5 comments about All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs.

1. This is one of the times when I think we should be able to go higher than 5 stars. Elie Wiesel's All Rivers Run to the Sea gave us a more in-depth look to the concentration camp survivor. He really gives us a rich experience in weaving together the threads of his past, from his days in school to the horror in the concentration camps, right up to his days of being a journalist, and ending with him as a groom. You really get a feel for the type of person he is as well - a wonderful, compassionate, and intelligent man. If you've read Night already, you're definitely going to want to check this out.



2. I would strongly recommend that all readers on Amazon read the review whose title caption is ' Remember'. It is far more extensive and far better than the small remarks I am about to post.
   Elie Weisel is the one human being who more than any other has helped the world understand the horror of the Shoah , the Holocaust the Nazi destruction of one - third of the Jewish people six million human beings.
   For this he should always have a place in the historical consciousness of both the Jewish people and mankind.
   His memoir is at times very moving .For those who know his other work and his masterpiece ' Night' there will be much familiar here, though here the story is enriched by greater detail.
   I find myself whenever I am reading Weisel unable to really judge in abstract or purely literary terms. His significance as a human being, as a witness as one who has spoken to me in my own life is so great that my feeling is closer to reverence than anything else.
   I read this book with the idea that any additional detail about his life and work, any additional understanding of his thought about Man's relation to G-d would be worthwhile. I read this work as I will read all his future works as an admiring student of a great teacher.
   May he be blessed by many more years of great creative work.



3. I found this a very compelling read, lasting over several readings. It's true the author did not stick tightly to chronological order, but anyone who has read his fiction knows his style tends to be very esoteric and rather free-floating (I personally do not care for his fiction, which I admit I do find to go over my head). However, as a reader, I certainly got a feel for emotions he felt throughout different experiences in his life. I found the last scene describing his emotions before and during his wedding to be really profound. It's true that there is a lot of Jewish content in this book, which may cause some of his analogies etc. to be less accessible to someone from a different background. However, for someone who wants to read a first-hand Holocaust experience without very strong graphic details, I do recommend it. (As a side note, just last week I actually attended a speech by Mr. Wiesel, and he is really a personable, funny, self-effacing and sweet man, not the really sad and somber person you might expect from his writings. I was surprised by this, pleasantly so!)



4. This spectacular memoir of Elie Wiesel, the great author and voice of conscience, begins with his boyhood in the small Transylvanian village of Sighet.
   
   A pious child, with a great thirst for Jewish knowledge, a student of Torah and Talmud, and fascinated with the Kabbalah. Elie is swept into the Nazi ghetto and then death cams where he loses his parents and his beautiful little blond sister Tzipora, all of whom perished in the Nazi furnaces.
   
   He writes in memory of his losses:
   
   "If only I could recapture my father's wisdom, my little sister's innocent grace. If only I could recapture the rage of the resistance fighter, the suffering of the mystic dreamer, the solitude of the orphan in a sealed cattle car, the death of each and every one of them. If only I could step out of myself and merge with them".
   
   Wiesel writes of the prophecy told to his mother by the Wizhnitz Rabbi that her son would become a gadol b'Israel (a great man in Israel) but that she would not live to see it.
   
   Wiesel records some of the horrors he witnessed in the death camps such as live children being thrown into furnaces by the Nazis, and laments the inaction by the Allies to do anything about the extermination they knew was taking place of the Jews- saving Jews was not a priority for the Allies either.
   
   He mentions that most of the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis were intellectuals- not surprising in light of the fact hat most Jews who have thrown themselves into the campaign of hate against their fellow Jews in Israel.
   
   He writes about the liberation of the death camps by the Allies after the war, and how one of the youngest child survivors of Buchenwald was eight year old Israel Meir Lau, later to be the Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi of Israel. In his section of his travels around the world as a young man during the early 1950s he writes of his great compassion at the plight of poverty-stricken children in India.
   
   Wiesel records his life in a youth home for Jewish refugees in Paris and the fate of displaced Jews after World War II, his life as a journalist for Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot for whom he covered the Eichmann trial, civil rights struggles, the Six Day War, the 1968 Student insurrections in France, and other world events.
   
   He has always been greatly interested in philosophy and parapsychology and writes of his discussions with such great leaders as Golda Meir and David
   Ben-Gurion, as well as the greatest thinkers of the day. He writes of his great love for Israel and it's people for which he has been attacked by the hate-filled bigots of the International Left. He also took a strong stand for persecuted Soviet Jewry during the 1960s and 1970s. Elie Wiesel also writes of his great compassion for humanity as a whole, such as his pain at seeing the suffering of destitute children during his travels in India. But unlike certain Jews of the Left, he does not see a contradiction between this and his great love of Israel and the Jewish people- Ahavat Israel.
   
