1 comments about Who's Who in Jewish History (Who's Who (Routledge)).

1. This is a reprint of an earlier book. Comay surveys all of Jewish history and selects out hundreds of important figures for inclusion here. Most of the entries are a paragraph or so but the length grows with the importance of the figure. She writes clearly.
   This is an excellent reference book.

No comments about And Yet I Still Have Dreams : A Story of Certain Loneliness.

No comments about Feldafing.

1 comments about Portrait of a Young Forger: An Incredible True Story of Triumph over the Third Reich.

1. Marian Pretzel was a young jew living in Lvov in Poland when war broke out in 1939. This is his story, and that of his family told with simplicity and without indulging in over-emotion. The bleakness of the observations make it extremely powerful and moving story.
   
   Pretzel tells of his life in Poland prior to the war, of the Russian invasion and his suddenly increased opportunities, and then the invasion of the Nazi's and the sudden increase in nastiness from the Polish who were once his friends and neighbours. Of bribery, blackmail, violence and the slow descent which eventually led the Jewish population to the concentration camps.
   
   Marian Pretzel got transported to a concentration camp nearby, but managed through luck and the interference of Simon Wiesenthal, to escape. On the run he realised that he could pass as an aryan and his forging skills and knowledge of the right stamps for various things allowed him to be fed, clothed and housed by the Nazis. This is the story of his wartime survival, but it is also tempered with the realisation at the time that despite his survival, thousands, if not millions of other Jews were suffering, starving, dying in cities and concentration camps. He says that the worst thing was the slow death which was wreaked on many, rather than a fast end.
   
   His story makes sobering reading. The guilt of survival has pursued him over the decades, that at times he has had to let his friends, and family go, simply because their will to survive was not greater than their will to remain where they were, or to do rash and idiotic acts which led to their demise. His sister Giza refused to accompany him into flight and did not survive, as many of his friends. Despite their parents already being shipped off to certain death.
   
   A well written memoir which makes disturbing reading. At the end of this I wonder how people can be so cruel - how could so many people act so inhumanly - and with people they already knew. I hope that the experiences from WWII remain with us, that everyone should learn and know what can be, that it never happens again.

3 comments about The Blood Tattoo.

1. This book is the story of a young lady, that survived the Holocaust. With her mother and one out of three brothers she survived. Her mother would have been died if it worent for a Jewish Kopo who keep the secret of a her surviving mother. I personally experienced the story of this strong at heart lady, she visited my school as a volunteer Holocaust survivor.



2. Okay, Okay...you'll say I'm biased because it tells my Aunt's story and how she survived together with my most loving grandmother after removal from their home, imprisonment in a ghetto, and then the train deportation to Auschwitz. I have loaned my copy to so many people and each person returns it to me stunned. It is truly a gripping story and you will know my aunt through this book--she will touch you too. Please buy it, read it and then loan it to someone who wants or needs to learn more about modern man's greatest atrocity.



3. I am from the UK and have had great priveledge in meeting Ebi and becoming a friend to her. She has been my inspiration in devloping my knowledge on the Holocaust. Her book evokes all the emotions one can imagine. She has written from the heart and when one reads her book one can anly imagine what she and her family were going through. A must read. Thankyou Ebi for sharing your story with us, I know it must have been a harrowing experience when you wrote this but I am so glad you did.

5 comments about Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968.

1. Clive James, in "Cultural Amnsia' - his magesterial review of literature and totalitarianism - said: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding of the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one". It tells a remarkable personal tale of a Jewish girl in Prague caught up by the Nazis and going to Auschwitz, then her escape and return to her beloved Prague, and subsequent worse sufferings under the communist government in the 1950s and 1960s. Her husband was a high ranking government official but later was put on a show trial and killed.
   
   "Under a Cruel Star" (also called "Prague Farewell" in some editions) is not as bleak as the story sounds. It is a slim volume of hope and understanding, written elegantly by a woman who later in life worked as a translator from English and finished her working life in the Harvard Law School library.



2. it is a great book use in my world civ class, and highly recommmand by my professor and TAs.



3. I would recommend this book to anyone. Even if you think you don't like reading about history, you'll like this book. In fact, it is books like these that are the reason I love history so much, and why I'm majoring in it. It isn't about the politics or the wars or whatever else (although those are certainly important), it is the story of a woman trying to survive through a hell most of us cannot even imagine has existed on this earth, especially not in the last 50 years. Peoples' lives are what connect us to the past, and what make it relevant to the future. It gives a little meaning and heart behind all the dates and events that you have to memorize in class...make them more personal. And furthermore, you will be inspired by this woman. Her strength and character is admirable, to say the very least. Actually, I don't think even a fictional writer could invent a heroine more honorable than this one.
   
