2 comments about The Life of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust: A Memoir.

1. As the Holocaust recedes further into the past, it becomes increasingly difficult to treat it as more than an abstraction. It becomes defined by numbers: Six million or more dead, numbingly large. Yet, how can one who did not live in that era imagine what it truly meant, and even more so for a goy such as myself?
   
   Ben-Zion Gold's memoir is truly a treasure, because of its portrait of Jewish life before the Holocaust. He describes his boyhood living in an Orthodox household in Radom, Poland in the 1930's. He paints rich pictures of family members and gatherings and a host of unique individuals. He depicts his religious schooling, cut short by the war.
   
   The last few chapters briefly describe how Gold survived the war, and the impact of his ordeal on his faith. His candor and insights are deeply appreciated.
   
   Gold originally wrote his story with his daughters in mind -- to tell them about the family in Poland, all of whom were murdered well before his daughters' birth. Fortunately for us, he has expanded the tale in such a way as to make it accessible, even to those of us with no familiarity with Jewish life or customs. I was particularly grateful for how terms are defined on first use.
   
   The Holocaust becomes so much more meaningful now. With Gold's story, we see the faces of those who perished, their personalities, community and culture. We understand a little better what was lost.
   
   I highly recommend this book.



2. This book is a compeling read. It describes in minute detail the religious, social and economic structure of the time. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to have a glimpse of life in Poland before WWII.

5 comments about Thanks to My Mother.

1. My daughter needed this in a matter of days for a project. As always Amazon came thru.



2. Susie Weksler was only eight years old when the Nazis invaded her city of Vilnius, Lithuania.
   The family would be forced to endure starvation and fear, and she describes the experience of hiding with other Jewish families and children in the Malina (the underground tunnels and sewers of Vilnius), where she describes the death of a baby who was smothered when his father tried to keep him quiet.
   
   Worse was to come.
   With the help of her mother who saved her by disguising her as being 16 years old when she was only ten, and filled her with a strong spirit of survival, Susie survived three concentration camps, and a "death march".
   
   The book describes heart wrenching and disturbing scenes of the horrors imposed upon the victims of the Nazi inferno, scenes you will never forget.
   The death camp where Susie and her mother were interned was liberated in January 1945, only three of her family had survived.
   The book included the English translations of the poems Susie wrote in the ghetto and the camps.
   They are powerful and inspiring and show a gem of a spirit:
   
   The Time is Not Far
   
   There will come a time
   and the time is not far
   when from east and west,
   from every side
   light will arrive
   and a warm wind
   and the clouds will
   all disappear quickly
   Oh, believe me my friend,
   the time is not far.
   
   This is one of the richest, most descriptive and engaging accounts by survivors of the Holocaust and I would strongly recommend it as a high school set work book.
   
   Susie immigrated to Israel in 1950, where she did her military service and married and still lives today.
   Her mother died in 1974.
   Most Holocaust survivors and most descendants of Holocaust survivors live in Israel today.



3. This was a truly amazing book. Since the author (not even going to attempt to spell the name) was alive and went through the holocaust she knew first hand what it was like. I remember at the beginning I was waiting for like talking and dialouge but then I realized it wasn't happing and at the beginning it just kind of seemed like the author was introducing something but as you get farther and farther in the book you don't have that feeling anymore you keep wanting to know what else could possibly be worse than what this people are going through and waiting for what is going to happen to these people next! Great to learn about Holocaust and easy EASY non-fiction read!



4. The story by Shoshana Rabinovici-Weksler about her family in Pre-WWII Vilnius(Vilna), and how the whole family found different ways to survive daily nazi actions in Ghetto Vilna, through the liquidation of the Ghetto when basically almost all Jewish population of Vilnius was killed in a matter of four days.
   Then her and her mother's struggle to continue thru a concentration camp, the Death March and the liberation.
   But the most powerful image in the story is her Mother, who did for her daughter more than anybody can possibly imagine or even trying to imagine.
   Very very painful and tragic story, highly highly recommend to anybody whether he/she knows about Holocaust or knows very little.
   Thank You Shoshana for sharing with us!



