No comments about The Life of A Child Survivor from Bialystok, Poland (The Life of a Child Survivor From Bialystok, Poland).

No comments about The Importance of One.

2 comments about Yoni Netanyahu (Jps Young Biography Series.).

1. Could anyone write me and tell me if this guy is related to Bibi. Just wanted to know. I havent read the book so give it 5 stars as benefit of the doubt



2. Yoni Netanhayu, an israeli hero, was related to former israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.

1 comments about In the Eye of the Storm: Growing Up Jewish in Germany, 1918-1943, A Memoir.

1. Herbert Strauss' In The Eye Of The Storm also provides a memoirof growing up Jewish in Germany, covering 1918-43 and the author'sescape to Switzerland. The two provide fine insights on childhood, politics, and struggles for survival.

5 comments about The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust.

1. There are two recent books that touch on this subject. Ms. Pringle's and Christpher Hale's "Himmler's Crusade". Hale's book is about the expedition to Tibet, which also occupies a large part of this book. Even so, go with this one. Ms. Pringle is an excellent researcher and writes very well. She avoids veering off and making mistakes about military affairs, a major weakness in Hale's book. In addition, this book goes beyond the Tibet expedition (a fascinating subject) and takes up additional matters regarding the group set up by the SS to examine racial-biological-political issues. If you have an interest in Himmler or the SS, you won't be sorry you read this book.



2. I've been a fan of Heather Pringle ever since I picked up The Mummy Congress and spent an entire day in Acapulco in my room reading it in preference to splashing about in the Pacific. This book is, of course, entirely different and concerns the efforts of Heinrich Himmler to establish a anthropologic/historical "school" called the Ahnenerbe to indoctrinate young Nazis by advancing the theory of the "master race" and tracking the history of advanced civilizations back to thier presumed Aryan ancestors.
   
   While Himmler's efforts were in themselves crackpot and gathered quite a few kooks along the way such as his assistant, former mental patient named Karl-Marial Wilgigut who traced his family back to the Norse god Thor, more interestingly is that many of the reputable German scientists of the day followed along either through fear of political censorship or quite possibley through shared beliefs.
   
   Throughout, Ms. Pringle pops up with interesting facts such as Hugo Boss' supplying of the Nazi uniforms and Ludwig Roselius' invention of decaffeinated coffee (sufficient reason in itself to dislike the Nazis.)
   
   This book is well worth the price particularly as it presents the acceptance of craziness and promulgation of insanity in modern civilization and deals with an area of the Third Reich which would otherwise be unfamiliar to most readers. Highly recommended.



3. This is not the first book about the mysterious branch of the SS called "Ahnenerbe". But it is the most well-written one and also the first book to present all the amazing Ahnenerbe expeditions abroad. These expeditions bring Indiana Jones to mind but are far more interesting than the "Indy" movies, as they took place in real life.
   
   As Ahnenerbe was to a great extent about motivating the pagan faith of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and many early SS-officers the book is also about the relationship of the SS to the major religions. Both to buddhism (therefore the fascination with Tibet), hinduism (with its "Aryan" side), Islam (two SS divisions were largely Muslim) and Christianity (incompatible with true SS spirit according to Himmler).
   
   Had Nazi Germany been victorious the SS would have dropped its wartime acceptance of Christianity and would have worked hard on replacing Christianity with its brand of pagan faith. "The Master Plan" gives a really fascinating insight into what was actually done in the SS to promote the new/ancient faith, and what the SS planned to do about religion, had the SS won.



4. Heather Pringle's "The Master Plan" gives an excellent history of the Ahnenerbe, the special branch of the Nazi SS made up of some of Germany's leading scientists and scholars whose purpose it was to document the history and prehistory of Germany and the Aryan race. These scientists, often hand-picked by Heinrich Himmler himself, were intended to provide the historical and scientific justification for the Nazi's ideology and conquests. Much of this story has remained largely unknown and Pringle's work is the first book that provides a comprehensive account of this fascinating subject.
   
   Himmler was obsessed with the idea that he could validate the superiority of the Aryan peoples and the supremacy of the German "volk" by providing clear scientific evidence supporting these claims. Where such evidence was lacking, it could be invented. Thus was born the SS Ahnenerbe, a organization that operated under the guise of unbiased scientific inquiry by some of the leading German scholars of the day. The findings of the Ahnenerbe were used to justify the Final Solution and the sinister deeds of the Nazis as the German war machine steamrolled across the world. Pringle's book explores the lives of the many scientists who served the Ahnenerbe and the various expeditions that were undertaken in the service of the Reich. It was these very archaeological undertakings that partly served as the inspiration for the film "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
   
   Pringle's book also makes clear Himmler's agenda to alter the very fabric of German society, especially religion. Himmler was a passionate anti-Christian who believed that Germany should be returned to the pagan religion of their ancestors. To that end, he used the SS as a prototype for a future society that would embrace the beliefs and practices of their Aryan forbearers.
   