   So please, read it. stories like these deserve to be shared.



4. This is a well-written, quick read. Heda's 27 years of suffering - first at the hands of the Nazis & then under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia - is heart rending. It's a book that should be part of high school curriculums to raise awareness of what too many people had to endure in the middle of the last century. It would be much more effective than relying on a history textbook that deals only with the 'facts.'



5. I read this about 6 years ago when it was assigned in one of my undergrad classes. There are enough online reviews for you to read about the plot and like. Rather I want to tell you how her voice has stuck with me. I think of her ability to see the slivering when everything is just gray, and her amazing capacity to keep going. Whenever I think I can't go on, this death/or lost/ or series of unfortunate events as shattered the very last of my will I remember her words. I highly recommend it. I regally give this as a gift, I know I'm not just giving someone a powerful story, but really I'm giving someone a packet of extra strength for when they need it most in life.

2 comments about The Jewish Prophet: Visionary Words from Moses and Miriam to Henrietta Szold and A.J. Heschel.

1. This book provides a tremendous resource to Jewish learning and history through the leaders and prophetic visionaries of Judaism.



2. With this wonderful book from British author Michael Shire, I found myself in a dilemma. Should I keep this volume on my bookshelf in the art section or the leadership section? Should I place it with other books about biblical figures or with biographies of Jewish philosophers? This book is the definition of "multi-faceted." One can read it from cover to cover in one sitting, or use it as a reference about the lives of important individuals of the Jewish faith.
   

   This beautifully illustrated collection of Jewish prophecy in the biblical, medieval, and modern periods features the lives and teachings of thirty women and men. Some of these individuals are well known prophets of the Jewish people, while others are not traditionally labeled as such, but after reading their stories, it is clear why such an appellation is appropriate. There is no doubt that Moses and Isaiah are prophets, but it is not until reading this book that the prophetic contributions of such individuals as Leo Baeck and Solomon Ibn Gabirol are realized. What is more is that Shire has included over 100 full-color illustrations from medieval Hebrew manuscripts acquired from the British Library. Enjoying the rich, colorful illuminations brings to mind Shire's beautiful Illuminated Haggadah with reproductions of medieval haggadot from the same collection.
   

   Throughout Jewish history, members of our faith have bravely stood up to speak God's message and connect our people closer to God, even when their vision was unpopular among the masses. Each of the thirty individuals described by Shire has contributed in their own unique way to the continuity of the Jewish people over the ages. Each selection contains a brief account of the prophetic life of the individual, including how the prophet was viewed both in his own time as well as posthumously. Shire includes some of the prophets' most meaningful words; selected from biblical literature, speeches, correspondence, and published material.
   

   The Jewish Prophet serves as a stunning inspiration for us today when we no doubt could benefit from prophetic leadership. The book is a lasting tribute to the energy these prophets displayed in their own life, and serves as a beacon for us to continue their passion to make the world a better place - l'taken olam b'makhut shadai. Each of these women and men possessed the leadership skills necessary to encourage the members of the community to lead a moral and spiritual life. Throughout their prophetic reign, they went to great lengths to criticize the evils of society and root out corruption among those in power, often at tremendous risk.
   

   The author acknowledges that some may perceive "prophet" as a controversial appellation for several of his choices; however, each of these leaders demonstrated a special category of kedushah and action that greatly benefited the Jewish people. Perhaps this outlook is most evident in Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's classic study of the prophets, in which he wrote that "the prophet's eye is directed towards the contemporary scene; the society and its conduct are the main theme of his speeches. Yet his ear is inclined to God." Shire, like Heschel, understands that a different understanding of prophet includes figures who witness the world around them with outstanding passion. Heschel understood that the prophet is a person rather than a microphone. The prophets' had the difficult task of serving as a refuge when the Jewish community was in distress; using his voice and vision to sustain the faith of the people.
   

   It is all too easy for us to paint the prophets with a broad stroke of the brush. In this volume, however, Shire has depicted thirty prophets as unique individuals whose prophesies are as diverse as the times in which they lived. Dr. Ismar Schorsch writes, "since religion is the human response to the experience of the sacred, the range of dispositions determines the variety of responses. Some perceive God visually and others auditorily, some rationally and others mystically, some through music, others through poetry. The endlessly fascinating testimonies in Torah and Tanakh, Talmud and Midrash to this human encounter of the Divine celebrates the tapestry of human typologies. Or in the words of the Rabbis: `The same signal came to many prophets, but no two prophets delivered it the same way' (B.T. Sanhedrin 89a)."
   