5. The two best books I have read on what it was like to live through the Holocaust have been "Childrens" books. This is one of the two books. It is not a childs book. It is a stirring story of survival through experiences that would severely try anyones will. It is a book for everyone.
   
   I am a researcher and writer of this time period. Sometimes, I pick up a book like this, and I feel I have read it already before I have even begun. After awhile, and enough research, you think you are becoming somewhat numb to the evil. Then I read something like this book and my heart is pierced once again.
   
   Should the author read this review, I wish to say to you:
   
   May God bless you for the rest of the years that remain.

5 comments about A Red Boyhood: Growing Up Under Stalin.

1. One of the most touching and riveting war memoirs I have ever read.
   Anatole Konstantin's life is a triumph over incredible pain and suffering during the Stalin era. This is a must-read.



2. An incredible story of survival in the most horrific of times. This book is testimony to the human spirit - to a young man's determination to prevail. His commitment to books, to learning and his ability to recall and describe the details of his difficult life are admirable. Unfortunately - like so many books of this ilk - it lacks an index.



3. Kirkus Reviews
   
   A boy's-eye view of life during wartime-first the Soviet Union's vicious internal struggles under Stalin and then its horrific ordeal after the Germans invaded in 1941.
   
   Konstantin begins his memoir in dramatic fashion, recalling the night of April 17, 1938, when his father was taken away by the Soviet secret police and never seen again in their little town in the Ukraine. The early passages of the book do a fine job of explaining the climate in which such an incident could occur; Konstantin describes an Orwellian regime full of furtive police activities, mysterious disappearances and a terrorized populace.
   
   What makes Konstantin's recollections so captivating is his ability to effectively divide the text between small details vividly rendered, such as a trip to the movie theater, and the larger story of a global political and military struggle. Despite the upheavals that roiled his childhood, the author somehow managed to get a decent education; he refers frequently to inspirational teachers and to devouring books ranging from The Grapes of Wrath to Das Kapital. But these moments of enlightenment in Konstantin's young life were tempered by the unbearable wartime conditions; often, as he left school for the day, he saw corpses piled high on wagons to be carted away.
   
   His mother married a Polish refugee in 1944, and they were able to return with him to Poland in 1945, happy to escape the "cursed" Soviet Union. But the Soviets soon consolidated their grip on Poland, and the family fled west, finally winding up in a UN refugee camp in Germany. As a displaced person, Konstantin qualified for free tuition at a local university, and after three more years of struggle was finally able to emigrateto "the land of my dreams"-America. Uneven, but full of engaging details about a tumultuous period in world history.



4. A wonderful history told from the eyes of a boy, whose intelligence and curiosity contrast with the brutal, senseless politics of the Soviet world he lives in. Konstantin manages to write from the naïve perspective of his own youth, while adding the essential contemporary insights that give his journey a solid frame of historical context. The autobiography is written as a wandering tale of survival, that somehow manages to echo the universal stories of youth, the love of parents, the rejection of hypocrisy, the discovery of romance. Far from a polemic about the evils of a particular world view, it none the less exposes the absurdity of a Soviet state that venerates obsequious functionaries one week, and executes them the next. The author does not aim to play to our emotions, but we are moved. While the sophisticated comedy of underground jokes leaves us chuckling, the more lasting humor emerges from darkly comic moments we experience as fortunes change at the whim of Stalin or Hitler. We can easily imagine the irony of using expunged encyclopedia entries for rolling papers and bathroom tissue.
   Konstantin begins his story with the events that shattered a happy childhood, and led his family to wander the Soviet Empire. He ends the book with his arrival in the United States, where he will eventually become quite successful. In choosing not to write about the later years, he forces us to meditate on the plight of refugees everywhere. Success is simply escape, freedom, the opportunity to grow up in a reasonable place. By not updating us to the current world, he keeps the past alive, and we are left with the sense that life in a free land is indeed an open book.
   --Dr.Greg Hampikian, co-author of Exit to Freedom



5. Stalinist Russia - no one will ever say that was the pinnacle of Russian civilization, and in fact is well and below considered one of the nation's lowest points. "A Red Boyhood: Growing Up Under Stalin" is a memoir focusing on the life of one on the outskirts of society, one who lost countless loved ones to Stalin's purges, and under a mother who struggled just so that her and her boys could manage to survive. An even darker look into a dark era for the country's history, "A Red Boyhood: Growing Up Under Stalin" is highly recommended to community library memoir collections, especially those with a focus on world events.