   He writes with great compassion, passion, anger, sadness and hope.
   In a plea for the plight of his own people today, especially the youth and children of Israel today targeted by terror and forces of genocide (such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Ahmadinejad regime- as well as all who are sympathetic to these anti-Jewish elements) he penned an open letter to President Bush stating: "Please remember that the maps on Arafat's uniform and in Palestinian children's textbooks show a Palestine encompassing not only all of the West Bank but all of Israel, while Palestinian leaders loudly proclaim that 'Palestine extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, from Rosh Hanikra (in the North) to Rafah (in Gaza). Please remember Danielle Shefi, a little girl in Israel. Danielle was five. When the murderers came, she hid under her bed. Palestinian gunmen found and killed her anyway. Think of all the other victims of terror in the Holy Land. With rare exceptions, the targets were young people, children and families. Please remember that Israel--having lost too many sons and daughters, mothers and fathers--desperately wants peace. It has learned to trust its enemies' threats more than the empty promises of 'neutral' governments".
   Elie Wiesel is a true voice of truth and conscience.



5. Elie Wiesel may be best known as the author of "Night", his harrowing and sparse account of his time spent in the concentration camps. His literary works have focused around the events that shaped Holocaust survivors and the questions those survivors had about their faith afterwards. His life's work is heavily imbued by those events early in his life, his novels vast testaments to making sure the world never forgets the atrocities man inflicted upon man.
   
   Yet there are many sides to this amazing man, which can often be forgotten when one dwells solely on his literary works. The first volume of Wiesel's memoirs, "All Rivers Run to the Sea", is a brilliant introduction and elucidation of the author. He relates quickly his early childhood and his time in the camps, but moves onto and focuses on his path after those events. As he forges a career as a journalist, meeting statesmen and celebrities, he finds himself and what causes he is willing to fight for. As a stateless person, his life is often difficult as he arouses suspicion, and he struggles constantly to make ends meet. Reading about his personal adventures, the reader sees how he is passionate, full of empathy, timid and captivating, a brilliant man with many stories to tell.
   
   For anyone who has read Wiesel's writings, the style of "All Rivers Run to the Sea" will be just as familiar: while it is divided into sections, his reminiscenses are as tangential as his fictional stories. Learning about his real-life adventures, readers can easily see how Wiesel has woven his experiences into all of his fictional works. The praises and accolades he has received are more than well deserved, for as long as he writes, his people will have a testimony to their past and to their faith.

5 comments about Blood Brothers.

1. Blood Brothers is the story of a very brave family during an incredibly controversial time. This conflict between Israel and Palestine is an ongoing struggle and causes a large amount of change and strife on both sides of the issue. As native Palestinians this family, the Chacour's, are part of this difficult journey with their village. This struggle beginning with them being tricked out of their house to losing some village members and the heartbreak of knowing life could never go back to "normal."
   
   This book revolves around a young boy who we see grow up throughout the book named, Elias Chacour. He is a Palestinian Christian, who lived in a small town Biram for most of his young life. This boy is full of life and a spirit that grows throughout the entire story.
   
   His father, a peaceful man with incredible amounts of wisdom, plays a large role in this Elias's life as well as rest of his family and the village. At one point Elias's father and two brothers were torn from their family and taken away by Israeli soldiers. After finding their way back this is all he did, "turning those sad eyes upon us, `if someone hurts you, you can curse him. But this would be useless. Instead, you have to ask the Lord to bless the man who makes himself your enemy. And do you know what will happen? The Lord will bless you with inner peace-and perhaps your enemy will turn from his wickedness. If not, the Lord will deal with him.'"
   
   The strength Elias's finds within himself and family to deal with these real issues that surround him is inspiring. This is a characteristic that we should all strive to have.



2. This is an incredible, heart-touching book that helps one understand the Israeli and Palestinian conflict much better than just what you see on the news. Incredible morals are woven through the book too.



3. This book as assigned to my son for reading for an online class. I picked it up and starting reading it to help him and got glued to its pages. Easy and quick reading.



4. Blood Brothers is a poignant biography of the experiences of Elias Chacour, a Palestinian Christian who lived through the violent and traumatic events surrounding the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the ensuing political conflict that plagues the region still today.
   
   I found myself teary-eyed at several points throughout this book. The most powerful parts were the detailed descriptions of how Chacour, his family, and his village of Biram, were led out of their homes by Israeli soldiers with promises that Biram would be defended against ravaging militants. When Chacour and his village returned they discovered that they had been deceived, and eventually, the village was bulldozed. Chacour tells the story of his own village, but notes that the same story unfolded in other Palestinian villages.
   
   Chacour tells of how Palestinians and Jews lived in peace with one another for centuries before the early 20th century. With the success of the Zionist movement and the horrible atrocities of WW2 and the holocaust, European Jews began emigrating en masse to Palestine. Ironically, while Western nations strongly supported Jewish immigration into Palestinian on the basis that they needed a homeland (Chacour fully accepts that they needed a place to live in peace and security as they were clearly unwelcome in Europe), Western states refused Jews entry into their own nations.
   
