1 comments about Matzo Balls for Breakfast: and Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish.

1. A reader suggested that I might enjoy MATZO BALLS FOR BREAKFAST AND OTHER MEMORIES OF GROWING UP JEWISH by Alan King, the great comedian who conceived and developed the book in the period before he died in 2004.
   
   She was wrong, I loved MATZO BALLS (almost as much as the actual food product).
   
   It is a series of essays written by famous people--many of them entertainers--about what being Jewish is all about . . . they range from Neil Sedaka writing about not becoming a cantor to Melissa Manchester describing how she came to find her way to the
   father . . . in a final section, Rick Moranis, Barbara Walters and Billy Crystal recall the Alan King they knew so well and laughed with so often.
   
   And don't feel you have to be Jewish to enjoy this material . . . regardless of your religion, it will move you at times . . . and make you smile, at others, as a result of gentle humor such as this tale from Barry Louis Polisar (a four-time Parent's Choice Award winner for his
   books and music for children):
   
   My grandmother used to tell me a story that her father, Louis, used to tell about God giving the Jewish people religion. "It's really not such a hard religion," God said. "Here, I'll write it down for you. You try it for a while, and if it doesn't suit you, bring it back." So the Jewish
   people tried it and found it was not too hard. For days, caravan upon caravan stretched across the desert carrying Haftorahs, mezuzahs, yarmulkes, prayer shawls, commentaries, and prayer books. God looked out at the caravans that stretched to the horizon and said,
   "What's all this? All I wrote down for you were ten simple commandments."
   
   Uri Geller contributed his favorite Alan King joke:
   Mrs. Cohen is yelling at the lifeguard who just pulled her husband out of the ocean. He tells her is going to give artificial respiration. She yells back, "You'll ever give my Benny real respiration or nothing!"
   
   There are also a series of wonderful quotes throughout the book, including these I particularly liked:
   
   The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.--Calvin Trillin
   
   If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.--Woody Allen
   
   I once wanted to become an atheist but I gave up--they have no holidays.--Henny Youngman

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.

1 comments about The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America.

1. This book is a wealth of information for ANYONE who enjoys women's history, as well as labor, entertainment and political history. The author of the book, Joyce Antler, has done a phenomenal amount of research to bring all these women to life. The only criticism I have is that the title might put off some readers, thinking that religion is the main theme. In fact, although religion plays an important role in all these women's lives, thier personal histories are fascinating regardless of their religious background. This book made me want to get full biographies of all the women mentioned in the book!

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

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

4 comments about The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction.

1. This small book covers an enormous range of subjects. Chasidic life in a shtetyl, the Holocaust, conflict within the Jewish institutions of higher learning in post war America, the personal psychological impact of being a Holocaust survivor, and the various modes of Talmudic scholarship - Halivin's great accomplishment is to bring meaning to this wide spectrum of topics in few words. This is a book by a serious thinker who is not afraid to risk revealing his innermost feelings and conflicts. A courageous work



2. Halivni's book will not satisfy those looking for a Holocaust memoir. He is not a professional Holocaust survivor or bad novelist like Elie Wiesel. Rather he is a scholar. He started out as a child prodigy in Talmud, but never had a chance to attend a real yeshiva. After the war he turned down such opportunities to get a doctorate in philosophy and develop academic textual criticism of the Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was a very big fish at JTS, but the water turned rancid when they abandoned Jewish law in favor of feminist correctness. He then went to Columbia University, but now every major university offers doctorates in Talmud.

   He makes a heartbreaking admission to us at one point. He says he cannot transmit the highest level of his methodology to his students. I would like to be charitable to so long-suffering a man, but doesn't it mean he has failed? What use is a method that exists only in his own head?

   Although he never says so, I'm afraid Halivni realized at some point he was not an adult prodigy. If he went to Lakewood with Rav Kotler or Yeshiva University with Rav Soloveitchik he would never have been among the first rank of scholars. He admits to the sin of envy, and that shortcoming drove him to isolation and failure. That, not Auschwitz, is the true tragedy of his life.




3. As another reviewer wrote, this is not just a Holocaust memoir. Halivni writes about his Holocuast experiences, but many others have done the same at greater length. What I got out of this book was:

   1. His discussion of pre-Holocuast shtetl life: its scholarship, its isolation, its sheer backwardness in many areas (for example, when one relative told the author's grandfather that the boy was "turning modern" because he ate with a fork instead of with his hands, and read secular newspapers). Unless you eat with your hands and avoid newspapers, you will find it much harder after reading this book to believe that Jews should be bound by every custom of their ancestors.

