5 comments about The Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps.

1. A sodomy law had been on the German law books since 1871, a law known simply as Paragraph 175. Only a few people were ever sentenced under this obscure law until June of 1935 when, after the rise of Hitler and Nazism, the Nuremberg laws were enacted and the consequences of Paragraph 175 strengthened. Where once before, you had to be caught in the act of same sex relations, now simply receiving a letter or the spreading of idle gossip would have you sent to a concentration camp.

   "The Men with the Pink Triangle" is one anonymous man's account of the harshness and cruelty faced by gay men at the hands of the SS and the ruling Nazi party, as well as by the other prisoners -- criminals, politicals, emigrants -- who viewed "filthy queers" as lower than the rest of them. They were distinguished by the large, pink triangles sown onto their prison outfits, making them easy targets for taunts and punishments. Also, homosexuals labored through the worst of the work details and "volunteered" for medical experimentation, which usually resulted in their deaths.

   Some advantages also appeared for gay men. The "Capos" who were in charge of the prisoner barracks, often made lovers of some of the prisoners, giving them some protection and better rations and clothing. As is says in the book: "Homosexual behavior between two 'normal' men is considered an emergency outlet, while the same thing between two gay men, who both feel deeply for one another, is something 'filthy' and repulsive." The anonymous man used this to his advantage and survived the camps and the threat of being sent to the front lines.

   Ths is a moving and powerful story about survival and about the right to be who you are, during one of the darkest times in world history. Highly recommended.




2. Such a good book. It gives a different perspective on the Holocaust. It's a page turner...I couldn't put it down once I got past the first few pages. Everyone one should read!



3. The dirty closeted secret of the Nazi Holocaust is and was the persection of gays and the subsequent systematic effort to exterminate them. This book is an eye opening account of an actual gay survivor of this 20th Century atrocity. It is absolute MUST reading for anyone who wants to understand aspects of the Holocaust, or for any gay man or woman in America today. Eye opening and brutal, this book will provide the reader with a glimpse of history not often told.



4. This is a must read for everyone who wants to discover the whole truth abut the concentration camps that the devilish Nazis set up during WW2. It's also a must read for every gay man in the world because it documents an important chapter about how gay men were so ill-treated (starved, beaten, horribly tortured, dishonorably killed) during ww2 and afterwards. I'm just sorry that the author didin't identify himself, because if he was living today I would try to find him and thank him for telling his story. It also documents the horrible descrimination that the gays suffered after 1945 until the 70s and how differently they were treated than the jews. These had the holocaust horror recognised immediately after the war was over, but no such luck for the few gay men who survived the camps (mostly Sachsenhausen and Flossenburg). Don't miss this book if you're setting up any kind of document, museum, documentary about gay people in the 20th century. I'm so touched by the men who died in those camps, I just can't believe how much they suffered....I've been at Sachsenhausen 2 months ago, and they had a sign in memory of the gay people that have died there, but I didn't realize the horror in it's full scope. All this just makes hate more and more anyone who defends the nazis and that deny the holocaust. I hope the nazis who did these crimes burn and suffer in hell for all eternity for everything they did. But I think it won't be enough punishment.....



5. Written in the first person, this book describes in vivid detail the horror of day to day life in a Nazi concentration camp. It's one man's eyewitness account of the camps, the death and degradation he faced on a daily basis, and how he clung to his humanity ~ and his life ~ against such unbearable odds.
   
   Most telling ~ though not really very surprising, given the vast power differences between prisoners and their guards ~ was his recollection of camp politics. He managed to survive by taking advantage of a guard whose friendliness toward him turned into sexual interest.
   
   This book is not for the faint of heart. The scenes of horror that play out ~ the executions, the torture ~ are not graphic in their description, but the stark, terse language in which they're conveyed, married with the sense of hopelessness you read between the lines, speak more to the brutality of the Nazis than a thousand descriptive paragraphs ever could.
   