   Chacour emphasizes that between WW1 and WW2, the peaceful and violent tactics of Palestinians fail to gain them any sympathy in the international arena, whose leaders ignored Palestinian diplomacy while continually urging Palestinians to accept their Jewish brethren while European states had persecuted them and refused to make amends by opening Jewish immigration quotas.
   
   Utterly mind-boggling is the fact that he has been called an anti-semite by some reviews on Amazon. Anyone who reads this book will see that he exhibits a deep love and admiration for Jews, and expresses heartfelt sympathy for the persecution of Jews throughout European history and culminating in the holocaust. Chacour points out that these sad facts only make the Palestinian plight more ironic.
   
   At times, I felt Chacour depends too much on the kindness and good nature of human beings, and that this made his political opinions somewhat naive. By the end of the book, however, I concluded that this was not a fair conclusion. He understands very well that Palestinians were persecuted and that Israel has a right to exist, but he doesn't believe violence ever leads to peace. Whether this opinion is very naive or very wise is up to the reader to decide.
   
   Lastly, one should always be skeptical when reading personal accounts of political conflicts. One man can only see so much, and if one wants to really discover the facts of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, one has to read several books. This is not a book of facts, but it is not intended to be. Thousands of books on the history of this conflict have been written, and any earnest and disinterested endeavor to learn about what actually happened will not result in much confusion as to what occurred (is occurring). Note that there is no devoid of personal stories and ethnographies either, although I would very people have ever read these, even though they would do everyone some good. But this is a rich addition to the literature, in that it successfully de-dehumanizes the Palestinian people and avoids anything but the most basic historical political facts.



5. I highly recommend this book for the information and the point of view which I think most Americans have never heard. Most Americans are not even aware that Palestinians include Christians as well as Muslims and we have grown up hearing how wonderful it was that Israel was "set aside" or "given" to the Jews as a homeland after the horrors of the Holocaust. It isn't that simple. It never was. This very personal story of Elias Chacour is told in a way most people can understand and empathize with and, hopefully, will add strength to the movement toward peace in that region.

5 comments about Europa, Europa.

1. This book was actually written after the movie "Europa Europa" was filmed. The book and the movie are pretty much the same. How Perel escaped death time and again is mind-boggling. The fact that he was quick-witted and able to keep his cool certainly had a lot to do with it. The fact that he not only escaped, but was accepted by the Germans as one of their own 'master race' is surely one of the most amazing true stories ever recorded.



2. Book review: Europa Europa

   ýEuropa Europaý is an extraordinary story experienced by quite a normal fellow. The story is about the Jewish boy Solomon Perel who was born in Germany in 1925 and lived there for some years but as the Nazi society developed in Germany he and his family were forced to move eastward. To avoid humiliation and persecution by the Germans they settled in Poland. He got separated from most of his family in Poland and with his brother he fled to Russia. There he lived until Germany invaded Russia and suddenly he was forced into using his basic instincts for staying alive. A German military group captured the Jews they found and started questioning them and if they were Jews they shot them in the nearby forest. Solomon Perel obviously spoke German and he miraculously managed to convince the German soldiers that he wasnýt a Jew but a normal ethnic German and that this was a mistake. From that day on and until the end of the war he lived with the Nazis as if he was one of them. He even entered the Hitler Jugend after returning to Germany, and he had to sing along to the songs about spilling the blood of the Jews.

   The story, which is authentic, is so special because there naturally were so many encounters were one wrong move would definitely have lead to his dead but he survived. Throughout the whole book you wonder about Luck and Fate. It is filled with situations where you think that either this is just pure luck or maybe it is meant for him to stay alive. But maybe in the end it was his only his own willpower that made him do exactly what his mother had told him in her last words before the separated, ýyou must stay aliveý.

   The book is great and very interesting. Not so much because of the way it is written since the best thing isnýt the quality of the writing but more the story that brings you so close to a human, which lived through the greatest fears.

   Matthias Petersen




3. I traveled to Israel on business in 1995. En route at Heathrow, Israel bound passengers went through intensive security screening 3 hours before flight time and were kept in a large room to await the flight. No shopping for me and I hadn't brought a decent book to read. An older gentleman was sitting next to me playing chess on a small computer. After about a half hour, we began to chat. His name was Solomon Perel and he told me the story of his life. Europa, Europa (the film) had recently come out, but the book had not yet been translated to English. He had been on a lecture tour of the United States. Even if you read the book or see the movie, no one can begin to fathom what it was like to sit next to that amazing man for 3 hours hearing about his life. His is a story of desperate acts of courage and survival. It is both heartbreaking and uplifting. He asked me to see the movie and to write to him - telling him what I thought. He gave me his address.

   As I worked in Israel I told my Israeli business associates about this chance meeting. By their response, you would have thought that I had met King Solomon himself. I began to doubt that this guy really was the very famous and deeply respected Solomon Perel. I figured he was a bored old man wanting to strike up a conversation with the young woman sitting next to him to pass 3 long hours.