   Himmler understood that if you can control what people know and understand about their past and their ancestors then you can control the future of that society. History is written, or often RE-written, by the victors for a reason. The Ahnenerbe was created for this very purpose. It is an important piece in the complex puzzle of understanding the motivations of the Nazis and why they did the things they did. Pringle's book is an excellent addition to that understanding.



5. Although I enjoyed the read, by the end I was left somewhat disappointed by the content. The details of the Nazi occult belief system are glazed over. I understand that this is a difficult topic to get to the bottom of, and many have tried before, but the author seems more at home dealing with the external logistics of Himmler's strategy rather than explaining the ideology that lay behind. When reading of the primeval blond-haired master race I couldn't help thinking of the "Nordic" aliens who feature so regularly in UFO abduction stories and in alien conspiracy books, and how Nazi scientists appeared in Speilberg's "Taken" series working hand in hand with the little grey aliens on the operating tables. No doubt a respected journalist, such as Ms Pringle, would be disinclined to follow that line of thought, but I wouldn't put it past Himmler. He was also inhuman. But more to the point, why would Himmler, or Hitler for that matter, be so obsessed with tall, blond hair blue-eyed types when they so obviously did not resemble them? Did the thought not occur to the author? It must have.

No comments about Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, 1913-1934 (American Jewish Civilization Series).

5 comments about To Play With Fire: One Woman's Remarkable Odyssey.

1. I read this back when it was called "Playing With Fire". I am not sure which branch of fundimentalist Christianity her family was with....perhaps the British group "Plymouth Brethren", they were really cultlike. Her background was extreme, but her issues with Christianity are thoughtful and not merely colored by her strange community.

   I recognized alot of things from my sojourn with fundimentalism, and I found her honesty refreshing. She is also very straightforward about the Jewish community she has joined. She doesn't paint an easy rosey picture of her transition. I still think of her and her husband, a convert from Episcopalianism. I think if you are interested in conversion stories and people affirming their Judaism you will love this book.

   I remember vividly her description of the heartrending time of her sister's death, and her parent's programmed reaction.

   Good Luck Tova! I am so glad to see this reissue of your book!




2. This book is a very honest one. I especially loved the fact that Tova did not show Orthodox Judaism in rosy colors, but were describing her negative feelings and experience with Orthodox Judaism as well. And there were plenty of what to be upset about. However, she chooses Orthodox Judaism for the rest of her life.

   She made it clear that she despised Christianity not just because she was abused by so called "Christians" but also because she was rejecting the New Testament itself. She wrote openly inside her book that Jesus was a false prophet, and that Gospels were misquoting and distorting the Jewish Scriptures. She revealed herself as a very educated and knowledgeable minister quoting the verses from the Bible in order to explain us why according to her the entire Christian doctrine is wrong.

   I highly recommend this book to all people: both Jews and Christians. Written in a very sophisticated English it will certainly help them to understand it other.

   Also, this new edition "To Play with Fire" is much better than the old one "Playing with Fire". This new edition is longer on sixty pages and reveals more details about her experience and feelings. Even if you own the book "Playing with Fire", you certainly should get this uncut and unedited edition, too.




3. Tova Mordechai's story of her journey from a Pentecostal cult to Judaism reads like a Jewish _A Little Princess_: she lives in poverty surrounded by plenty, is forcibly separated from her family; she succeeeds at everything she tries and yet receives no recognition for her successes, but she is cheerful and good-hearted throughout. If this book were fiction, it would be remarkable for its excellent writing, suspenseful plot, and believable characters. The fact that the book actually happened is all the more amazing. _To Play with Fire_ compellingly tells a truly fascinating and inspirational story, giving the reader an insight behind closed doors of two little-understood religions.
   
   Any autobiographical work about an author's religious "odyssey" sets off alarm bells in the mind of a demanding reader, yet this book avoids the clichees. Despite telling a very personal story about the evolution of the author's fundamental religious beliefs, it maintains a distance from them: much to her credit, the author does not attempt to persuade readers of the truth of her new belief system, and she does write a relatively honest assessment of her new life. Further, it is clear that Ms. Mordechai is writing for her audience, not herself: she tells her story because others have found it fascinating, not because she thinks herself a model of humanity, again quite unique of autobiographical works.
   