   But this was probably one of the best books I've read on the Holocaust. I wish it were required reading for every person, everywhere, as a testament of the human spirit in adversity and a warning to us all. Perhaps then we could begin to move past our differences to a more peaceful co-existance.

1 comments about A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile (The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series).

1. Poets seem to have a knack with memoir. There's alreadysomething very baring about much contemporary poetry that is similarto what many memorably brave and direct memoirs possess. There's also something even more immediate about translation. Works translatedinto English often have a stunning directness, which can owe itself tothe difficulty of effectively bringing the idioms and cadence ofanother language into our own. These tendencies, like any elements ofwriting, can be effective and they can also be overused. InMarjorieAgosin's A CROSS AND A STAR: MEMOIRS OF A JEWISH GIRL INCHILIE, they are both. Luckily, the effectiveness of the writing outweighs the repetitiveness of certain phrases and elements. The brevity of the book, 179 pages which include 30 pages of photographs, serves it well. Agosin is writing in the voice of her mother, so the book becomes a sort of autobiography by association, and as such the stories are simple and powerful. If the book had been any longer, the simplicity of its thematic basis, and the overly-direct style of the translated prose, would have begun working against it. As it is, the collection effectively evokes the beauty and wonder of Chile, the destructive power of hatred in the lives of one family, and the power of people who choose to help, rather than hurt, each other. The tales in the collection span decades, and many have survived only due to oral storytelling traditions by which Agosin's predecessors maintained their connections with each other even in the face of the overwhelming tragedies of the Holocaust. Most evocative are thestories dealing with specifics of lives torn apart by having to leaveeverything behind in order to avoid being taken to concentrationcamps; the details of these stories, the choices made by theseindividuals, are compelling. Agosin's accounts, too, of the mixture ofbeauty, fear, peace and isolation that came from living at thesouthern tip of the world amidst Nazis and natives is fascinating. Theonly places where the narrative falters is in the repetition ofaccounts of verbal abuse which the Agosin's mother endured. Thereare only so many times you can be told that she was called "dirtyJew" or "Christ killer" before those moments have lost their power amid the lush prose and captivating details. One of the most striking aspects of the memoir is the way in which it seems to flow back and forth between pure realism and a kind of "Magic Realism." This is in keeping with the events of the book, taking place at the bottom of the world, as well as the ways in which people can alter their perceptions of reality to deal with incredible adversity. Since the narrator is recalling childhood for the bulk of the book, simple desires are often stated with great grandeur, such as Agosin's mother's wish for the beauty and safety of a Catholic guardian angel. Much of the narrative's power comes from the unaffected wants and needs of a girl growing-up surrounded by a mixture of overwhelming hatred and beauty, societal spurning and familial love. It is a mixture that works well. This book is an effective, and highly readable collection of survival tales that sing of natural beauty and spiritual strength, of the wonder of children and the resolve of adults, and of the incredible value of memory and language.

5 comments about Playing for Time.

1. I read this book a number of years ago. It left an indelible mark. It is the story of women survivors in a concentration camp. They literally "played for time," with musical instruments. The movie "Life is Beautiful" brought this book to mind this week. That is why I looked it up. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about courage in the face of adversity. The remarkable will to survive demonstrated by the women portrayed in this book is inspiring and unforgettable.



2. Playing for Time, a grade-A book by Fania Fenelon, is a document not only about the Holocaust, but one that goes deeper: it shows how music brought redemption of spirit in the Hell of Hells. When Fania and her friend are brought to the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, she is recognized by a girl in the camp's orchestra as a Parisian caberet singer. She is accepted in to the orchestra, where she is forced to sing the opera Madame Butterfly for the SS. Fania does not let the hardships of the camp take over her spirit, though. She uses music as a weapon, and, as an orchestrator as well as singer for the group, she orchestrates marches by Jews and anti-Nazis right under the noses of her captors, who never catch on. Fania's love of music allows her to survive Auschwitz, and when she is sent with the rest of the "Orchestra Girls" to Bergen-Belsen near the end of the war, her passion for life pulls her through a severe case of typhus. One day she learns that the Nazis are going to shoot the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen at 3:00 that afternoon. The English arrive at the camp at 11:00 that same morning. Fania just barely survived the war, and afterwards she returned to Paris and started again as a caberet singer. She died of cancer in her hometown in 1983. Playing for Time teaches us many things. It teaches us that the human spirit cannot be killed. It teaches us that good always wins over evil. And it teaches us that if you have a love, stick to it. One day it might just save your life.