   When I got home, I rented the movie. It followed the old man's tale very closely - but I figured that the old guy had read the book in Hebrew or already saw the movie - that's how he knew the story. But then, at the end of the movie, there is short clip of Solomon Perel in Israel. It was him - it was the man I had met in Heathrow.

   I regret to say that I never wrote to Solomon Perel. Every time I started a letter, I found it impossible to say anything meaningful. From a young age, this man had suffered an unimaginable horror and came out of it undoubtedly wounded, but also incredibly strong. I, in turn, had been raised by a loving family in a peaceful and prosperous country. I was blessed with a great job, wonderful friends, a loving husband, and a beautiful 1 year old boy. I couldn't think of anything to say to this man that didn't seem trite. Perhaps I'll try again to write to him. If you read this book, it will break your heart. If you are smart, you will realize what I did - just how blessed we are ..... well, so far.

   I was a European history buff, but knew little about the Middle East conflict. After meeting Mr. Perel, I started reading history books on the area and since September 11th I've read every relevant book I can find (check out my review of Howard Sachar's A History of Israel). I expected to feel great solidarity with the Israeli cause. But the more I studied, the more I felt that the Israeli policies of occupation, settlement, repression and retaliation are morally flawed. I feel this in spite of my deep respect and regard for Mr. Perel. So I was somewhat reluctant to recommend Europa Europa - fearing that feelings of solidarity with Holocaust victims would further bias reader's opinions about America's foreign policy in the Middle East. Nonetheless, I can't deny Mr. Perel's story is compeling and deserves an honest review. I only hope that readers - in fact all Americans - study the issues carefully. Our country is under attack for our Middle East policies and all Americans have a responsibility to the country and the world to look beyond headlines and speeches, form educated opinions, and exercise your civic responsibility to contact your elected officials. {end of political diatribe}




4. A tragic story in the middle of tragic events. He whitnessed it, he went through it and he survived.



5. It was very interesting to read this story about a survivor of the persecution of the Jews. It was an inside look of what really went on under Hitler's regime. It was also very informative of the depth of hatred that Hitler had of the Jews and how he fooled so many German people. Shlomo Perel's story should be read by everyone who studies the history of this tragic time.

5 comments about Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora.

1. "Scheisshaus Luck" is superb. Most people think it was just Jews who were holocaust survivors; however, this book clearly details how the Nazis captured Italians, French, and others.
   
   Pierre Berg was an 18-year-old French lad in the wrong place at the wrong time in January 1944 when he was captured by the Germans. He suffered an unspeakable and savage existence for the next 17 months until May 1945. This brutality was not only dished out by the Germans but by his fellow inmates who had garnered priveleges as overseers of the other prisoners.
   
   Pierre Berg with the help of writer Brian Brock delivers a cold and unemotional account of his and others existence (through his eyes) during his imprisonment in several concentration camps. The tragedies he experienced (witnessing calous murders, beatings, disembowelment of a dead prostitute to catch eels for the Germans, etc.) clearly portrayed how a "pre-war" wonderful human being could lose all his dignity to be reduced to the sub-human person the Nazis expected him to be. His story is told with such a clear emotional detachment, that one really got a good feel for how he survived.
   
   Brian Brock said that it was Pierre's resistance to talking about the emotions that made it difficult to express Pierre's memoir as vividly as he wanted. In my opinion, however, Brian really misunderstood how effective the lack of that expression makes the book. It was this lack of emotion that drives home how one becomes after such catastrophic torture. It is not that Pierre has no emotion; it is that he has had to become so numb to expressing that emotion and had to sometimes find humor in some circumstances to SURVIVE. It is the same survival instinct some abused children employ.
   
   I am so sorry Pierre and others had to suffer such atrocities and thank him for telling his story. There is no doubt those awful 17 months changed you (and the other survivors) for life.