   Nevertheless, I do wish that she had written more about her current life. She mentions her reluctance to accept anything blindly, and indeed she argues extensively with the Lubavitch rabbis at her seminary, but she nonetheless stayed within Lubavitch during her struggles, rather than exploring other streams of Judaism, such as the Greek-Jewish and Egyptian-Jewish traditions of her ancestors.
   
   While the most important part of her exploration occurred in the transition from Christian to Jewish, I wish she had discussed her thoughts about the nature of religion itself: whether power in any religious group should ever be centralized in one figure whose opinion determines the policy of the religious group, or whether decentralized power (as in the classical Jewish model of multiple rival opinions) is safer.
   
   It is understandable that she cannot risk personal relationships by giving a complete discussion of her own life in her small community, but I was disappointed to watch her lush prose become sparse at the very end, and to see her incisive commentary become more muted.
   
   One warning to the reader: it is impossible to read only one chapter and it compelled me to stay up until 3 am to finish it.



4. If you are looking for a book which details the intellectual and rational search of a person for the soul's home in the Jewish faith, this is not the book to read. Coming from a cultic, dysfunctional Pentecostal family, the author is very emotional and seems to judge religious precepts purely on the basis of how they "feel". I don't doubt that she had a life-long feeling of inner-connectedness to Judiasm,but all one reads is how a woman exchanged a christian faith which controlled all her action for a jewish version of the same.



5. Tonica aka Joy aka Tova has the misfortune to be born to a couple of warped religious fanatics. Her mother a Sephardic Jew is the daughter of an orthodox father and not so observant mother. Eventually, Tonica's mother and grandmother become Christians while her grandfather and two uncles remain orthodox. Sally, Tonica's mother meets and marries Jim Marlow, a born again Christian. They move to England where Jim is content to live in the shadow of his wartime buddy, Raymond who eventually becomes cult leader "Daddy Raymond."
   
   Tonica is 16 when Daddy Raymond gets the "revelation" that her father and mother are supposed to sell everything they own (including Tonica's beloved horse), donate it to the church/cult and quit their jobs and move into a one bedroom apartment and work for the cult for free. Her father the head of the household dutifully complies, even though he is only two years away from a full pension, and Tonica is left homeless. They dump her at Daddy Raymond's new Bible college for "training." Tonica is abused physically, verbally, and spiritually to the point that she stays with church/cult and severs all contact with her parents after Daddy Raymond excommunicates them.
   
   If you replace church with revolution, Jesus with Chairman Mao, and Daddy Raymond with one of Mao's lower henchmen you could be reading a memoir of the Cultural Revolution. The basic premises are the same; impressionable young people are beaten into submission physically and psychologically. Then they try to out do each other in their adoration of a so called deity who becomes their raison d'etre. In the process they spy and tattle on each other, turn in and or disown family members, in order to win favor and work their way up the hierarchy. They also devise petty backstabbing machinations that rival day time soaps. The final reward for all this effort is group acceptance and recognition from the cult leader.
   
   This book is just under 450 pages and the first 300 or so pages we are dragged through Tonica's thought processes during her nine years with the cult; I think I'm really Jewish, no I love Jesus, no I'm Jewish, no I love Jesus. The redundancy itself was agonizing, but what I found extremely frustrating was her inability to wake up and leave this cult of freaks. She is very capable of making a bonafide living, has had positive contact with the outside world, and even been offered a ticket to Israel by her estranged uncle. Instead she chooses to stay and continue to be abused and used as slave labor.
   
   This book would have been much more palatable if it had been kept under 150 pages and or written by a third party with some insightful commentary about cults and missionaries. Other than her thoughts on modesty for a woman's spiritual development versus modesty to prevent male temptation very little of this memoir was thought provoking. I found Tonica's husband's story impressive, but he doesn't' appear until page 413. He was born into a blueblood church family. He came to Judaism completely on his own after reading through the Bible and after a priest is unable to successfully answer his numerous questions. At age 18 he immigrated to Israel. I thought that was pretty gutsy. On the back of the book it says; "Tova also lectures throughout the world on being Jewish in a contemporary society." Given her and her husband's backgrounds I think they would be very well suited to do a Noahide outreach and or anti-missionary work.
   
   Turbulent Souls by Stephen Dubner is a similar, but much better book. Dubner's American WWII Era Jewish parents for some reason felt compelled to convert to Catholicism. Then they met and married. Dubner is more sophisticated, does his research, and asks thought provoking questions as he winds his way back to the religion of his grandparents.