3. This is an absolutely incredible book. An already powerful story it is taken to a new level by the constant reminder that this is first hand experience.

   It is perfect for nearly anyone, the musician will relate to the music, the historian to the accuracy and the avid reader will simply latch on and be unable to let go.

   It brought tears to my eyes.




4. The story has been known for many years, but this book puts in focus, by a survivor, the insanity of a lesser known action then the case at Auschwitz. A well told personal experience by someone willing to put down for history something that needed to be said. No matter how many years I've studied, and the many survivors I've known who have shared fragments, this clear telling in print for generations to come is a treasure.



5. This is the story of a French singer who spent 2± years in a Nazi concentration camp. Saved because of her musical abilities, FF spent her internment as a member of an all-women's orchestra which played for the camp's leaders. It is a strange tale, not especially well or clearly written--essentailly stuff for a holocaust junkey. Compared to Martin Goldsmith's The Unestinquishable Symphony, this book is definitely second tier.

5 comments about Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust.

1. This book will be enjoyed by all who read it for it is a story of survival from the ashes of the Holocaust. This book is also an excellent book club selection that will spark much thought and conversation.



2. My father's story parallels Joseph Berger's in eerie ways...they were both at the Schlactensee DP Camp and the Landsberg-Am-Lech DP camp...Berger's mother's story of her youth could be my grandmother's, from an unpleasant step-mother to the flight East to Russia. My father was born during my grandparents' refuge in the USSR, and crossed illegally with his family into Poland after the war ended. I have always been close to my grandparents, but this book brought clarity and insight into topics they don't generally discuss...the duality that immigrant survivors (the displaced persons) felt between their new lives in America and the tragedy and loss left in Europe. When I look at my grandparents' happy faces at family occasions---graduations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties---I wonder if the events make them remember times similar back in Lithuania. Berger's story, beautifully written and researched, is a must-read.



3. Joseph Berger has written a story that needed to be told, but he has included too much extraneous material about his own life. Much of what he tells reveals what it was like growing up as the child of a refugee, but who cares whether or not he dated in high school?

   The best parts of this book were those about his mother's life and about how she managed in the United States as a refugee. Berger's writing is more journalism than story telling. He's got all the facts, but none of his descriptions flare above the mundane. His mother's reminisences are far more artistic, and reveal more than the words on the page.




4. New York Times journalist Joseph Berger has created a masterful, evocative and moving account of the ever-present duality of his life: his identity as an acculturated American child of Holocaust survivors. This duality gives his account of his mother's life and his own evolution from a bewildered refugee child into an accomplished American a poignancy and power. "Displaced Persons" will stand as an important contribution, not only to our understanding of the long-term implications of being a survivor of the Holocaust, but of the unique burdens, pressures and responsibilities children of survivors inherit from their parents.

   Berger is acutely aware of "the unmentioned sorrow that was the subtext to everything [his] parents said or did." Haunted by memories, devastated by enormous loss, handicapped by their arrival in America in their twenties and driven to provide security for their families, Holocaust survivors often perceive their children as replacements of beloved family members who perished and as repositories of hopes and dreams denied them. Worried about their children's safety, happiness and future, Berger muses about his parents' perspective, "What could I say about the dread and suspicion with which they encountered a world that had proven maliciously fickle?"