2. This is a very well written book about the author's experiences in the Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II. It is an almost brutally frank appraisal of man's inhumanity to man. One episode of particular interest on the effect of these events is the author's description of what happens when he finally meets up again with his beloved Stella, who he first meets on the train to the concentration camp, and why he acted as he did. Overall, the book is a must read for anyone even peripherally interested in this aspect of World War II.
   It is clear the writer hates the Nazis (of course, not without good reason) and a minor drawback to the book is that the author's editorializing about matters beyond his personal knowledge sometimes seems out of place and tends to drag down the overall quality of the book and actually detracts from the story. [In the same vein, the book (somewhat like Rolling Stone magazine refusing to ever mention John Lennon's assassin by name) never mentions Hitler by name, referring to him solely as the "god with a moustache": This itself does not detract from the book, and is presumably Mr. Berg's choice, but I would have liked to hear the author's personal explanation for this (i.e., other than the obvious ones).]
   Other minor drawbacks are (1) Mr. Berg's insistence he saw Heinrich Himmler at Auschwitz at a time when there is no record of Himmmler ever being near the camp (A note in the book and the book's afterward try to explain away this mistake by asserting it must have been a body double of Himmler's. Yet the footnote for this assertion fails to identify a single source confirming Himmler's use of body doubles. I would appreciate authentication of this for my own general knowledge, either from the publisher or any astute Amazon readers.), (2) the reference to a prisoner's identification as consisting only of a colored triangle (e.g., red for political prisoners) with an additionl yellow triangle if the prisoner was both Jewish and fell into some other category (e.g., pink for homosexuals) as it is my understanding that, during the later stages of the war when the author was interned, the Nazis used a yellow bar over the triangle, instead of two triangles, to identify Jewish inmates who fell into more than one prisoner category (e.g., a Jewish criminal would be identified by a yellow bar over a green triangle), and (3) the sometimes too literal interpretation of German words and phrases that fails to pick up the nuance of what was actually meant.
   But please do not let these minor matters prevent you from reading the book. It is full of harrowing escapades (not the least of which is the death march from Auschwitz to Dora) and episodes where the author survives by blind, or just plain dumb (as when he mistakenly escapes execution due to the misreading of his prisoner number), luck. In the final analysis, though, it was more than just luck that kept the author alive. He just never gave up and used his ingenuity and intelligence to survive.



3. I just finished Pierre Berg's book, "Scheisshaus Luck," and it was quite a vivid memoir.
   
   If you have read Elie Wiesel's book, "Night," you will notice some parallels. A teenager sent to Auschwitz, "selected" for hard labor, and attempting to survive as best as he can. "Night" tells the Holocaust story primarily from the Jewish victim's point of view. "Scheisshaus Luck" tells the story from the gentile point of view. Both points of view are just as brutal, and both young men suffered horribly during their internment. Berg was older than Wiesel at the time of internment; that may account for the additional observations and details in Berg's book ("Night" is about half the length of "Luck").
   
   Some of you may be put off by the title. Don't be. The title is in reference to the randomness of fate that intervened at odd times. This randomness ensured Berg's survival. In fact, there's an excellent online interview with Berg, posted at litpark.com/2007/10/03/pierre-berg/ One example of this randomness is an incorrect digit, which keeps him from a date with the hangman.
   
   One addition I wish could've been made in the afterward; we meet characters in the book, and we never know what happens to them again (for example, Berg's parents. We see them up until 1947, and then that's it). I'd like to know what happened to Berg's parents, to the Novaks, to Claude, etc. What happened to them after the war? I realize we cannot know what happened to all of the characters, as many probably disappeared and were never heard from again. That is the only suggestion I have for improvement.
   
   "Scheisshaus Luck" is frank, raw, in-your-face, snarky and filled with gallows humor. And it was well worth my time. And it'll be worth yours, too. You won't regret it.



4. Hey, I'm a big fan of Holocaust Books - generally I can't put them down. Sometimes I make fun of myself and say that I'm like Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall who has to go see Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and The Pity every time it shows. But what this does is create some kind of fairly informed perspective - at least I think so. I know I'm not here to review the back cover, but to say that this book ranks in importance with Levi and Weisel, as the back cover does, is shameful hyperbole. Every survivor's story should be heard, but this one is on the plebian side of the spectrum. It doesn't engage with the universal, paradigmatic significance of the Holocaust. It is artless, and in that it has value. We are perhaps TOO accustomed to drawing deep philosophical significance from Holocaust Testimony, and this book reminds us that there are hundreds of thousands of individuals who went through this collective trauma and came out on the other side, marked forever. But I can't recommend this book warmly, although making aesthetic judgements about such recountings troubles me. But when one publishes such a book, I suppose one leaves oneself open to this.



5. "Scheisshaus Luck" is a searing memoir of the Holocaust. As the initial draft was written less than 2 years following the author's release from the concentration camp, the book retains the rawness and freshness of detail that brings the day to day brutality and deprivation of concentration camp experience to life. As I read the book, two themes stood out: (a) the tremendous evil that humans are capable of inflicting on each other, and (b) the depths of what humans will endure in order to live. Most of us think we could not stand long days of back-breaking labor with only a cupful of weak soup and a few bites of bread to eat day in and day out. Berg, and his fellow prisoners at Berg's camp did this... and more. One of the outstanding features of the book, in fact, is Berg's inflinching portrayal of the conditions of concentration camp life, in all its moments of great ugliness (the scene where one inmate takes advantage of temporary darkness to steal Berg's bread literally from his hands is particularly heartbreaking) as well as moments of great heroism (Berg survives one forced march due to the efforts and help of his friend, who is then so weakened that he is "selected" for death upon the arrival at the next camp).
   
   The title of the book echoes the major premise developed by Berg in his narrative, which is that the question of who lived or died during the Holocaust was largely determined by blind luck. And he does an excellent job of portraying the arbitrary nature of much of the cruelty that occurred, not to mention the role that chance plays when the line between life and death is so slim that one's survival literally depended on whether you were able to "organize" an extra spoon of soup that day.
   