   2. His attempt to describe his own ideological position: more respectful of traditional halakhah than modern Conservatives, more critical of traditional interpretations than some Orthodox commentators. You can find plenty of books by commentators to Halivni's right, and plenty by commentators to his left, but I would be surprised if you could find any by people who think exactly what he thinks (assuming there are any). As a result, his book is unique or nearly so - and for this reason alone, his book is worth reading and will probably challenge you whatever your views.

   Another reviewer said that Halivni is not among the "first rank" of scholars. (I am not enough of a scholar to intelligently agree or disagree). But even if this were the case, I would recommend this book. I've learned quite a bit from people who weren't in the "first rank" of scholars - many of whom, I suspect, are not of Halivni's rank.




4. Prior to reading this book, I was curious about Rabbi Weiss Halivni. What kind of man, I wondered, would stand up against the left wing of the Conservative movement, at the potential cost of his own career? In reading this book, I have been richly rewarded with an understanding of him. Rabbi Weiss Halivni is searchingly honest, even brave in his degree of self-revelation, as he describes his life in a backward village in Hungary in the lead-up to the Second World War, the troubled psychological dynamics of his family, most of whom were subsequently murdered by the Nazis, his experiences in the death camps, and the course of his career in the United States as a scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary and then Columbia. He explains the origins and process of his style of Talmudic analysis; an unusual blend of the traditional and the critical analytic methods, coming in part from his grandfather, but also a product of modern scholarship. He laments that he's been unsuccessful in fostering it in his students (they find it too difficult I think).
   
   But it is his self-analysis if his own character, his simultanously anxiety-ridden and courageous life, that makes this such worthwhile reading. I think that he is just not afraid to be different, and he values honesty more than most; his stance on preserving halachah in the face of tremendous pressure from liberal "progressives" at the JTS is one outcome of these traits.
   
   [...]

3 comments about The Story of a Life: A Memoir.

1. 
   Aharon Appelfeld, the highly regarded Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor, has written a hauntingly beautiful book.
   
   It begins with a loving description of his childhood years with his parents in Czernowitz near the Carpathian Mountains and with his grandparents whom he visited in the country every summer. That all ended with the Nazi invasion in 1941 and the murder of his mother. After months of confinement in a ghetto, Aharon, his father, and the other Jews who had not yet been shot or starved to death were forced to march across the Ukraine to a slave labor camp.
   
   Appelfeld writes sparingly about the ghetto, the forced march to the labor camp, his escape from the camp, and the deaths of his parents. "I have forgotten much, even things that were very close to me--places in particular, dates, and the names of people--and yet I can still sense those days in every part of my body."
   
   He describes in somewhat greater detail the time he spent hiding alone in the Ukrainian forest. The strongest imprints the war years made on him, he writes, were intensely physical ones, like hunger for bread. "To this very day I can wake up in the middle of the night ravenously hungry. Dreams of hunger and thirst haunt me almost on a weekly basis. I eat as only people who have known hunger eat, with a strangely ravenous appetite."
   
   He writes that his novels hardly begin to capture what he went through. "I've already written more than twenty books about those years, but sometimes it seems as if I haven't yet begun to describe them. Sometimes it seems to me that a fully detailed memory is still concealed within me, and when it emerges from its bunker, it will flow fiercely and strongly for days on end."
   
   In the Ukrainian countryside the animals he met did not scare him. "I was sure they would do nothing harmful to me. I became familiar with cows and with horses, and they provided me with a warmth that has remained with me to this very day. Sometimes it seemed to me that what saved me were the animals I encountered along the way, not the human beings. The hours I spent with puppies, cats, and sheep were the best of the war years. I would blend in with them until I was part of them, until forgetfulness came, until I fell asleep alongside them. I would sleep as deeply and as tranquilly as I had in my parents' bed."
   
   When from time to time he came out of hiding and worked for peasants in exchange for food, he learned how to pass himself off as a gentile orphan. Those years made him distrustful of the world around him ("even today, I stop and listen every few paces").
   
   After the war he struggled to build a new life and learn a new language in Palestine, soon to be Israel. He immersed himself in Yiddish and Hasidic literature and began writing, but in the late 1950s he gave up trying to be what an Israeli writer was supposed to be and instead became "an emigre, a refugee, a man who carries within him the child of war, who finds talking difficult and tries to speak with a minimum amount of words."
   