5 comments about Where She Came from: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History.

1. Although this book has a slow start with a lot of historical information, once you get to the Holocaust section, you will not be able to put this book down. I read it while in Vienna and after I visited Prague. I felt so connected to my surroundings and the author that I literally felt like I was in the book. Makes the enormity of the Holocaust personal and understandable. A MUST READ FOR EVERYONE!



2. This book was a beautiful personal tribute to the author's ancestors.
   
   I was engrossed in this book from the first page...although it was a slow read for me, because I wanted to grasp the intensity of the generational saga, and grasp the historical facts, correctly. Epstein has more than proved herself in this dramatic memoir of family generations, identity, and history, weaving us through time, each piece of family fabric a part of the final tapestry. The reader is given remnants and squares of fabric in a familial tapestry, of sorts, through history and time, through the horrors of war, and how it affects all the generations, from past to present. From assimilating into society and racial and religous identity, to how one views themselves and what they identify with, Epstein manages to stitch a tapestry of her family, each stitch in time adding to the fabric of her own identity. Bravo for a wonderful read!



3. This is a fascinating chronicle of three generations of the author's female ancestors. It is probably the only book in English that tells the story of Jewish women in Prague in the the first half of the twentieth century. Helen Epstein has a special talent for recreating social history and bringing it alive.



4. Beautifully written, WHERE SHE CAME FROM is also the product of very serious and exhaustive research. It is a magical and haunting book. It brings alive a period of Jewish women's history that is only now being written about in English. Travelling through pre-Holocaust Central Europe with Epstein is an amazing experience: the reader follows both the process of investigation of family history and the emotions this opens up for the writer.
   
   I taught the book several times both in the US and Mexico in classes on Memory and Autobiography. My students loved the book. Many of them bought several copies to give to relatives and friends as gifts. My graduate students (in History and Literature) were impressed by the rigor of Epstein's research, and the skill with which she weaves historical information into her prose.



5. In WHERE SHE CAME FROM, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based award-winning author Helen Epstein has penned a meticulously-researched memoir to the four generations of Czech and former Czechoslovak women in her extensive family, from her mother's side of the brood.
   
   While today she associates her public persona to the proud and extensive line of former Czechoslovak Epsteins (see Ms. Epstein's fabulous Amazon Short available off of this site, SWIMMING AGAINST STEREOTYPE: The Story of a Twentieth Century Jewish Athlete), the writer stakes her claim to a noble and illustrious family line which once proudly sported famous Viennese and Prague-based surnames such as Rabinek, Solar, Weigert, Sachsel, Furcht, and Frucht.
   
   Like an experienced batsman for a World Series-winning major-league baseball team, Epstein managed to hang in that old batter's box, waiting for just the right pitch to slug out of the ballpark. In the book world, the analogue was when all the right moments fortuitously transpired to assist Ms. Epstein in securing many essential clues of research which she utilized handily in crafting this excellent book's narrative. Even she'll tell you, the process was far from easy.
   
   Thanks to a dedicated coterie of like-minded collaborators based in points all around the globe as you'll soon read (the former Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Israel, South America, and the United States), Ms. Epstein succeeded in cobbling together one of the most comprehensive Czech geneological histories on the public record.
   
   The work is not only emotionally remunerative for Ms. Epstein, to the extent that those missing links in her family chain were finally sewn together, but it's additionally a fine account of several strong women, renowned in their various fields of endeavour, who persevered during the best of times and the absolute horrorific worst of the 20th century.
   
   Starting with Helen's great-grandmother Therese Sachsel, nee Frucht (Furcht), who lived during the reign of Franz-Josef in the last of the Habsburg-ian thrones, passing through her grandmother Pepi's life story during the turbulent First World War and the First Czechoslovak Republic, and finally overlapping the history of her own mother Frances Epstein, Helen pored over hundreds (if not thousands) of archival sources in constructing this cogent tale.
   
   Collectively, these three noble upstanding women belonging to the author's colourful past outlived the worst of the 20th century's ravages, passing fads, and tragic downfalls.
   