   However, I might gently disagree with Berg that his survival was only a matter of sheer luck. Throughout the narrative, it becomes clear that--while arbitrary luck certainly played a role in what happened to him--Berg's survival also depended heavily on his abilities and quick wit. More than once, Berg was provided with jobs that were physically less demanding and provided him with more food because of his skills as an interpreter (he spoke four languages fluently). More than once, he obtained more favorable jobs because of his mechanical abilities and willingness to fake being a trained electrician.
   
   This is not an easy memoir to read. Berg relates what happened to him and his companions in a clear, unflinching prose that does not sugarcoat any of the details. But it is not a totally depressing book, either; Berg has a sardonic wit (as seen even in the very first sentence of the book, where he says "if you're seeking a Holocaust survivor's memoir with a profound and poetic statement...you've opened the wrong book"), and there are multiple instances of gallows humor to offer a reader some emotional relief.
   
   Toward the end of the memoir, Berg questions "whether, as a society, we had the fortitude to ever overcome the bestiality so deeply embedded in our fabric." I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that if we are to have even the slightest chance of preventing genocides like the Holocaust from occurring again, we much confront, and remember, the evil of the past. Berg's book, like the memoirs of others who have experienced the Holocaust, plays a vital role toward that end.

3 comments about Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust.

1. This anthology is fascinating, moving, sad, horrifying and inspiring. It revises our notion of what Holocaust literature is, and shows us how very differently women experienced and wrote about it. The book's second section contains excellent essays about women and the Holocaust. In short, a must for feminist readers and anyone interested in Holocaust studies, genocide studies, and the literature of witness.



2. I used this book when I was writing the memoir RENA'S PROMISE: A STORY OF SISTERS IN AUSCHWITZ, which is the story of a woman on the first transport of women into Auschwitz. Aside from the Auschwitz Chronicles, this was the only text I could find that spoke of this transport, which was also the very first transport into Auschwitz.
   This book helped me further my research and provided me with invaluable information that allowed the survivor I was writing about to validate many facts that she remembered--thereby validating her story, her memories and the truth that women were targeted far more rigorously than men. It is amazing any of them survived.



3. This book is an excellent contribution to the study of women and the Holocaust. Many books concentrate primarily on men and the Holocaust. This book provides various perspectives and is a valuable book for scholars and students of the Holocaust.

No comments about Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile's Journey (Jewish Women Writers).

5 comments about Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag.

1. Janusz Bardach, who became a plastic surgeon in Iowa City, Iowa in 1972, recounts his experiences in the Gulag in this bleak tale of survival reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. A secular Jewish man and supporter of Stalin and communism living in Poland In 1939, he and his family fear their future as Germany's military forces are set up along the border. He is eventually drafted into the Red Army, but when he inadvertently gets his new tank stuck in a river, he's arrested and given a sentence of 10 years of hard labor. He, like the other prisoners, spends most of his time working to meet ridiculously high work quotas, while in a constant state of starvation. He travels from camp to camp during his six years in captivity working in various work situations including a mine, the forest felling trees, and as a medical assistant working with tuberculosis patients (which he eventually contracts). Once he recovers, he's sent to work in a psych ward, where the main focus is exposing the "fakers," those trying to get out of work. His job is to inject them with a seizure-inducing drug, which he does reluctantly. With a little help from his one surviving family member, Polish army officer brother, he is eventually released and finds out the fate of his grandparents, parents, sister and girlfriend. They were all executed.



2. I can't really say anything that hasn't been mentioned already, and I think that it would be inappropriate to give away any of the plot.
   
   This is simply the most fascinating story of survival of any that I have ever seen. It is incredible as well as inspiring. It teaches you to value your life, and the relationships that you have with the people you care about most. There were so many instances when he could have resigned to his fate and accepted death, but instead he kept going. Millions of people died in prison camps during the war, and unfortunately all of their stories cannot be told. But to understand what they had to go through in their fight for survival, nothing beats this book. Besides telling his story, it examines the history and psychology behind what happened to him. And overall I believe that it is a valuable read for anyone interested in Russian Gulags or prison camps in general during WW2.



3. I read this after reading The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin. This book may be bleak and shocking, but remember, the author survived! It is an amazing, gripping, shocking story about humanity. I loved it.



4. This is one of the most unbelievable stories I've ever read. It's written with superb simplicity, making it a rapid and engrossing page turner. What a great gift Bardach has given us in writing this book about his horrific and heroic experiences. This is the best account of any world war 2 camp survivor, period. He clearly illustrates that the Soviet Union was about as horrible a place to be as Europe at the time. The book is as well written as the story is interesting. Fantastic. Thank you, Janusz!