   As the author emerges from childhood, he begins to chafe from his mother's protective, controlling instincts and desires to assert himself as his own man. Berger's wrenching analysis of his status becomes the overarching theme of his memoir. "I saw myself now an an American...I would no more be the timid refugee boy with one leg planted in the fearful shtetls of Poland, with a mother ever vigilant that no more perils come to the remnants of her kin." It is this unspoken loving tension between Joseph and his mother, Rachel, that gives "Persons" its dynamism.

   Alternating between two narratives, one his own and the other the gripping account of his mother's survival, Berger deftly intermingles past and present. Aware of his distinct heritage, the young Berger recognizes others in his impoverished Manhattan neighborhood who share his background. "We knew one another, knew in our young bellies that our parents were the same dazed and damaged lot, had the same refugee awkwardness, the same whiff about them of marrow bones and carp." Now attempting to wrest coherence in America, Holocaust survivors tend to frustrate Berger with their problem solving techniques. Berger prefers the American way of standing up directly; survivors "were always scraping by on a willingness to do what was necessary to survive, even if that meant surrendering pride or principle."

   Raw emotion floods "Displaced Persons." Rachel's symbolic mourning of a dead child in Warsaw at the onset of World War II serves to remind us that she has no "mental picture" of the actual murder of her family. Unspoken grief undulates throughout the memoir. Berger's stoic father Marcus scarcely articulates his unfathomable sense of loss; nearly half a century passes before he can utter the names of his sisters. Guilt ebbs and flows in Rachel's description of her survival. Anguished over refusing to bring non-kosher food to her hungry brother during World War II, she has never forgiven heself, calling it "the worst thing I ever did in my life."

   Yet life surges and humor emerges in Berger's descriptions of growing up in New York City in the 1950s and 60s. With both parents working at dreary, tiring jobs, the author experiences a freedom of movement he admits he would never conceive of allowing his own daughter today. His descriptions of his initial exploration of Manhattan reveal the sheer joy of discovery, the incredible exuberance of youthful hopes and the awesome sense of possibilities Berger recognizes in his new home. Berger's frantic disposal of an illicit girlie magazine carries universal appeal; he becomes an American everyboy. His struggles with self-confidence, academic competition and sexual frustrations are those of not only his generation, but of those before and after.

   Written with conviction and compassion, "Displaced Persons" is that kind of memoir that not only describes, but instructs. Through the author's descriptions of his resolute, stubborn and proud mother, survivors attain an identity beyond that of suffering and loss. His own life's story shapes our understanding of the purpose of our national experience and the sacredness of an American identity. Treating both the Holocuast in its past brutality and its implications for the second-generation children of survivors, the memoir blends sorrow and joy, heartache and hope, pain and redemption.




5. i loved this book. i felt as though i was right there with him and his family through every phase of their lives. this book had everything going for it, sadness, chaos, happiness, tragedy. it was so personal and you just felt as though the author let you in to share with him.

5 comments about Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood.

1. It is in Fragments now, a total hoax.

   A Holocaust survivor memoir that has received prestigious literary awards and lavish praise has been exposed as a hoax.

   In Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Binjamin Wilkomirski describes his ordeal as an infant in the Jewish ghetto of Riga (Latvia), where his earliest memory is of seeing his father being killed. Wilkomirski also tells how he survived the terrible rigors of wartime internment, at the age of three or four, in the German-run concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.

   First published in German in 1995, Fragments has been translated into twelve languages. In Switzerland, the country where Wilkomirski lives, the book has been a major best-seller. Two documentary films and numerous personal appearances by the author in schools throughout the country have helped promote the memoir.

   The American edition was published by Schocken, an imprint of Random House, which heavily promoted the book with teachers' study guides and other supplementary materials.

   Jewish groups and major American newspapers have warmly praised Fragments. The New York Times called it "stunning," and the Los Angeles Times lauded it as a "classic first-hand account of the Holocaust." It received the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Autobiography and Memoir, while in Britain it was awarded the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize, and in France the Prix Memoire de la Shoah.