   We swoon with Therese Sachsel during the euphoria of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk's (TGM) storied first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938), when all seemed possible for the Central European remant of the former Austria-Hungarian powerhouses of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia. Our hopes and dreams are temporarily crushed alongside her grandmother Pepi Rabinek as we witness the invasion and subsequent occupation of Prague by Nazi hordes, who sweep unchallenged through the former Czechoslovakia's borders after the West's perfidy of Munich. We agonize alongside Pepi's daughter, Frances Solar/Rabinek/Epstein, the paragon of the family and Helen's stalwart mother, as she is dispatched to the Teresienstadt (in modern-day Terezin, Czech Republic) concentration camp, or in the colloquial Czech, the "koncentrak." We also rejoice when Frances is extricated from the hellhole of Auschwitz, and tranported the West in wartime Germany as part of a labour brigade, towards the oncoming Allies from the West, liberated in Bergen-Belsen by British forces at the end of WWII. Finally, we are shocked to discover the insensitivity, sheer apathy, and in many instances -- outright hostility -- that Praguers demonstrated towards the surviving returnees from the Nazi camps, to which Frances and her future husband, famous former Czechoslovak Olympian swimmer, Kurt Epstein, counted themselves.
   
   Helen Epstein's lines draw us inexorably into this story, and once you start you'll have a difficult time finding excuses to stop.
   
   What staggered me as I made my way through this read was Ms. Epstein's formidable discipline. The sheer single-mindedness with which she approached the colossal task of the near-vertical climb to reach the bottom of her family's history. I read with awe how solace was found towards the end.
   
   WHERE SHE CAME FROM will stand as one of the foremost examples of the self-researched memoir. If you need any reason at all to read this book, then let it be thanks to the iron-willed determination which the answers gracing its pages were unearthed by Ms. Epstein.
   
   A book like this needs to be savoured for its significance, appreciated for its illumination, and respected for its purity. There isn't a single letter which graces these pages that wasn't typed, written, or transcribed in the absence of a labour which can only be termed love.
   
   I sit back and wish we all had the staying power of Ms. Epstein. The book is laudatory in the extreme.
   
   As if Ms. Epstein's family history were not enough, there are other benefits to this book too. For those with a keen interest in the past two centuries of life in Prague and the experiences of Bohemia's and Moravia's Jews and its Czech peasantry, WHERE SHE CAME FROM is chock-a-block with painstaking factoids and historical tidbits that'll nudge you gently towards further reading. It will also supply its readers with a glimpse towards the increasingly-distant Czechoslovak past, which, with the passing of the years and the keener integration of this country with the rest of the EU, slips further and further away from the grip of Czech youth.
   
   This book is more than just a reminder, it's a testament to a time which no longer exists. In that respect, it is now part of the permanent historical record.
   
   WHERE SHE CAME FROM is written in a language at once accessible and magnetic. For all ages, for all backgrounds. I can't do anything less than award this superb work of history my highest rating of 5-stars.
   
   I know you will too.
   
   -- ADM in Prague

No comments about The Birobidzhan Affair: A Yiddish Writer in Siberia.

4 comments about Biografía de Ana Frank.

1. This book is wonderful, it was done with the complete cooperation of Anna's surviving relatives, who gave the author letters, photographs and Anna's more personal side. They finally show us Anna's mother and father, and you will find letters and parts of Otto Frank's diary and memoirs, where he sees a complicated relationship between mother and daughter, and the pain he felt that Anna and her mother could have more time together to get to know and understan each other better, he knew that the fights where due to her age. For the first time you get to know Anna Frank, not as a victim, but as a human being, who loved, laughed and cared, but who also fought, cried and felt alone. A must read, Enjoy!



2. While perhaps the title of this book might give you a hint, nothing in the documentation for this book tells you that it is NOT the original, but is a translation into Spanish. Be forewarned. My low-star rating has nothing to do with the quality of the book. I assume the other reviewers were able to read the book in Spanish. But if you aren't able to do this, don't buy this book.



3. Agosto del 2001

   He leído el libro en dos días, me ha cautivado el estilo de la escritora, pero sobre todo los hechos de la vida de Ana. Esta biografia es la primero que leo sobre Ana, ignoraba que hubiera algo como esto ademas del diario. Pienso que la autora ha hecho un excelente trabajo de investigacion sobre los acontecimientos que sucedieron antes, durante y despues en la vida de la familia Frank, durante esos tragicos dias de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El libro ademas de presentar los hechos de una manera cronologica fundamentados con documentos historicos, tiene, diria yo, un "sabor" familiar, es como si la autora nos estuviera contando algo que le ha sucedido a algun ser querido muy cercano a nosotros (los lectores). Las excelentes fotografias que tiene el libro permite que se conozca a algunos de las personas con las que Ana convivio. Al final del libro se encuentra una parte dedicada a quien pudo haber traicionado a los que se escondian en la "casa de atras". Esta parte me gusto mucho porque es una pregunta que surge al estar leyendo el libro. Es un excelente libro sobre la vida de Ana Frank.




4. this 's a good biography of Anne. it's very interesting book so i can't turn my eyes of it..