5 comments about Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village.

1. 2008 marks seventy years since the tragic events of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a wave of destruction against Germany's Jews. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. Mimi Schwartz, author of "Good Neighbors / Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village" wasn't born yet. She would be grow up in Queens, New York, on milkshakes and hamburgers, and her father's stories of life in Germany, a life she had very little interest in. Her father grew up in Benheim (the name of the village has been changed to protect privacy), a little village of Christians and Jews in southwest Germany where according to all accounts Jews and Christians lived peacefully side by side. No allied bombs fell on Benheim during WWII so much of it is still preserved. The synagogue which was attacked during Kristallnacht is still there, now as an Evangelical Church. One can still visit the Jewish cemetery with 946 old graves.
   
   Schwartz was in a village in Israel when she saw an old Benheim Torah and was told that "the Christians of Benheim rescued the Torah for us during Kristallnacht." That story sent her on a quest to discover all that she could about this little village, to determine if, like her father had always told her, Benheim was special in that the people there got along and would do anything to help one another.
   
   In "Good Neighbors / Bad Times" Schwarz interviews many old Benheimers, some in Israel and some in America. She also visits Benheim several times, a village which now has no Jews. The Jews that were there either escaped in time or were killed in the concentration camps. Only two Benheimers who were interred in the concentration camps survived. The other eighty-seven were murdered. On her journey, Schwarz discovers a series of individual stories and individual perspectives which each tell part of the whole story. She discovers both the Jewish and the Gentile perspective on what happened. She struggles with knowing what everyone knows now versus what people knew then. There was a large swastika that had been erected in the town in 1934, but as one Benheimer stated, "It was not important; no one knew what it would mean." She learned of other kind deeds that occurred in Benheim and of a second Torah that was saved and is now located in Burlington, Vermont. She learned of how good people struggled to live through such difficult times, of people too scared to take a stand and the punishments that came to those who did. She learned of children being indoctrinated with hate in the local school and parents who struggled to fight against it.
   
   "Good Neighbors / Bad Times" is a valuable work of social history. It is so important to preserve the stories of those who lived through these tragic events. In the end, Schwartz decides that Benheim was special, that decency managed to prevail there despite the Nazi hate that infected the land. As Schwartz states, "decency is often such a solitary act; it's evil that draws a noisy crowd." "Good Neighbors / bad Times" is recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about Jewish / Christian relationships during the World War II era. It would also make a wonderful text for a college course on the topic.



2. As those who lived through the Holocaust are rapidly disappearing, this sensitive and open-minded work captures the anguish and inner conflicts of Jews and Gentiles living in a small German village during the Nazi period.
   Knowing a number of the people Mimi Schwartz depicts, I can enthusiastically attest to her accurate portrayals.
   For those of us born after this time, but still bearing some of its burden, there are important questions: What was the flavor of 400 years of mutual tolerance? How did this harmony disappear? What can we understand about ourselves in reflecting on the daily moral challenges of life lived under an evil regime?
   There are no easy answers here, but a moving and true story.



3. "Before Hitler, everyone got along," according to the author of "Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village". This a true story of decency and compassion in a small German village and how its generosity stood in the face of an empire of Nazi hatred. Author Mimi Schwartz recalls tales from her father and goes on a journey that spanned over three continents and a dozen years to get the more complete story of her father's village and learns interesting details about it all from every interview and discussion. "Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village" is highly recommended for Holocaust studies shelves and for anyone seeking a more upbeat account of 1930s Germany.