   The US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC -- a federal government agency -- was so impressed that it sent Wilkomirski on a six-city United States fund-raising tour last fall.

   This past summer, though, compelling evidence came to light exposing Wilkomirski's memoir as an literary hoax.

   Although he claims to have been born in Latvia in 1939, and to have arrived in Switzerland in 1947 or 1948, Swiss legal records show that he was actually born in Switzerland in February 1941, the son of an unwed woman, Yvette Grosjean. The infant was then adopted and raised by the Doessekkers, a middle-class Zurich couple. Jewish author Daniel Ganzfried, writing in the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, also reports that he has found a 1946 photo of the young Bruno Doessekker (Wilkomirski) in the garden of his adoptive parents.

   Comparisons have been drawn between Wilkomirski's Fragments and The Painted Bird, the supposedly autobiographical "Holocaust memoir" by prominent literary figure Jerzy Kosinksi that turned out to be fraudulent.

   Reaction by Jewish Holocaust scholars to the new revelations has been instructive, because they seem more concerned about propagandistic impact than about historical truth. Their primary regret seems merely to be that the fraud has been detected, not that it was perpetrated.

   In an essay published in a major Canadian newspaper (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 18, 1998), Jewish writer Judith Shulevitz arrogantly argued that it doesn't really matter much if Fragments is authentic. Her main misgiving, apparently, is that the deceit was not more adroit: "I can't help wishing Wilkomirksi-Doesseker [sic] had been more subtle in his efforts at deception, and produced the magnificent fraud world literature deserves."

   Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University (Worcester, Mass.), and co-author of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (Yale Univ. Press, 1996), agrees that Fragments now appears to be fraudulent. At the same time, though, she expressed sympathy for Wilkomirski, saying that when she met him he appeared "to be a deeply scarred man." Amazingly, Dwork does not blame him for the imposture, "because she believes in his identity." Instead, she takes the publishers to task for having "exploited" Wilkomirski. (New York Times, Nov. 3, 1998).

   Deborah Lipstadt, author of the anti-revisionist polemic Denying the Holocaust, has assigned Fragments in her Emory University class on Holocaust memoirs. When confronted with evidence that it is a fraud, she commented that the new revelations "might complicate matters somewhat, but [the work] is still powerful."

   Daniel Ganzfried reports that Jews have complained to him that even if Fragments is a fraud, his exposé is dangerously aiding "those who deny the Holocaust."

   American Jewish writer Howard Weiss makes a similar point in an essay published in the Chicago Jewish Star (Oct. 9-29, 1998):

   Presenting a fictional account of the Holocaust as factual only provides ammunition to those who already deny that the horrors of Nazism and the death camps ever even happened. If one account is untrue, the deniers' reasoning goes, how can we be sure any survivors accounts are true ... Perhaps no one was ready to question the authenticity of the [Wilkomirski] account because just about anything concerning the Holocaust becomes sacrosanct.

   Wilkomirski himself has responded to the new revelations by going into hiding, although he did issue a defiant statement describing the climate of discussion about his memoir as a "poisonous" atmosphere of "totalitarian judgment and criticism."




2. When I read this book several years ago, I did not understand how anyone could have believed it. Having known several true Holocaust survivors, and heard their stories, I certainly didn't.
   
   Now, there have now been several clear and thorough exposes of the fraud perpetrated by Bruno Grosjean Dossekker, who falsely claimed here to be one Binjamin Wilkomirski, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Stefan Maechler, The New Yorker, 60 Minutes and several other publications prove beyond any doubt that Wilkomirski is no such person and that Fragments is a fiction.
   
   Every possible lead has now been followed; each detail in Dossekker's narration of "events" has been compared with historical records from such leading Holocaust scholars as Raul Hilberg and Lawrence Langer, accounts of other child survivors, interviews with members of the Dossekker and Grosjean families and more.
   