5. The most important thing that I gained by reading Janusz Bardach's book is that the will to survive is as important as food when it come to survival. More times that he imagined, he survived because he felt that he would, like he had a special angel or just more "good luck" than other people. It doesn't matter if it's true, it only matters that you believe it.
   
   Luck is also helped by brashness and the will to succeed. His story about becoming a medical assistant, though he had absolutely no formal training, reminds me of Solsenitsyn's tale of how he survived the Gulag by lying about having training as a nuclear engineer. It's the ability to adapt that keeps you alive. Goebbels said that if you told a big enough lie enough times, people would begin to believe it. The only way to survive in the Gulag was to lie to yourself and everyone else.
   
   Since so many of the NKVD were corrupt and brutal, the only way to survive in there world was to also appear to be corrupt. Stalin sent so many of the NKVD and those who worked for them to prison, that they were well cared for by their ex-comrades, because they knew they had a good chance of joining them. Who could survive better in a criminal state within a state then a criminal?
   
   This is a story of hope without all the 'hearts and flowers'. It just the true story of what went on, warts and all (lots of warts).

5 comments about The Man Who Shocked The World: The Life And Legacy Of Stanley Milgram.

1. Stanley Milgram is one of the most influential social psychologists of our time, who through his obedience studies, made some of the greatest and most enduring contributions to psychology. Through his controversial experiments, that "shocked the world" he enabled us to make some sense of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust. He made us look at our dark side, and began a world-discourse about why we blindly obey authority. That discourse continues today and can be found everywhere and in everything from academic journals to films, books, music, and even dog-training manuals. Not only is Milgram's work fascinating but the man himself was just as captivating.
   
   In this superbly written biography of Milgram, Thomas Blass gives us an intimate look at the man behind the brilliance. Blass has meticulously researched Milgram's life and presented the reader with an honest, and not always complimentary, view of Stanley Milgram. I applaud Blass for his candid approach, and his balanced view of an extraordinary man. By revealing Milgram's darker side, Blass has cleverly demonstrated that we all share the same human foibles and weaknesses, and that ultimately the experimenter is no better and no worse than the subjects he uses in his experiments. We are all just humans.
   
   With the current state of our world, I believe renewed discourse on the subject of blind obedience could not have come at a better time. Milgram's work is relevant to just about every aspect of our lives from workplace social dynamics to terrorism. Because of that, I recommend this book to everyone who shares a background in psychology and most certainly for those who do not. Blass's book is a marvelous introduction to Milgram's work and to the fascinating man himself.



2. Milgram seemed to share the showmanship of P.T. Barnum and ingenuity of reality show creator Mark Burnett. If Milgram were alive, he might have been a top reality show creator.
   
   Milgram seems most notable not for the results of his experiments but for their conception and content. He hardly modified the approach used by Asch in his conformity experiments, which relied on deception, but he changed the subject to something considerably more striking. The result may have been significant, but think about it: any result would have attracted attention. Comparing the experimental situation with concentration camp situation is what first made the experiment newsworthy. If the result had been that no one or very few shocked, then news could have been generated of how much better behaved Americans are. Or if Germans also didn't shock much, it could have been claimed people nowadays are much better behaved than folks back in World War II. Given the catchy experiment, the results hardly mattered in the sense that the very description of what the experiment was doing would catch people's attention.
   
   Which isn't necessarily bad. Milgram brought social psychology out of relative obscurity. To a good extent, he bailed out psychology in general, whose reputation had been damaged by decades of speculations without much support.
   
   As a situationist, Milgram recognized that our social lives are quite complex. Rather than spend much time theorizing, he experimented. Don't know? Don't invent a reason, go gather facts. It's a measure of just how complex we are socially that even having gathered results, as with the "obedience" experiments, Milgram seemed at a lost to explain what was happening. Blass notes about Milgram's "Obedience to Authority book" that "Milgram's theorizing is the weakest part of the book". Milgram's feeble appeal to cybernetics contrasts sharply with his description of the experiment. Blass also notes that the kind of "obedience" Milgram studied doesn't seem at all sufficient to explain what happened during the Holocaust.
   
   Milgram shouldn't be faulted for the problems with his theorizing. How many psychologists can theorize well? There's still an enormous amount we don't know about ourselves and the way we interact. Milgram's gift seems to have been sensing that and instead finding novel ways to help us to learn about ourselves. Even if the content and results of his experiments are someday forgotten, the spirit of bold experimentation that Milgram brought to social psychology will be of great value. Blass communicates that. So I don't know if Blass is the "undisputed expert" but the book seems well-researched and quite readable.



3. Great book, couldn't put it down. It is an excellent book to get the whole story about Milgram and his famous experiment. What great insight Milgram found out about man, but was man ready to look in the mirror? If you teach psychology, or you are just interested in psychology, and want a more in depth look at Milgram, you won't go wrong with this one. My students are enjoying this as well.