4. In Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Mimi Schwartz writes a highly nuanced account of the Holocaust and how it affected the small German town where her father was born and which he remembered fondly until his death in the 1970s. While other reviewers have suggested this memoir for a Holocaust shelf or course, I recommend it to Christians seeking to understand how religious prejudice can blind us to the humanity of those who worship differently.
   
   Schwartz writes engagingly of growing up in a neighborhood of mostly Jews and longing to break out. She did this by first attending the University of Michigan and later (after marrying her Jewish boyfriend) assimilating into the predominantly Christian town of Princeton, NJ. Schwartz seems to have identified more with her mother, a city girl, than her father, who was born into a cattle trading family and left the village referred to here as Benheim to fight in World War I. As a soldier, he saw how Jews were treated in Russia and when, in 1933, he attended a rally at which thousands of enthusiastic Germans saluted Adolph Hitler, he knew to leave.
   
   While Arthur Loewengart and his brothers came to the United States, other villagers emigrated to Palestine, which was still under British rule. In the end, all but 89 of the village's Jews escaped. They were deported to camps where only two survived. Throughout her childhood, Arthur told Mimi that people in Benheim were different, kinder and more principled than the typical Nazi. After he died, she wondered if what he said was true. She began to connect the dots between survivors in New York and Israel and the German village where no Jews live today.
   
   Her journey both physical and metaphysical is told here. It is a story of small kindnesses (and cruelties) in the midst of unimaginable larger horrors, and how truth is deeply textured but well worth knowing.



5. Since I was born in 1945, World War II and the Holocaust had always been history to me. So when I spent five years working in Germany, I constantly wondered about the older people I met--"How did you respond to Hitler's regime? What do you feel now?" Even with Germans of my own generation, the topic was one I felt uncomfortable raising.
   I have found Mimi Schwartz's book fascinating because she acknowledges very human conflicted feelings, the need for Gentile Germans to feel they did the best they could to help their neighbors, the deep-seated fear of a Jewish survivor who wants to believe people are basically good, the almost militant fervor of a young German Gentile seeking to discover the darkness of his parents' past. And Schwartz raises timely questions about conflicts between Christians, Jews, and Muslims that trouble this century.
   Beyond the topic, I am intrigued with issues of writing memoir which Schwartz's book raises. How much should an author reveal about personal feelings? How does the writer reconcile conflicting memories? Can a writer allow herself to become vulnerable? To be too naive?
   I have hardly been able to put this book down since finding it at the library, and now I want a copy for myself to highlight and reread.

5 comments about The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews--A Woman Discovers Her Spiritual Heritage.

1. I found this book at my Jewish boyfriend's mother's house. She checked it out of the library as part of a Sephardic reading group. I started skimming through it and couldn't put it down, had to buy my own copy here on Amazon! Trudi Alexy and her family fled Czechoslovakia to escape the Germans and were chased through France and finally Spain before they felt safe. Spain, in spite of its history of ultra-conservative Catholicism, Inquisition, expulsion of the Jews, etc., was one of the few safe havens for Jews fleeing the Germans during WWII. I was surpised to find this out, since Franco was a part of the Axis powers, a rigid ultra-Catholic, a dictator, and a Fascist. But I guess he wasn't an anti-Semite, because he basically looked the other way when Jews began pouring into Spain illegally to escape being killed in the concentration camps of Occupied Europe, especially Vichy-controlled France, which practically did all they could to deliver the Jews over to the Germans, nasty anti-Semites that the French are. In contrast, Spain not only looked the other way when Jews came pouring over the border, in many cases Spanish diplomats would demand that arrested Jews in other countries be released to them as Spanish citizens, even in cases where the Jews were Ashkenaz, not even Sephardic! The Spanish Red Cross also made a great effort to get food, clothing and letters shipped to Jews in concentration camps in the rest of Europe, even as the International Red Cross did absolutely nothing to help. There are horrific stories from the survivors themselves, tales of fleeing the Nazis with only the clothes on their backs, of escaping concentration camps and struggling over the Pyrenees in mid-winter without even a proper coat. Tales of getting to Spain and turning themselves in to the police to find warm beds, food and even money provided for them by kind hearted Spaniards from all walks of life. Then there are stories from the people who smuggled them into Spain, the risks they took to save thousands upon thousands of people from certain death. And tales of the Secret Jews, or Marranos, or Crypto-Jews, who were forced to convert during the Inquisition, or who were expelled from Spain, and the constant threats that they faced. Many of them continued practicing their Jewish rituals in absolute secrecy, in most cases not even letting their children know that they were of Jewish blood until age 12, when they were less likely to slip and give the secret away to outsiders. Many Crypto-Jews live in Mexico and New Mexico today, their ancestors having arrived in the 1500's after the expulsion from Spain. The Inquisition follwed them to the New World, however, so they continued practicing the most minimal Jewish traditions, such as ritual prayer, in absolute secrecy. Trudi interviewed some people who only identified as Catholics, but had listened to an NPR show on the Crypto-Jews and identified ancient and distorted Jewish traditions that their own family practiced! These people were utterly shocked to find out that they were of Jewish ancestry. I don't personally see the big deal, but I guess if you're a major Christian, then you might think it's a bad thing. In most cases though, the families were not only aware of their Jewish ancestry, but fostered it in secret while living a public life of Catholicism. They would intermarry only amongst one another and kept to fairly tight-knit communities. I liked the stories of the people who escaped to Spain during WWII best, since they were so full of heroism and drama, but really the whole book was fascinating.