   He closes his memoir with a moving chapter about the New Life Club in Tel Aviv, which Holocaust survivors from Galacia and Bukovina established in 1950. "There was no one with whom I was close in Israel, so I'd go there to drink coffee, play chess, or listen to a lecture." Since its members spoke Yiddish, Polish, Russian, German, and Romanian, the club became a substitute home for him.
   
   When Appelfeld's first book, Smoke, was published in 1962 to good reviews, some members complained that his characters were too grayish and too obsessed by the past. Where were the heroes? Where were the ghetto uprisings? they wanted to know. "Only later did I understand: it was hard for some people to be taken back to those places and forced to relive those experiences. The moment I understood this, I was no longer angry."
   
   Since each club member carried within him a double and sometimes triple life, the club was important to Appelfeld for literary as well as social reasons. "I borrowed a little from each of their lives." In fact, it sometimes seemed to him "that all my writing derives not from my home and not from the war, but from the years of coffee and cigarettes at the club. The joy I experienced when it was in its heyday and the pain I felt when it collapsed--these feelings are still very much alive within me."
   
   Part of the credit for the literary artistry of this compelling memoir goes to Aloma Halter, who translated it from the Hebrew.
   
   --Reviewed by Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust



2. Applefeld is one of those writers much loved by critics but without a great legion of readers. I never somehow really 'got into ' his fictional works. This memoir however was different and I was deeply moved by it.
   His story of his childhood in Czernowitz, the relations within his family, his special connection to his mother who was murdered by the Nazis , his being torn out of his childhood world, and sent with his father on a death march, his escape and life as a child in the forest and with a prostitute who makes him her servant and alternately terrifies and fascinates him, his hiding, and moving about , his finding his way to the ship which will bring him to the new home in the land of the Jews, his difficulties in accomodation , his being an outsider here even where he is supposed to be at home- all this is told with great restraint and power. Applefeld himself seems to radiate a certain kind of calm, the calm of what he has described himself often as ' the observer' the one who ' waits and looks' and tries to understand. His early efforts at writing are also described here and the contradictions between what others expected of a ' Holocaust writer' and what he himself had to give. The sense of loneliness is palpable in the last pages of the book where he tells of his coming to belong in the club made of those from his former home - region .The dissolution of this club with the years is the loss of a second home.
   As with Oz in his also remarkable memoir " A Tale of Love and Darkness" Applefeld does not delve into the present reality, into the world of the new family he has made. He says he walks around and at times ' he is back there' and this work gives a real sense of what that ' there' is. I have not in this review really come close to touching on the richness of this memoir, its emotional depth. It also has great horror in it, and there is one scene one story that sticks out in my mind and which bothers me even now as I write this. It is about one camp that Applefeld came to. In this camp the Nazis had a special kind of corral in which they would throw babies, who would be devoured by German shepherds. When I think of this I wonder what the words ' forgiveness' and ' humanity ' can possibly mean. This fills my heart with such horror and sorrow, I don't know what to say. I apologize for picking out this one detail and emphasizing it so strongly .The work has many scenes and much perception of and wisdom about life. Applefeld has written a masterful and moving work. He is one person who survived the horror and has conducted himself in his life with quiet courage and great human dignity .He should be seen as a hero in the creation of Literature, not only for the Jewish people but for Humanity as a whole.



3. Way too short on details and specifics. Apparently the author's memories of the Holocaust are still too painful or repressed. I don't need to know all the horror of it, but expected much more of an eye-witness account.

4 comments about Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Jewish Lives-Memoir).

1. Great book--exciting reading and has kept me up all evening until I completed it.



2. I couldn't put the book down until I read the last page. An exciting adventure of a young lady trying to avoid the Nazi's.



3. This is a story of a young women being persued by the Nazi's and her ability to get away from them. She was brought to jail for questioning but with a great deal of bravery she was able to get away. A MUST READ.



4. This memoir, rich in texture and detail, reflects the extensive research the protagonist's co-author, Steven Weingartner, seems to have done in preparation for writing this work (since so much of the history and background recalled here would have been beyond the ken of Lala Fishman, the story's narrator). The authors trace Ms. Fishman's family roots, from what was then the Ukraine into the Poland of that era, and provide, in remarkably vivid detail, a picture of what it was like to live through two back-to-back invasions of Poland: the joint Nazi-Soviet attacks of 1939 followed by the treacherous Nazi thrust against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1941. For Jews like Fishman, the advent of the Nazis into eastern Poland made a trying situation, under Communist rule, infinitely worse as the Nazis systematically undertook to exterminate the Jews.
   
