDHOOD ENTOMBED IN NAZI GERMANY.

5 comments about The Light After the Dark: Six True Stories of Triumph after all hope had gone....

1. Before hunger, deprivation, terror and torture, there was another part of life - life filled with meaning, spirituality, dignity, resistance and struggle, that even in the blackest moment in the history of the Jewish people, the enemy could neither vanquish nor destroy. That is the message of this powerful, moving book, a message we must never forget.



2. While there is much to inspire in these accounts, my first reaction was of amazement at the behaviour of people on both sides of events. What a lesson in humanity. These stories make personal the atrocious events in history, the people who were the victims, and some other people who were just there, and by being there, played roles in what happened. Besides the history that can be learned through all the detail about places and events, the testimony of these people gives us much to think about. How would I have reacted? These stories enlarge our understanding of both history and humanity. A most worthwhile read.



3. In each of the six stories, the subject took an active role to ensure his or her survival. During the Holocaust in which six million Jews perished, it is easy to lose sight of the individual and his or her actions. Jews weren't the sheep that history would like us to believe Abram states, there is no sense of pride in being portrayed as a victim. It is this statement that provides the running theme throughout the book that when read by a younger generation, would instil a sense of pride and lead them to the realization that a survivor in surviving was a hero.



4. Abram must have needed infinite patience to draw the details of each of these stories from their narrators. He certainly exerted all his talent in retelling them, using a flashback technique to set the scene for each one, but otherwise letting the stories of the individuals' Holocaust experiences and subsequent lives speak for themselves.



5. This book is solely from the heart. The author certainly took a lot of time and care to research this book and wrote it with a lot of feeling. I cannot wait until Alvin Abram writes another book even a sequel would be thrilling to read once again. I have recommended this book to all of my friends here in Toronto and abroad. I am sure they too will derive as much pleasure as I did in reading this book. Thank you for making the holocaust a more pleasurable reading experience. Jane Skinner

No comments about My Version of the Facts.