3 comments about How Dark the Heavens: 1400 Days in the Grip of Nazi Terror.

1. Perhaps you, like I, at times wonder of what stuff you are made. In a truly horrible situation, would you do what it right at all cost? Would you have the inner fortitude to persistently march forward, to place your life at risk for the good of others? Often, and sadly, I suspect I would not; but, my ego hopes I would. Lithuania might be an unfamiliar name to you. But, this true story invites you to join the author in his nightmarish run from the Nazis during World War II. You'll know what it is like to be suddenly wrenched from your home, country and family by the pursuit of others out to exterminate you, simply because you happen to be in the way. In his flight, the author chooses paths of moral and physical courage, in order to preserve meaning for his life. Would I have joined him? Or would I have given up? What about you? Here's a chance to "test your stuff," at least in the safe pages of a good read.



2. How Dark the Heavens is a valuable resource of historical information on the Holocaust, and an authentic recollection by a survivor. It is unique, in that this book pulls the reader into the story as would a novel.



3. the author writes in a "detached" style.I guess that is the only way he could recount these horrible experiences inposed upon him by subhumans. It is a superb diary.

5 comments about An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945.

1. Great book...what I want to know is why can't the facist-loser whiners writing reviews on this site realize that anti-German atrocities were a direct result of GERMAN-PERPETRATED ATROCITIES? Do they think this happened in some kind of vacuum?Place responsibility where responsibility lies. One caused the other. Also, German atrocities were perpetrated by Germans wearing the uniform of Germany, these Jews who worked the Soviets weren't representing the Jewish people...they were only representing their individual grudges (i.e. seeing their whole family murdered). The Commies knew to use individual Jews because they knew Holocaust survivors would make great anti-Germans--duh!



2. Horrifying account of atrocities committed against German civilians by Jews in the aftermath of World War II. Long-suppressed story -- by a fearless Jewish author and noted journalist -- of how Jews of the Polish Communist "Office of State Security" killed and brutally mistreated many tens of thousands of German men, women and children in concentration camps and prisons in conquered German territories. This story was featured on a "60 Minutes" broadcast segment. Antony Polonsky, Prof. of E. European Jewish History at Brandeis University, comments on An Eye for An Eye: "... Extremely gripping and compelling account of the appalling events which accompanied the end of the war and the expulsion of the Germans ... impossible to put down ... a major contribution to our understanding



3. Jews have said that God chose them to be the "light to the nations." Thus, they must act in an exemplary manner as God's emissaries. Their actual behavior, however, suggests that most Jews do not take this role to heart. In fact, by and large, when Jews have proclaimed themselves as "lights," they have forced their pronouncements onto peoples other than themselves. The Christian concept of mercy plays an important role in the western judicial system. By contrast, the modern day Jewish concept of justice is "targeted assassination" and get-them-before-they-get-us. The title of John Sack's book neatly summarizes the Jewish concept of justice: "An Eye for an Eye." Towards the end of World War II, German civilians and military alike caught in "liberated" areas of Poland were rounded up into concentration camps. Many believed that they would gain their freedom after the surrender. They were sadly mistaken, for millions of German, the hell continued for several long years after the surrender. Sack describes the Polish hell, which was run by Jews under the auspices of the Office of State Security. It is not entirely clear if there was an official policy to specifically hire Jews as camp commandants, interrogators and police, but the numbers Sack cites speak for themselves - the overwhelming majority of Office employees were Jews. The official Polish attitude towards Germans was to exact revenge, which was significantly magnified in the Jewish-run death camps. It may be difficult for the average person, versed in turn-the-other-cheek style justice to comprehend the behavior of the Jews towards their former captor. However, Jewish thinking is clearly illustrated in the beginning of chapter nine, in an exchange between a Jewish commandant and his prisoner, a German Catholic priest, which can be summarized as "there is a set of rules for us (Jews) and there is a separate set of rules for goyim (non-Jews)." It is the feeling of racial separateness and solidarity, among both religious and non-religious Jews, that define Jewish behavior towards the non-Jewish world. If one remembers this concept when reading "An Eye for an Eye," then the atrocious behaviors exhibited by the Jews make perfect sense. If, however, one clings to the democratic-egalitarian concepts of justice, then nothing in the book -- the torture, the purposeful negligence of prisoner welfare, the executions -- will make sense. Understanding the Jewish sense of uniqueness will explain their actions in the modern non-Jewish world as well.



4. I found "An Eye for an Eye" well researched & highly credible. Unfortunately, humans are imperfect. They are capable of horrific evil. Every nation, ethnic group, religious group etc. has its victims & its villains...without exception.
   
   Anyone who is familiar with Soviet History, should be aware of the Ukrainian Famine Genocide of 1932-1933. Stalin's right hand henchman & architect of this genocide was Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich. The bolsheviks eliminated up to 10 million innocent men, women & children, yet, one of the most evil tyrants of the 20th century, Kaganovich, remains unknown.
   
   In 1929, when the Soviet "concentration camps" became "corrective labor camps", the names most associated with establishing a regime of torture, murder & exploitation of slave labor are Henrikh Yagoda, Stanislaw Messing, Lazar Kogan, Matvei Berman, Iakov Rappaport & Naftaly Frenkel.
   Read Anne Applebaum's "Gulag" and Donald Rayfields "Stalin and his Hangmen - The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him".
   