   Certainly, Shire is not the first to consider some of these unlikely individuals to be prophets. Janusz Korczak, the physician, educator, and children's rights campaigner set up a children's hospital to care for the sick and dying he found in the street, and risked his own life to provide medicine and food for these children. He could have escaped from the Nazis, but instead he chose to remain with his two hundred orphans who eventually perished with him in the gas chambers. Indeed, to the orphans in Korczak's care, he was a caring and devoted prophet.
   

   This offering from Shire, who is vice-principal of the Leo Baeck College in London, will be a most important addition to the Jewish classroom. Under a new light, students will be re-introduced to many of the significant figures in Jewish history whom they have been studying like Samuel, Micah, Hillel, Yochanan Ben Zakkai and Akiva. They will also encounter the fresh words and visions of such notable prophets as Bachya Ibn Pakuda, Baruch Spinoza, Rav Kook, Henrietta Szold, and David Ben Gurion. We will come to appreciate these "prophets of our time" more after reading about their notable prophetic accomplishments, which are even more impressive considering the amount of adversity they faced.
   

   This special book will quickly alter the belief of anyone who considers the concept of navi to have ended with the canonization of the Torah. The exploration through the lives of these thirty visionaries is testimony to the fact that the navi has walked in our time as well as the times of old. Heschel writes, "The prophet's word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven." Dr. Shire invites us in to explore the wildly chaotic, yet intensely interesting life of the prophet. We might go into this exploration hoping to learn more about their lives, but we inevitably come out having learned more about our own lives.

No comments about Dealing with Satan: Rezso Kasztner's Daring Rescue Mission.

3 comments about Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust.

1. Jan Karski, who died in July 2000, was a larger than life hero from World War II, who tried to smuggle out information from Nazi occupied Poland to warn the rest of the world about the horrors happening to the Jewish population of his country. He was captured by the Nazis, tortured, escaped, eventually met with President Roosevelt, and truly lived an unbelievably brave and inspiring life. The story is better than any fictional thriller or Hollywood movie. You have to keep reminding yourself that what you are reading is true. It keeps your attention throughout the book, though the last couple of chapters are less exciting naturally than the rest, once the war is over. One has to wonder if there are people like Jan Karski living today...



2. I first heard about Jan Karski when I read his obituary in the New York Times a few years back. After reading the obituary, I thought that this guy led an exciting and profound life, and that his life story would make a great book and/or movie (Steven Speilberg, are you listening?). That's why I'm glad I found this book.

   Jan Karski was a young diplomat in Poland when the Germans invaded in 1939. Before the invasion, he seemed to be more interested in the political power struggles of the day rather than the moral and ethical quandaries of war. That soon changed after he was taken prisoner and sent to both Soviet and Nazi prison camps. He spent the war years secretly delivering messages around Europe for the Polish underground, and word of his exploits soon spread among the Allies. He was later sent to Britian and later, the United States, where he became a citizen and lived out the rest of his life.

   His near-famous quest to relay the horrors of the Holocaust to the skeptical Allies is only one facet of this individual's life. The authors excelled at opening my eyes to the political infighting among various factions of the Polish resistance (politics doesn't die in wartime, it just goes underground, I learned), and they seemed to paint Karski as an individual who became more interested in working for human freedom and dignity than for carving a political legacy for himself in a postwar Poland.

   Karski's days in Britain got a bit dry in the book; his wartime adventures in occupied Europe and his postwar days at Georgetown University (as the world began to recognize his contributions) held my attention the most.

   As a bonus, a guide to the many characters Karski dealt with in his life is included in the appendix...a handly tool for keeping track of who's who in this book.




3. Thomas Wood, an American journalist, and Stanislav Jankowski, a Polish historian, have written this biography of Jan Karski, who was tapped by the Polish resistance to escape from Poland and go tell the Allies that the Germans were committing a genocide against Poland's Jews.
   
   Karski, a universally respected diplomat, was infiltrated into Warsaw's Ghetto and into a German concentration camp to witness the harrowing persecution in progress and thus be able to aver to the Allied leaders he warned that his testimony was based on his own eyes' witness. Sadly, during World War One the British had propagated propaganda falsely accusing the Germans of all sorts of incredible and senseless brutality in Belgium, not least in order to draw the United States into the war. Many of the leaders Karski met, including FDR, Justice Felix Frankfurter, and Rabbi Stephen Wise deemed Karski's accounts to be so disturbing and unfathomable that they were unable to believe them, choosing to believe that the Polish government in exile had chosen to propagate atrocity propaganda of its own against the Germans.
   