2. Once you read this book,the title makes sense. The author was a holocust survivor and was so grateful and impressed with Spain that she felt compelled to go back to see if others felt the same. Lot's of interviews in this book regarding that perticular era. What a twist for Spain!

   Excellent Read!




3. This is a good book, all the stories gathered and told really paint the picture of what people went through trying to escape the Holocust, and how Spain really did help them.



4. Highly-readable account of Spain's indirect role during the Holocaust as many Jews sought escape to the West through Spain. There are interesting portraits of both the rescued and rescuers, with additional chapters on modern Spanish Jews and Marranos or Crypto-Jews of Spanish descent. Alexy did a great service bringing these stories to our attention as very few have thought of Jews in Spain beyond the Inquisition.



5. Alexy was a child in Prague, in 1939. When World War II broke out, her father suddenly announced that the family was leaving, and that they would be baptized as Catholics. Up to that point, the author had not even known that her family was Jewish. From Prague, they fled to France, and then to Spain.
   
   Years later, after she was living in America, she learned that many Jews had fled to Spain during the Holocaust, but that most had not converted or hidden their Jewishness.
   
   As she began to trace her roots, she discovered the irony of Jews seeking protection in a country that, centuries before, and persecuted and expelled them.
   
   There are a couple of books here, fighting for supremacy!
   
   The first book is about how and why Spain opened its borders to Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
   
   "The irrefutable fact remains that, although the presence of Jews placed the whole country at risk of being drawn into another ar or occupied by Hitler's forces, Fascist Spain, both officially and unofficially, accepted thousands of foreign Ashkenazic Jews within its borders and allowed them to remain until they were able to secure residence elsewhere."
   
   Why? The question is probably unanswerable, though Alexy tries her best. Guilt over the expulsions of 1492? Maybe, but this does not account for the welcome to Ashkenazic, as well as Sephardic, Jews. Maybe Franco had Jewish ancestors? There's no proof of that. A political decision in case the Allies won? Perhaps, but in a country devastated economically by the Civil War, Spain gave much. One interesting suggestion is that because of the expulsion, and the concomitant absence of a Jewish population, Spain did not develop the kind of anti-Semitic attitudes seen in other European countries.
   
   Whatever the reason, the fact remains that thousands owe their lives to an official blind eye, and open Spanish arms.
   
   Alexy begins by explaining her quest, her need to understand her own family history that sent her to Spain, and to the New York archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ("the Joint"), the organization that was responsible for helping stateless Jewish refugees in Spain. She interviews several people who found, or whose parents found, a haven across the Pyrenees, and in the section called "The Rescuers" she writes of those, Jews and non-Jews, who provided the means to safety. People such as Lisa Fittko, who acted as a guide, and Renée Reichmann, who from Tangier arranged material support, and Spanish diplomats who told the Gestapo, "these are our Jews" and taught the children a few words of Spanish in case they should be challenged.
   
