5 comments about TEARING THE SILENCE: On Being German in America.

1. Ursula Hegi moved to the US from Germany at the age of 18. She was born one year after the war ended, and she remembers vividly what her elders told her about those years. In her Introduction to _Tearing the Silence_, she states why she wrote this book, and how it helped her identify with her cultural heritage. With the title _Tearing the Silence_ she makes her point very clear: Post-war German immigrants have stories to tell.

   Hegi conducted interviews with post-war German immigrants in the US. Most of the stories were similar to her own: born and raised in Germany during, or after, World War II, and immigration to the United States before age 20. Some are children of SS officers, others are children of privates. Some live happy lives and do not focus on the past, others are haunted by what happened.

   There are some great stories in the book--very thought-provoking. I was amazed at how some of the same phrases were repeated in all of the stories--even though the interviewees never met each other. Many were told that there parents "...never knew about the Holocaust", and others said "Germans suffered too..."

   With _Tearing the Silence_, Hegi provided a much-needed contribution to World War II history, and biography.




2. very interesting reading , You don't have to of German heritage to understand the why and how German's are viewed since the war .



3. Hegi has proven herself as equally talented in the nonfiction arena as she has steadfastly excelled in the fiction genre.



4. Tearing the Silence by Ursula Hegi tells the unique and sometimes painfully insightful stories of sixteen German men and women, including the author herself, who were born just after World War II. They are the now-adult children of the German families who lived in Germany during the years of Hitler's Third Reich.
   
   Unlike the many books that have been written about the Jewish experience in concentration camps, these interviewees are the children of Christian families who were not driven out of Germany, but who suffered the consquences of living in wartorn Germany, and their parents' refusal to talk about the atrocities occurring openly in their daily lives.
   
   To her great credit, the author does not paraphrase what she learned from her interviewees. She records their answers faithfully. As I read, I can hear the accents, the speakers' sometimes awkward phrasing, and the wholehearted sincerity of these emigres as they responded thoughtfully and conscientiously to Hegi's probings concerning their lives during this troubling time in our history.
   
   Each interviewee discussed the resentment and often anger they still feel toward their parents for hiding the truth from them, for refusing to answer their questions or for dismissing them with, "We didn't know," or "We just did what we were told." Many of them talk about how their parents' silence and evasions resulted in their own stifling sense of inferiority and lack of trust. Many of them admitted that they still grapple with those feelings today.
   
   I was deeply touched as I read the complicated and conflicting feelings discussed because I too am German, though, being Jewish, my family fled in time to avoid the war. And I too was turned away when I questioned my parents about why we had to leave. I know now that my parents were unable to discuss the trauma of being evicted from their beloved homeland--the country that defined their heritage and which they could not bear to leave. As one woman told Hegi, "You write about things most of us don't dare to look at." Johanna admits to a sentiment many of us share: "If this can be done by human beings, it can be done by me. She asks over and over, "What can we do so this will never happen again?"
   
   Hans-Peter believes that it is already happening again. When visiting Germany he saw the hatred against the foreigners whom Germans believe are stealing their jobs. He saw again how groups of people insist that they are superior to others. He lives with the feeling (and fear) that someone may one day treat him with the same hatred, the same unmitigated violence, and that the same discrimination will start all over again.
   
   A subject that comes up frequently among the interviewees is the dilemma of feeling neither at home in America nor at home in Germany: They feel too German to feel like true Americans and too American to ever feel at home again in Germany.
   
   In addition to their disorientation, there is much shame around being German: "How can we expect others not to hate us for what we have done?" The author tells the story about her fourteen-year-old son Eric's friend, who, upon learning that she is German, asks: "Does that mean you are a Nazi?" She hears the question and can hardly breathe.
   
   Hegi writes about the obedience to authority that was ingrained in all of us and in most of German citizenry, generation after generation. Marika tells us how she believed that if she did exactly as she was told, if she was just "good enough," everything would turn out all right... both in the political future of her country and in her steadily deteriorating marriage. She believed that under no circumstances must she "make waves," or she would "lose everything."
   
   I must say here that this is not just a German way of being. It is universally human to want to take the easier, smoother road. That is why this book has much to offer everyone. I was moved to tears as well as uplifted with admiration as I read the stories of these postwar men and women who experienced firsthand the evils of the Third Reich and have the courage to speak about it.
   
   Hegi, in my view, expresses what is most important in her book when she reminds us of the importance of taking the time to talk with one another... not just about the good things in our lives but about our worries and conflicts as well. She admits there may be pain involved..."But that is only a part of it; there is so much more." Speaking openly and with trust will lead to a greater understanding of ourselves and of one another, and much tragedy will be averted that comes from the refusal to discuss and confront our uncertainties and different points of view.
   
   by Duffie Bart
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   www.storycirclebookreviews.org
   reviewing books by, for and about women



5. Ursula Hegi must have been squirming during some of these interviews, as the subjects were sometimes brutally and tastelessly honest about their feelings. I found that honesty a draw for me to keep reading. Having read 'Stones From the River', and a few other Hegi novels, I was familiar with her style. However, she mostly lets her interview subjects guide the way; she does great with this style as well. Anyone who is in the least bit interested in what goes on in the minds of some of Germany's children from World War II, should pick up a copy.