   Fishman recalls both the telling details and her own reflections as the Nazi terror swirled around her. From the initial indignities of Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population, to the construction of the ghetto and the unpredictable "actions" that swept Jews indiscriminately off the streets and into oblivion, to the whittling away of her own family members, one by one, as they are taken in the "actions," Fishman describes the growing sense of dread and helplessness that overwhelmed the Jews she knew. Witness to brutal hangings of Jews by Gestapo soldiers in the streets, arrested more than once herself, Fishman, on the verge of adulthood, finally recognizes that no help is coming and that there can be only one end to it all.
   
   "It's a trap," she tells her distraught father and mother when the Nazis initially press them to enter the ghetto, a place to get all the Jews together she insists so they can finish them off. Her family, heeding her words, stays put for as long as they can. But they can't hold out forever and Fishman must finally flee the city of Lvov with what's left of her family (her broken mother and nine year old sister) after her uncles and father disappear and her elderly grandmother is grabbed from their apartment in a surprise Nazi raid.
   
   But flight alone is barely enough, for Fishman can't escape the cruelties of the Nazis and their Ukrainian minions, nor the cold anti-Semitism of many Poles. Yet it's through other Poles, men and women of good will, that Fishman is finally enabled to survive. Relying on false papers and the training in Catholic ritual and teaching she receives in a crash course from Catholic friends, Fishman contrives to "pass" as a Catholic Polish girl. Still, she is taken and beaten by Nazi interrogators, stripped to her underwear for their inspection and finally, on winning a temporary reprieve, flees into the nearby countryside as the Gestapo pursue her and a friend. The journey takes Fishman into a new life, one of deception and paranoia where she must constantly live with the memory of her lost family, including the broken spirited mother and terrified nine year old sister she was forced to abandon to save herself.
   
   Sometimes, though, there's almost too much research here, too much detail about things Fishman could not have known while she was living it all. But the episodes of flight and survival recalled by Fishman, and recounted here, make this story a valuable window into an era which saw the brutal eradication of Europe's Jews.
   
   SWM
   
   co-author of A Raft on the River the story of a young girl's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust in eastern Poland between 1939 and 1945
   
   editor of Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor

3 comments about Hidden on the Mountain: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon.

1. This book is geared for preteens and reflects absolutely accurately the interviewees' stories. We can attest to it, because we were there and are written up in the book. To this day, the people of Le Chambon do not understand why they are going down in history because "they only did what was right". This book is definitely worth reading.
   Hanne & Max Liebmann



2. I just chanced upon this remarkable book: Hidden on the Mountain by Deborah Durland DeSaix and Karen Gray Ruelle: Stories of Children Sheltered from the Nazis in Le Chambon. The authors spent four years finding and interviewing people, who as children and youth were protected during WWII by this community. They have then masterfully proceeded to tell their stories.
   
   Le Chambon is a mountainous region of France inhabited by Huguenot Christians. These people, many poor farmers, opened their homes and supported three children's homes for children needing safe haven during WWII. Many of these children were Jews. They are credited with saving at least 3,500 Jews as well as about 1,500 other refugees.
   
   In addition to the memories of the children and youth, the book includes a detailed time line of events of the war; numerous pictures of the children, people, and places mentioned in the book; a glossary; index; maps; and informative chapters about the war, the region, and its people.
   
   This book was written for children and is exactly what I am looking for to share with my children, ages 10 and 13, as we study WWII.



3. This non-fiction book is a unique collection of real-life accounts from individuals who as children were sheltered during the Nazi era in the mountains of Southern France in a town called Le Chambon. This work is quite admirable, as individuals interviewed recall their experiences in journal form. The stories attest to the heartbreak and the realistic dangers of the times, but provide an added sense of hope and an appreciation for those who rose up against evil. Each entry is followed with an epilogue that gives the reader the satisfaction of knowing what has become of each child. The stories are not without pain and great loss, but what shines through is the righteousness of the citizens of La Chambon. The Jewish children who were sent to La Chambon, a Protestant community, were separated from their parents. In the face of trauma, the children were warmly welcomed into their new community. The children attended school, worked on farms, and participated in activities with other children. The uniqueness of La Chambon was in the sense of duty the entire community had in protecting the Jewish children. Many of the individuals discuss their Judaism, including the struggle to make sense of their religious identity. The "Note to Readers" in the beginning of the book, clearly details the research process and the care taken by the authors to share these stories with authenticity. The authors' passion for the project is felt throughout the book. For ages 11- 16.

5 comments about Castles Burning: A Childs Life in War.