   The next two parts seemed to me as though they should be in a different book. "The Reformers" writes of present-day liberalization of Spanish laws and attitudes about non-Catholics (not merely Jews). It's interesting but although it touches on some theories as to why Spain helped, it is really more focused on the present and seems out of place.
   
   The same is true of the final section, about contemporary Marranos and other "secret Jews". This is a huge topic about which a whole book could, and should (and probably has, I'll have to look) be written. In fact, the subtitle of this book suggests that that's what it's about. But it isn't.
   
   Either this book should have been much longer, and made into a history of Spain and the Jews (and that would be a seriously long book!), or it should have been shorter, and the last two parts saved to become another book or books.
   
   But those are quibbles. This is a fascinating, and very personal, discussion of an unexpected and little-known part of the Holocaust.

1 comments about Marc Chagall: The Lost Jewish World.

1. This wonderful and richly illustrated book is an in-depth study of the Jewish roots of Chagall's art. Divided into nine chapters, it explains the cultural context in which Chagall's paintings were created, the outside influences (Leon Bakst, Picasso...), the themes (death, life, wedding, pregnancy...), the early masterpieces of the 1910's and 1920's, the influence of Yiddish culture and the schtetl (the lost Jewish world...), of the theater, in a nutshell what made Chagall one of the greatest artists of the first half of the XXth century (in this respect, one should forget about his later years, the 1960's and 70's, which the book barely studies and when he himself admitted to becoming repetitive if not merely commercial). An indispensable addition to the literature on the artist.

3 comments about Flory: A Miraculous Story of Survival.

1. Flory A. Van Beek has written this memoir of the time she spent hidden from the Nazis. It is inspiring to read of her survival during World War II. I also am amazed by all the help various people gave her even though they were risking their own lives by helping her. After reading the book I saw on the internet that there may or may not be a television mini-series based on the book. I do so hope someone will make sure this story is told as widely as possible. A TV mini-series would be one way to do it. There are others. I just would like to see it done and the sooner the better while the author is still alive. Brenda Foust.



2. This is a gripping true life memoir of a young Dutch girl named Flory and her life in German occupied-Netherlands. I listened to the unabridged audio edition of this novel, and it was very compelling. I found Flory to be a remarkably resilient and likeable woman. Her observations were insightful and pertinent. The Dutch Christians who hid her and tended her and her family through the war were quite brave.
   
   The only thing missing was more about the relationship between Flory and her husband. I admit I am curious how their relationship fared under such harsh circumstances, especially after such a quick marriage.. I understand why the author did not include details, but I admit, that I am curious a bit about their situation, especially since they both seemed so young and married under duress.
   
   I would recommend this to persons who are interested in educating themselves about wartime events and life in occupied Europe.



3. In 1939 as Nazi forces became a reality, the Jewish population through Europe faced options to flee and lose all or go into hiding. The author, a Holocaust survivor, faced this choice and her story follows her dark journey as she relates her teen years spent in terror when the Nazis invaded her neutral homeland of Holland. Any library strong in first-person Holocaust memoirs needs this.

5 comments about Irene Nemirovsky: Her Life And Works.

1. This short biography helps the reader get a better picture of Irene Nemirovsky's background and hardships as a as a Jewish author living in France both leading up to and during the occupation before her deportation. I highly recommend reading it after reading "Suite Francaise." Her tragic and untimely death keeps us from being able to see how the rest of her serial novel (Suite Francaise) and writing would have unfolded had she survived.



2. This great work brings to light the controversy of integration. Irene, sacrificing her Russian Jewish origins to embark on a literary career in France finds acceptance, not because of who she was but because of what she could produce. Her intrinsic value as a human being is recognized by a few but ignored by the masses as she finds her end at Auschwitz. Her works seem to be a foreshadow of her life. Am I Jewish, am I Russian, am I French, am I a woman of letters, am I a friend, am I a mother, am I a wife...or am I human debris? Tragically this book is non-fiction! A great read as a follow up to Suite Francaise, which is written by Irene.