4. I admire those who ask the hard questions. I admire those who don't fall into line with easy answers. I'm glad Stanley Milgram existed and did his groundbreaking work. I'm sorry he's not still alive to be doing more of it. I'd love to see his take on the current state of affairs in our country. I first learned of Milgram as a college student who was one of a group duplicating his experiment. I didn't shock anybody and argued with the "experimenter" as the task was being explained to me. And having read this book I still proudly wear my "Question Authority" button in honor of Milgram. The Blass book is an excellent read if you're willing to entertain some uncomfortable thoughts.



5. In July of 1961, just three months after the beginning of the trial of Adolph Eichmann, Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram began a series of experiments destined to change the world's view of human behavior. The essential elements included a `teacher' and a `learner'. In reality only the `teacher' was part of the experiment. His job or rather his orders were to test the `learner' and for each question the learner answered incorrectly he would receive an electric shock up to the point at which he might die from it. Milgram showed that many of the randomly selected `teachers' would inflict the maximum punishment without disobeying their `orders'.
   
   This brilliant book tells the story of the man behind the experiment and the legacy at has left in the world today. A brilliantly written, well constructed, fast flowing narratives takes the reader from Milgram's early days through his family and professional life and discusses the legacy of this amazing experiment.
   
   Seth J. Frantzman

3 comments about Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972.

1. The second volume is even better than the first...Kaplan does not idolize Heschel; he shares the frustrations and shortcomings, but also the richness of his writing, his work and his soul.



2. I can personally attest to the point Kaplan makes in this splendid book that Rabbi Heschel touched many lives beyond the Jewish community.
   
   In my recently published autobiographical novel LAST RITES about a young man who follows his grandfathers and father into the ministry only to find out he made a big mistake, I write about Heschel's effect on the main character Tom Reed. At this point in the novel he has left his parish in rural Connecticut and is on a "study sabbatical" in New York where he wants to find a secular job so he doesn't have to return to his bishop for reassignment.
   
   " The next day I took the bus up to Union Seminary where I registered for my independent study program for the second semester. I went to the opening day of a few of the classes, mostly to get the reading lists. Father Panovsky's course on Russian Orthodoxy looked interesting, but the course that I found most intriguing was Rabbi Abraham Heschel's seminar on the prophets, given across the street at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
   
   "At Rabbi Heschel's first seminar he had us go around the table and introduce ourselves. He looked surprised when I identified myself as an Episcopalian clergyman on sabbatical, and he was even more surprised when he learned how much Hebrew and Aramaic I knew. The Heschel seminar was the only course I stayed with, and I even had a couple of conversations with the great man in his office. We talked about the "anti-religion" theme that runs through the prophets and also the history of Christian anti-Semitism--what Jules Isaacs called the church's "teaching of contempt." I read several of the books he recommended and felt more in tune with his thinking than I ever did with any of my seminary professors."
   
   I can only wonder what the great man would have made of my book ETERNAL TREBLINKA.
   
   --Submitted by Charles Patterson, author of "Last Rites," "Anti-Semitism" and "Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust"



3. After completing "Spiritual Radical," I sat on my parent's couch in their NYC apartment, emotionally, if not physically, trembling. A myriad of thoughts and feelings streamed through me as if I were a video that one watches on the internet. On the ride back home to Brooklyn, I composed--in my mind--what easily could become a 20+ page essay, "Was Abraham Joshua Heschel A Prophet?" That's how moving and evocative I found Professor Kaplan's biography to be.
   
   Besides giving me so, so much insight about Heschel, the man, I learned much about Heschel the theologist/philosopher, the historical period in which his work took place, the points of view of the various segments of both Judaism and Christianity--individual, organizational, and theological--and so much more it would take several pages to list them all.
   
   Indeed, words like brilliant, superb, and/or profound to describe the quality of the Kaplan's writing would be understatements! If I may borrow a phrase from the title--even if English language purists would shake their heads--his work evoked in me "radical amazement." For sure, of all the biographies I have read over the years, his is the BEST I have ever come across--surpassing McCollough's "John Adams," and Cook's biography of Elanor Roosevelt, to name two that I esteem. Besides the clarity of the writing, what particularly impresses is how fair he was, given the necessity as a biographer of being truthful to his task, even if that required being critical--at times--of someone he obviously loved.
   
   Finally, I can only imagine the profound and time-consuming labor he must have gone through to determine not only what to put on paper, but what to leave out! I believe his judgment concerning the latter places him, as much or more than anything else, in the top echelon of the vocation of biographers!
   
   Abraham Joshua Heschel -- Spiritual Radical -- is a masterpiece!
   
   Steve Rosner
   Brooklyn, NY

1 comments about Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side 1890-1925 (New Feminist Library).

1. I read this book while I was doing a research paper on immigrant women and their experiences in America and I was quite impressed by the amount of information it has. Unlike some books on this subject I've read, it has a nice flow to it and it reads well. I really liked the way the author organized it because it follows the immigrant women from the old country to America and very nicely describes their transition into Americans and the struggles they faced while doing this. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in this subject.