1. This is one of the most moving accounts of that time that I have ever read. I admire the courage of the writer to recount it, I admire the fierceness of that little girl, so many years ago. Its haunting beauty stays with me.



2. Her memory and recall of detail, conversations, and feelings make her an excellent writer of a compelling story. I wonder if she wrote of her life after reaching Cuba.



3. Magda Denes was five years old, in 1939, when her editor father abruptly abandoned his family, transferring all his assets to the United States.
   The family was left with nothing.
   Persecuted and then hunted, Magda was determined not to give way to despair (as she was taken around to different places of hiding and had to hide under floorboards, in an oven, and in a cellar) . She lost her brother Ivan, who was a rescuer for the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. The Zionists rescued many Jews from the Nazis, and were the backbone of Jewish resistance to Nazism.
   What results is a colourful classic of the sruggle for life in dangerous and frightening days of death, written with wry humour and biting wit.
   You will grow to understand, sympathize with and love Magda as you follow her story.
   Today influential voices are calling for an end to the State of Israel (which was in many cases built by holocaust survivors), which would certainly lead to a second holocaust aginst the Jews living there.
   It is up to us to prevent a second holocaust from occuring.
   To prevent a situation where Jewish children will be murdered and hunted, by fully supporting Israel in her struggle to survive and fighting anti-Israel prejudice.



4. This book is a Hungarian version of Ann Frank's Diary. It shows the world of a persecuted young Jewish girl through her own eyes. But it's also much more of an adventure story - and less introspective - than Ann Frank's Diary - and the heroine survived. It artfully portrays the family tensions - which, aside the extraordinary circumstances, were in a sense ordinary: yet they are beautifully and vividly portrayed. The author was obviously a character of great steel inside. Having myself lived many years in Hungary, the places, names etc. were all familiar which made it doubly interesting. A must for anyone seriously interested in Hungary.



5. This book shall remain in my library permanently. Do not mistake this as simply an "Anne Frank" copycat; it is not! Nor is this just another Nazi story. What make this book so incredible is her comments about life and loneliness. Interestingly, there is also laugh-aloud humor sprinkled throughout. The end of the book, unlike Wiesel et al., leaves one feeling upbeat. It is a remarkable, true account, written by a successful NYC psychiatrist on her deathbed due to breast cancer and published posthumously. THIS BOOK SHOULD NOT BE MISSED!

2 comments about Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue.

1. Jim Forest has brought us many wonderful books about the spiritual life, looks at icons and praying with them, a recent exceptional vision of pilgrimage as a way of life: The Road to Emmaus, his fine biography of Thomas Merton, Living with wisdom, an examination of the Beatitudes. only to cite several. This children's book takes the reader into a terrible time, one in which whole families were swept up, put into horrendous conditions of imprisonment in concentration camps, the result for most being disease and death. In the midst of such darkness we encounter the light and hope and goodness of a woman honored after her own death as "Rigtheous among the Gentiles." This is the new saint, Mother Maria Skobtsova, a fascinating, unusual example of holiness in our time. Jim Forest weaves his lovely, spare text with Dasha Pacheshnaya's extraordinary photographs, most based on historical photos fo Mother Maria, Fr. Dmitri Klepinine, the hostel at Rue de Lourmel in the 15th arrondisment of Paris and the cycling stadium, Vel d'Hiver, where the French Jews were held. The story though turned into a narrative is based on first hand accounts of what Mother Maria was able to do in her visits to the stadium in th sweltering June days of 1942, as those rounded up awaited transport to the camps. Not only children but all of us need images of goodness in the face of great despair and evil. This wonderful story provide just that.



2. Jim Forest's re-telling of Mother Maria's ruse to save Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Paris is a welcome addition to our child's library, and Dasha Pancheshnaya's illustrations are a most welcome change from some of the children's illustrations that have come out of St Vladimir Seminary press over the years. Forest's re-telling is lucid and easy for a child to follow (I suspect), but over all, the story is dull in Forest's telling. For all you dads and moms who tell your children stories (true or ficticious), imagine the excitement of a child's being hauled around in a trash can to escape utter danger, hiding out in a pious Orthodox christian home while intensely missing one's parents, and then hopping a bakery truck to southern France!! This really is an exciting tale; AND IT'S A TRUE TALE.
   
   None of that excitement comes across in Forest's telling. The story (the miracle, actually) comes across as a mildly interesting incident in WWII Paris. Over all, the story is a welcomed addition to children's litterature (I'm glad Forest took this story on) and the illustrations are soft, lovely and lively. However, the story could have been better told, I think.