   Solomon Milshtein, Lavrenti Beria's railways boss, arranged transportation (by rail & by truck) for all the Polish officers, civil servants & intelligentsia who were executed in the Katyn forest...over 20,000. The bolsheviks blamed it on the Nazis. A Nazi in his position & with his "deeds" would have been prosecuted. There was no Nueremberg for Milshtein, Kaganovich, Mendel Khatayevich, Lev Aronovich Shvartsman, Boris Rodos, Aleksandr Langfang and thousands like them.
   
   People who live in glass houses should not lob "collective guilt" stones at Germans, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians...



5. I am Jewish, and we do not blame Germans for the holocaust. We blame the leadership of Protestantism and the Catholic church since the killers were all baptized Christians. Blaming all Germans is as racist as Hitler blaming all Jews. As for those Jewish guards, I am sure most were void of any Jewish education since Lenin ended all formal religous education in 1918. But with idiot Nazi's calling you a Jew because of your last name, and all the ugly controversy, we forget that Stalin caused 'the holocaust and forced migration' of the Germans, just as he did of the Ukrainians!

1 comments about The Mysterious Visitor: Stories of the Prophet Elijah.

1. The Mysterious Visitor is an entertaining anthology by the team that won the 1993 Sydney Taylor Award. Eight varied legends about the prophet Elijah brim with adventure, romance and humor. Lovely full page paintings enrich this universally appealing volume. For elementary school age children.

No comments about The Life of David: The Man After God's Own Heart (Bible Character Series).

No comments about Emissaries: A Memoir of the Riviera, Haute-Savoie and Switzerland During World War II.

1 comments about Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives.

1. Davis takes the reader deep into the lives of three quite different European women of the 1600s, showing how they courageously face family and career challenges. Each story is amazing. Catholic widow Marie Guyart goes to the wilderness of Canada to help found the Quebec branch of the Ursuline teaching order. Jewish mother of 14 children, Glikl von Hameln is a successful business woman, both as her husband's chief assistant and as a widow. Divorced Protestant Maria Merian supports herself and her daughters through her engravings based on her own ecological observations of caterpillars native to Europe and northern South America. I particularly enjoyed learning about Merian because I have been impressed by her elegant work which I have seen in a number of museums including the National Museum of Woman in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

2 comments about The Maimie Papers: Letters from an Ex-Prostitute (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series).

1. I liked this book a lot. Maimie's trials and tribulations never abated her spirit and as she hoped against hope and did what she believed right for herself and those near her, she developed into a sharp business woman. If not for the misfortunes of the war she might have become successful and rich, her keen business sense is remarkable in a woman of that period and class. Her faith never lost, she seems to have succeeded (not many records found after the letters end to give us the full picture) in creating for herself a happy and normal life. We should all have such an unquenchable spirit to try and try again and never give up!



2. Maimie Pinzer should never have confined her writing talent to the realm of letters. With her insights, life experience, and ability to tell the truth with the same flair that fiction authors tell a good story, she could have been a social historian on a par with Charles Dickens.
   
   "The Maimie Papers" provides us with invaluable insight into why so many young women chose prostitution over threadbare yet respectable lives. Too many contemporary books and treatises on the subject are religious in theme and little more than repentance speeches from former prostitutes. Maimie Pinzer rationalized her choices without once apologizing for them, and once in a position to do so, combatted the prostitution problem using compassion and common sense, not blind religious fervor.
   
   The book consists of a collection of letters that Maimie wrote to Boston philanthropist Fanny Quincy Howe between 1910 and 1922. Reading each one chronologically, one sees her progress from a floundering victim desperate for 'respectability' to an assertive young woman who challenges the system and may not always win, but emerges stronger via the effort.

No comments about Ben's Story: Holocaust Letters with Selections from the Dutch Underground Press.

No comments about The Lonely Days Were Sundays: Reflections of a Jewish Southerner.

2 comments about The Best of Enemies.

1. I found the book extremely interesting and enriching. At the beginning the two writers were extremely divergent, and then became slowly close in thinking and outlook. I found very interesting the parts where Uzi writes about intelligence and Shin Bet tactics, and those where Bassam talks about the revolutionary years and Wadih Haddad. Bassam and Uzi are clearly very proactive, seeing and sensing things much before other people are able to. This book, written by an Israeli and a Palestinian, is a step forward towards concensus in the Middle Eastern quagmire. Such a book would have been unthinkable of only a few years ago. It takes a strong courage to write, because the mentality of the people involved is not yet mature enough to accept peace with all the concessions it entails. The life of these two authors and men of action must be anything but a smoothly flowing river.



2. This is one book that any person professing to be open simply HAS to read, if they ever want to appreciate living in a multi racial society. It is rich as it is blunt, extreme as it is honest. Only if you have lived as one or the other, and wondered if you or anyone else ever were "the rightous ones", this is the way forward. It doesn't matter if you think your society is already well adapted or otherwise to differences. By exploring the extremes we consider the subtles, and this book works well to show how things we take for granted passing down to our children can only serve to reinforce long term prejudices, which will only serve to divide. READ IT!