   The strongest evidence, unearthed by Stephan Maechler, is the fact that in 1981, Dossekker/Wilkomirski contested the will of Yvonne Grosjean, whom, in a letter to officials in Bern Switzerland, he called "my birth mother." Dossekker/Wilkomirski received a third of her estate.
   
   Other evidence includes Dossekker/Wilkomirski's use of Laura Grabowski to "corroborate" his story. Grabowski claims to have known him in a children's home in Krakow. In fact, Grabowski is an American citizen of Christian faith who has since her youth fabricated stories about her victimhood, the most well-publicized being a book called Satan's Underground.
   
   The Social Security number of said Lauren Stratford is the same as that of Grabowski, who subsequently used it to make a false survivor's claim. Furthermore, Satan's Underground and this volume contain startling similarities.
   
   --Alyssa A. Lappen



3. Just follow the money trail, the political bantering and incessant self-victimization (which always seems to lead into getting paid one way or another) and you'll see why the most powerful of the jewish lobby (yeah, I'm not afraid to say it) will still ENDORSE IT after it has been proven to be a complete fabrication.
   
   And they wonder why the "extremists" have so much credibility even before people look at all the facts. I've read this book and got a great laugh out of the rediculous claims, and the writings of a man obviously an older version of someone whom would be on the Jerry Springer show today if faced with a different self-victimization issue.
   
   I was already well informed this book was a fabrication in advance, so I can't say "I'm smarter than you all whom were fooled"...heck, even Elie "Weasel" fooled me the first two times around. Looks like his credibility is crap as well. I'mglad I have relatives that were on both sides of WW2; as camp munitions auditor, fitness/activity trainer (A Sergeant's job! He was denied citizenship in US but later came from Canada in about '80), a Luftwaffe infantryman whom both stayed at the conc camps, and himself taken POW when wounded in Belgium (yes many Luft Inf exist so stop emailing me, you don't know history) and a US liberator of Buchenwald...I'm glad REALITY doesnt match the whining stories of crybaby rich jews exiled after the war...so many millions of survivors all rubber-stamping eachothers stories about human soap and lampshades, all proven false by MAINSTREAM science. Like I said, follow the money trail...



4. After some investigative reporting by the media, it was discovered that this alleged "true story" of a Holocaust survivor was anything but. The facts? Binjamin Wilkomirski is actually Swiss-born Bruno Grosjean Doessekker, and his experience was about as real as that of the supposed "fellow survivor" who corroborated his story, Laura Grabowski.
   
   How did Grabowski play an indirect role in unmasking the author? She claimed to be an orphan who suffered torture at the hands of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and was later adopted by an American couple, only to have these stories be exposed as equally untrue (her childhood photos show a happy, healthy American girl w/not even hints of the emaciated sate commonly associated w/those who spent time in concentration camps). Additionally, she was revealed to actually be Lauren Stratford, author of the equally fictitious-but-presented-as-a-true-story "Satan's Underground", which detailed her alleged involvement in Satanism and the sexual abuse she endured from the time she was a young girl (something she'd also had a history of lying about since her late teens); as it turns out, "Grabowski" was actually the surname of her maternal grandparents.
   
   Don't the Wilkomirskis and Grabowskis of this world realize that their exploitation of one of the most despicable events in history is not only self-indulgent and unbelievably selfish, but giving credibility to those misguided Holocaust-denying racist groups? Such lies will allow these scumbags to convince the lesser-informed folk out there that the attempted extermination of an entire race was also nothing but lies, which I'm sure never occured to these self-indulgent storytellers as they proceeded to betray countless REAL survivors, who have already suffered enough as it is.



5. I read the book and believed it.NOW IT TURNS OUT TO BE FICTION!!!!
   MORE AMMUNITION FOR THE HOLOCAUST DENIERS.
   IF AMAZON IS TO SELL...PLACE IT IN FICTION PLEASE...!!!!