   Karski also served as a courier in the Polish resistance, worked for the Polish resistance and government in exile in various capacities, taught at Georgetown University, and more. Obviously a fascinating man, with a fascinating and righteous life, any account of his life is worth reading.
   
   And yet more than a few improvements could be made to this book. At a scant 250 pages of text, excluding glossaries, indexes and more, it's incredibly short for a life as rich as Karski's. Enough mention is made of factions in Polish politics for the reader to understand that factions existed, but there is no introduction to the history, ideology or sociology of the various factions, which makes reading the pages devoted to Polish politics seem as intellectually stimulating as peering into a kaleidoscope. A history of Poland, its politics, and of Polish antisemitism and to a lesser extent of Poland's philosemitism would have proven invaluable to the lay reader. Bereft of such an introduction, a reader not already versed in Polish politics cames away from the book with little understanding of the intricacies and intrigues that Karski had to master. A 500 page or even 750 page text would have been vastly more enlightening.
   
   Jan Karski's life easily deserves 5 stars; the biographers of this book deserve about two stars for their efforts. Averaging the two, I've given the book 4 stars.

5 comments about The Lost Childhood: A Memoir.

1. This page-turning memoir by Yehuda Nir, a New York City psychiatrist, tells the story of his family's experiences during World War II, as it masqueraded as Christians and hid from the Nazis. Nir's fascinating, well-written narrative operates on several levels. These include: the grim adventures of a boy, his sister, and their mother who are caught in a historical nightmare and are trying to survive; a psychiatrist describing how different members of his family coped with the stress of hiding in plain view; and the experiences and impressions of a normal boy growing up in an abnormal world, shadowed by the possibility of disclosure and death.

   Amazingly, this bleak but inspiring story is also laced with humor. Laugh-out-loud moments are provided by the Russians, who bomb Warsaw with heavy parcels of non-parachuted food, destroying the homes of their Polish allies; and flustered German nurses near the war's end, who are distracted from detecting that Nir is Jewish by the aggressive lewdness of his fellow prisoners. Steven Spielberg, get that into a movie!

   It's truly a shame this book is out of print, since it provides an accessible human slant on the important subject of Jewish experience during World War II. In my opinion, the unavailability of this book illustrates a sadly common condition in today's book industry, with editors throwing money at worthless blockbusters but not supporting books like "The Lost Childhood", which could become an adult perennial and a basic text in high school and college curriculums with just a minor marketing effort.




2. This is a very interesting book. This book is about a boy and his mother and his sister. They are all Jews, who servied the World War 2. The boy's name is Yehuda Nir. This is a hair-raising story.
   Yehuda is the son of an affluent carpet manufacturer in Lwo'w, Poland. He has a nanny to take care of him and a German cook for him. He is only 9 years old. After the war started and they were forced into a smaller apartment.
   Within the two years, the tide turns and the Nazi are again incontrol. Many Jews are seized on the streets, imprisoned, and executed. Yehuda's father is murdered. The family moves. Nazis sercure situations in Warsaw. His mother works as a domestic for a wealthy German playboy, catering orgies and meeting important Nazi officials.
   Now their lives are turned upside down. They were living in a time where one had to be careful. They have to trust one another. Then finally there was a up rising in Warsaw. This is why I find this book interesting it is very good.



3. this is the best World War Two story told.. I never liked history books but after i read the plot, i knew i had to read it. its true about what the person above said about reading it at night and you will not put it down until u finish it. I stayed up nights until 12, 1am to finish reading it.. i recommend everyone to read this even if you arent a fan of history. it will change your opinion.



4. The book The Lost Childhood is a great Holocaust book! It gives a great description of the horrible things that happened to the Jewish people. This book alone should tell you why teens should learn about the holocaust because I would never want any thing like this to happen again, and we are the future. It makes people realize that you should stand up for what you believe in and don't let people put other people down when they don't even know them.
   This book is about a young boy who had to live through the Holocaust being Jewish. It tells how his mother, sister, and himself lived without knowing what happened to their father (husband), and how they went without being known as Jews. This book is very good because you get to know how it felt to be treated badly when you did nothing wrong except practice the religion you believe in. In this book they had very hard times from being sent to no one knows where to always running and hiding when they saw Germans. If you are interested in the Holocaust, this is a great book, but even if you are not this is a great dramatic adventure.



5. This extraordinary memoir is back in print! Scholastic re-issued it recently. Look for ISBN # 0439163897.