3. This biography is an academic, critical study of the life and writings of Irene Nemirovsky. It is well researched. As a critical study it is directed to other professionals in literature and to their graduate students.



4. Having read the majority of Nemirovsky's works in French, I was eager to read this book. What a disappointment! Mr. Weiss cannot make up his mind whether he is writing literary criticism or biography. His research is thin and the conclusions he draws (or attempts to draw) from the works themselves and various bits of research are extremely dubious. Mr. Weiss has jumped on the bandwagon of the success of 'Suite francaise' to sell his book. Do read Irene Nemirovsky's works and make up your mind youself about her work; I highly recommend them. As for a biography, save your money and wait for the really good biography of Nemirovsky that has just come out in French, which should be available in English in about a year.



5. The author has successfully been able to glean most of the existing information of Nemirovsky and put her and her works in a meaningful order in the light of France
   in 1930-1942....helping the reader to get the full impact of her works, especially Suite Francaise

5 comments about The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank.

1. This is one of the best books I have ever read. A must read for all ages. These ladies are some of the most courageous people in the world. They perserved knowing that their demise could be any day. But living was too important to them so they dug deep within themselves to keep their spirit alive and they succeeded. Hooray for them!!! Miep Gies is also a very courageous person. She is right up there with these ladies. "Anne Frank Remembered" by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold is also a wonderful book. If you are looking for excellent reading and a time frame for the life of Anne Frank, then by all means read this book. I don't know if I could handle the pressures that these ladies went through to live, and I hope that I never have to endure their suffering, but if I do, I will take these 7 women with me and draw on their strengths and spirit to keep me alive.



2. "The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" by Willy Lindwer was originally a documentary. The author and filmmaker's encounter with the women who knew Anne Frank, after her family was captured, left him with more material than could ever be told in a documentary. It is collected here in this powerful and necessary testament to the legacy of Anne Frank.
   
   The book begins with a slight overview of Anne Frank's life. It then gives way to the stories of six women who knew her - some before her deportation to the camps, and all of them during her final days at Bergen-Belsen. The collection begins with the reminiscences of Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Goslar, Anne's childhood friend (who she wrote about in her diary), who later threw her Red Cross packages across the barbed-wire fence of the camp when they miraculously encountered one another again. The stories the women have to tell are similar - their treatment in the camp, the way they met Anne and Margot - and all of them were inexplicably touched by her life. Some felt an overwhelming sense of failure at not being able to do more to help these poor sisters, but there was little they could do, especially when both were fighting typhus and had little will, or strength, to survive. At least one even made comment that had Anne known her father was still alive, she might have fought a little harder to see her beloved Pip once more. Anne was the 'apple of her father's eye' and his life after the liberation of Auschwitz was to let her words bear testimony for her.
   
   These women all have powerful and miraculous stories to tell. The fact that they survived the death camp is a miracle in itself. One of the women's husband survived Auschwitz with Otto Frank and many of them had the privilege of meeting him after the war; and one had the sad 'honor' of confirming Anne and Margot's deaths. Perhaps the story of Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder is the most compelling for her witness to not only the girls' final days, but to their deaths as well. Both the Frank girls died of
   typhus a few short weeks before the liberation of the camps. "The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" is a crucial examination of an amazing life cut short by unimaginable cruelty, and to the miracle of those who survived to tell it in their own words.



3. Anne Frank's name is one of the most known names in the world. She stuned the world with her diary. But there were still so many unanswered questions about what happend after they were betrayed? Everyone knew that she died at a consintration camp, but what did she die of and so many other questions ligered in the minds of the millions of people who have read her diary. Finally Willy Lindwer took up the challenge of finding out what happend in the last 7 monthes of her life. I recomend this book to anyone and everyone, but I recomend reading her diary first. This book picks up where her diary left off and continues to the day that she died.This book is told by the women who knew Anne Frank and her family at the concentration camp and not only tell what they know happend to her, but their story as well. It is truly and amazing book and a must read!