5 comments about Edith Stein: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

1. Maria Scaperlanda's book on Edith Stein provides those unfamilar with this fascinating, modern Saint with a great introduction to her life and thought. The reader will be able to follow Edith Stein on her passionate life journey, sustained by her desire to find truth, first pursued in philosophy and finally completed in her embrace of Catholicism and life as a contemplative, Carmelite religious. Although there are various books about Edith Stein on the market, Maria Scaperlanda's work is the best work to provide the reader with an introduction to Edith Stein and guide the reader on to further works on the Saint with an excellent bibliography. Edith Stein's life and work should be studied by all those who seek meaning and truth (not only Catholics), especially in our current post-modern, relativistic culture that so vehemently denies absolute truth. This book is also an excellent choice as spiritual reading for Christians desiring to study the life of a contemporary Saint.



2. I really like how this author has woven a story out of the several strands - of Edith's own writings - of others who have written about her - of the history of the Jews in Germany - and of the life and times of Adolf Hitler as it affected Edith's life and that of millions of Jews and Christians. The author has braided together some wonderful connections that set Edith's life in the context of her times and of our times. I found special joy in these connections because I have read almost all of the sources - primary and secondary - separately - and it is good to see them woven together with spiritual meanings. This book now holds a place of prominece on my Edith Stein shelf of books.



3. This is story of a simple and devoted Carmelite nun. It is a wonderful story that not only gives biographical information it also incorporates a lot of Edith Stein's (Saint Teresa Benedicta a Cruce (Latin)personal philosophy and her feelings on femininism in society. It also shares her exceptional faith and devotion to God, even in the face of death. The book tells of her life, her entry into the Carmelite cloister and then her death in the Nazi camp, Auschwitz, Poland. It is a truly inspiraional and beautifully written book of one woman's courage and devotion.



4. This book is a wonderful introduction to the life of Catholic and Jewish martyr, philosopher, professor, nun, feminist, and saint who died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Scaperlanda does a great job of introducing the reader to her philosophy, personality, background, and amazing faith. If you enjoy this book, I reccomend "Knowledge and Faith" and "Life in a Jewish Family", both by Edith Stein.



5. This is an easy to read beginners biography on Edith Stein: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. It tells her life story and how she freely offered herself for the conversion of others. She grew up Jewish and became Catholic after searching for the truth, and then finally coming across the truth, when she read St. Teresa of Avila's Autobiography. You will truly come to know Edith Stein and feel close to her after reading this book.

5 comments about Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir.

1. Ms. Faderman has always been an outstanding scholar, giving the academic and Lesbian worlds her well researched, and highly informative books about Lesbians and Lesbianism. She has also written other scholarly works that are highly recommended, if not a little heavy for most readers. In her latest venture, her memoir " Naked in the Promise Land", Ms. Faderman shows her readers another side of her makeup, her personal side. The Memoir is as interesting for what it reveled about Ms. Faderman's past life as well as what has been carefully left out. Readers may well have to wait for a bioghapher to tell the complete story of Lillian Faderman's life for it appears that she is willing to go only so far in its telling.
   What is also a point to note is the muse that Ms. Faderman has chosen to use. It defiantly is not the carefully structured formal English she used for her academic books, nor should it be. However, as a memoir it reads more like an Ann Bannon or Clair Morgan novel, and this, perhaps, is part of its charm as well as its draw.
   Finally, in the telling of part of her life story the reader is made aware that Ms. Faderman is a consummate actress. After all she studied hard to learn the techiques. As such, one has to wonder if what she has presented to the world after her "Sunset Strip" life, is nothing more than another act in one more carefully constructed costume.



2. By far, Lillian's best yet. Her previous writings were way too heady for me, but this one held my attention. For those looking for the juicy tidbits of Faderman's personal life, this book pretty much hits the spot. I am looking forward to the sequel -- this woman has much more to tell.



3. I wonder if other men love this book like I do. I loaned this book to someone then forgot whom I loaned it to. Doesn't matter. I've thought about this story a thousand times.
   