4. "The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" is only periphally a book about Anne - but it is pointedly a book about Anne's experience in those last months of her life. With the exception of her close friend Hannah Goslar, who talks about her at length, Anne is mentioned only in passing by the other interviewees, all of whom were acquainted with her. But their individual stories of what they endured in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen is also her story, and illuminates her time in the camps as she herself would have - but never got the chance to. A good addition to a library of Anne Frank material, or an excellent compendium of personal experiences during the Holocaust, whichever way is more valuable to the reader.



5. "How can I find tranquility?
   Years later, the tumult of the men resounds,
   The swishing of their whips,
   Above the people being pushed along,
   And stamping of boots,
   Cries of anguish.
   I have seen so many go to a desperate death,
   Across a dirt path, on which their weakened feet
   Dragged them to the gate
   Smoke cannot speak,
   From the chimneys they slip out, formless above my head,
   And are taken by the wind,
   Robbed of their bones.
   Since then, despite my clothes, I am naked.
   And remain exposed to synonyms.
   Therefore it is not tranquil within,
   The whips are still lashing,
   And at the most unexpected times,
   The packing paper pictures come forth,
   Chilly, yellowed, gray from smoke,
   And stiff with death at night when I want to sleep."
   Ronnie Goldstein- van Cleef,
   
   This novel was an eye opener for me of the Holocaust and all that the Jewish people were made to bear. Death looked them all in the eye, and from day to day, no one knew if they would see another day. They were humiliated and dragged down, stripped of their self-esteem and their strength as never before in their lives. Husbands were separated from wives, and some children from their parents. Many got sick and died before reaching the gas chambers. Many looked already dead in skeletal form breathing their last breaths.
   I applaud the six women who gave interviews from this book. These women saw Anne Frank and her family and sought to help them any way they could. These were brave women, who endured the suffering of the death camps and came out alive. Hannah Elisabeth Pick-Gosslar, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, Rachel van Amerongen-Frankfoorder, Bloeme Evers-Emden, Lenie de Jong-van-Naarden, Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef, we thank you for sharing this horrible time of your life. It must have been very hard to relive, so thank you. Thank you so much for your courageousness.
   Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 07/03/07)

4 comments about Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943.

1. Etty began life with the same silly angst and shallow aspirations that we endure each day. Then came the war and her experience as a Jew in Holland. The transformation of this young intellectual to a woman of great depth takes the reader on a soul journey of such transcendence that one's paradigms are forever changed.

   Add to the story a great and musical quality of writing and a brilliant mind . You have Etty, my heroine, my mentor.




2. A young woman who is running out of time writes about her experiences as a prisoner of the Nazis in a concentration camp in World War II in 1940s Europe. She responds to the demands of society and of life as she finds it in both its pedestrian and hopeful forms, while also musing about what a distracted God might be doing up in heaven as so many innocent people perish at the hands of so many cowardly and sadistic oppressors. Ultimately she converts to Catholism and she dies in a concentration camp at the age of 29. Even with the crushing and depressing burden of a predatory society of captors constantly hovering over her, captors to whom she would soon sucuumb by her physical death, she wrote about life, social roles, her relationships with others and God prodigiously before her life was stolen from her in a dark place and a dark time by the human forces of evil. The strength she must have called upon to do this work while living in day to day oppresssion and unrelenting misery is stunning to imagine.



3. I read this book over twenty years ago and it remains one of the most inspirational books I've ever read. I leant it to a client who lost it so I must buy another. Thankfully it's still available.



4. This book is one of the most touching and inspiring books I ever read. This book will touch the heart of anyone - whether Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. and even an atheist!
   
   The battle of a soul in those dark days (the German Occupation in the Second War World) trying to keep sane, asking herself how not to loose hope and remain human, avoiding hate, in spite of all what is going around her. This is a journey of a Soul from focusing in herself changing to focus in the world around her.
   
   I bought the book also for 3 friends of mine as a New Year present!
   
   P.S.: Since my English is NOT my mother tong (I'm an Israeli), I'm apologizing in advance for spelling (and other mistakes). Thank you for understanding.