   I love my own mother deeply, tenderly, but if I could have chosen my own mother, notwithstanding some very tempting candidates out there, Lillian Faderman would have been numero uno. I'll say it. I'm a softie for strong character; people who have been dragged through the muck and not only survived, but emerged from the pure hell of life to bring honor to themselves and to those who have struggled for the right to their own dignity.
   
   I bought this book the first day it hit the shelf and read it from cover to cover and wished it would not end. I wanted to read it and I didn't want to read it because I've spent maybe two decades sculpting and perfecting this pedastal I've had Lillian Faderman on and I was worried that she would demolish it by turning out to be a prep school and legacy brat from the suburbs. No danger here.
   
   Everything I know about the real lives of lesbians I learned from Dr. Faderman and, I'll be honest, I didn't think I'd enjoy anything else after Maya Angelou's "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings." I read Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Lonliness" and was sickened by it's twisted logic and it stamp of approval from kook psychologist Havelock Ellis. I thought Gertude Stein's "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" merited points for chutzpah. But Stein, Hall and Angelou are no Lillian Faderman.
   
   This book is rich with terror, heartbreak, despair, grief and finally - triumph. It's what "Brokeback Mountain" should have been rather than another story about how a homosexual dies or gets murdered in the end.
   
   I've changed my mind. It does matter. Whoever has my copy of this book - GIVE IT BACK !



4. I savored every bit of this memoir. There are, sadly, so few really well-written lesbian memoirs. "Naked" is a terrific book and an engaging reading experience. I highly recommend it.



5. Lillian Faderman writes an autobiography with an engaging style that easily pulls in the reader. She is technically the child of a Holocaust survivor, although her mother and aunt arrived before WWII, sent ahead to America (one presumes this is the Promised Land in Faderman's book title) by the family, to find work in America, sending money home, preparing the way for the rest of the family to eventually settle in America.
   
   Only that reunion never happened: all of Faderman's relatives perished in the Holocaust, and the rest of her mother's life was defined by survivor's guilt, a legacy of conflicting emotions that were inevitably passed on to the first generation of children born after the Holocaust. Lillian Faderman and others of her generation carried the burdens of the ghosts of the slaughtered, the relatives and loved ones who were killed before they were even born.
   
   Faderman's story goes beyond being Jewish: as the first-generation American child born to an immigrant, her experience is one that will speak to many, Jewish or otherwise, and it really is a classic story. The child of an immigrant garment worker, she grew up to live the American dream, getting a college education, eventually becoming a noted historian, textbook author and researcher. True life stories don't get any better than this one.

2 comments about The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak.

1. The book was almost too well researched, giving every minor detail of Korczak's life as well as those of his companions. It was, however, worth learning about a national hero from Poland.



2. Interesting material about a national Polish hero, although too much detail made the book somewhat tedious.

1 comments about And Prairie Dogs Weren't Kosher: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest Since 1855.

1. I used this book as a main resources for a paper I wrote in college about the experiences of Jewish-American women. I quickly fell in love with this book - the history and real life stories are fascinating and really make you think.

5 comments about How to Talk Jewish.

1. Quintessential Jackie! Hilarious! A must-have in a Jewish humor library. May I also recommend a nifty, gezunta book I received as a gift and fell in love with? "A Little joy, A Little Oy" -- if Jackie's a main course Joy, Oy is one amazing antipasto.

   Lillian & Joe Moses




2. Not as good as I had hoped. He explains a lot of Yiddish phrases that are not commonly used. The commonly used expressions were not defined as well as I could have defined them myself.



3. I wanted to learn some common Yiddish sayings. So I bought Jackie Masons' book titled: "How to Talk Jewish". It is an enjoyable book complete with Yiddish sayings and a taste of Jewish life as only Jackie Mason can tell it.



4. Jackie Mason's observations on Yiddish are hilarious. You don't have to be Jewish to love this book!



5. Jackie Mason's book "How to Talk Jewish", is the greatest and funniest teaching tool for anyone who wonders why they've wasted words speaking English, when they could have said the same with one word in Jewish.