2 comments about Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz.

1. Although the length of this book is not great, the meaning behind each word is. Isabella Leitner, a Holocaust survivor, wrote this on her experiences in her life as a Jewish woman in Europe during WWII. Leitner was transported to a concentration camp. She writes many of her obstacles as if she were writing a journal. I liked this book, but is not the best I have ever read. What made me give it four stars was that it is true. The person who experienced this wrote it down. It makes me admire Leitner because she went back to this time and wrote about it on paper. I did not give it five stars because I felt I needed a deeper understanding of what I was reading. I would suggest that someone be about sixteen before they read it, unless they were very mature. I would not recommend this book to someone who likes things to be concise. This is best for a patient reader who searches for a deeper meaning. All together, Fragments of Isabella is a great book for the dedicated reader.



2. This book is slimmer than the volume which came out in 1994, combining and somewhat updating this and the sequel 'Saving the Fragments,' but in a way it has more of an emotional impact, even considering a lot of the powerful vignettes of Isabella and her by then two remaining sisters after the liberation are completely left out. Because it's so short, it has more room to leave a deeper emotional impact; it didn't really dawn on me until rather recently that this, the most powerful book I've ever read, offers up relatively little details about daily life in the camps or seemingly important events and rituals the then-four remaining sisters would have gone through, like mealtime, beatings, the superiors in their barracks, the type of "work" they were forced to do, and their boarding of and ride in the icy halftrack from Auschwitz to Birnbaumel in November 1944. We get some events that took place in both camps, but not, as in other Shoah memoirs, long detailed passages and chapters accounting for every day, week, or even month spent there. What has made this book so powerful to me over the years aren't the details but rather the truly touching and genuine bond between Isabella and her sisters, how they stayed alive and together for one another, because of one another, even when it would have been easier, particularly for the youngest remaining sister Regina (called "Rachel" in this book because she wouldn't let Isabella use her real name in print at the time), to go the way of the smoke. We don't even know the ages of the four sisters, which makes it harder to picture the full dynamics of this relationship (the oldest sister, the one who was caught during their eventual escape and never reunited with them, dying shortly after Bergen-Belsen was liberated, was actually almost 30 years old, I've since discovered). These are fragments in the truest sense of the word, which Isabella wrote on scraps of paper, in her native Hungarian, shortly after she'd arrived in the States in May of 1945, whenever the images and memories forced themselves to the forefront of her mind and she needed to get them out of her system, however temporarily. Although in the updated volume, this account is told in the present tense, which makes it seem even more gripping than when told in the past tense in this original book.
   
   There are also some passages in this original volume that were left out in the updated one, like how Isabella's mother, whose death she never stops mourning or thinking about, had taught her the very important lesson of listening to her heart and the small inner voice within her dictating what was right, as well as describing how her only brother, Philip, temporarily hid as his family, friends, and neighbors were being herded to the cattlecars, but reappeared a moment later, unwilling to desert his family and not share in their fate too. (Interestingly, I happened upon the ID cards the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's webpage has for Isabella, her mother, her baby sister, and her oldest sister, and discovered that Philip may have been the only surviving brother in a family of five sisters, but wasn't the only brother they ever had; after Potyo [whose real name was Helen] was born, there were apparently born twin boys who died at 8 months of age.) There's also an interesting switch in the passage talking about how Isabella would put down her shovel and stop digging whenever the Nazi guards looked away in Birnbaumel, since her mother had told her not to aide her enemy; in this book it says "I honored her and kept myself alive" as opposed to, in the updated version, "I honored her and tried to keep myself alive." Reading the original unchanged passages makes it more emotional. And though even years later this book haunts me so much that I feel as though I had lost my own sister, nothing compares to the experience of reading it the very first time and receiving the stunning blow that Cipi, the oldest of the four sisters left, was caught and did not survive, having assumed she was with them in America and had survived too, even that maybe they'd found her even decades later. One feels the same way Isabella does, that had she known she would have tugged at her sleeve or run holding her sister's hand or arm. This volume also contains the very powerful closing line that is completely left out of the updated volume, "Mama, I make this vow to you--I will teach my sons to love life, respect man, and hate only one thing--war."

1 comments about The Unfortunate Passion of Hermann Broch.

1. This short paperback book is a quick, intense reading experience, focusing on the historical biography of the 20th century Austrian writer, Hermann Broch.
   
   The translation by Eduardo Mayo is matchlessly smooth and refreshingly casual while seeming to sacrifice no serious and pertinent academic considerations, although there are no footnotes anywhere in the text and there is no bibliography at the back either.
   
   The writing style is rich in historical detail and stays highly pictorial or visual even while Broch's lofty abstractions concerning aesthetics and ethics on the absolute are introduced or discusssed.
   
   The political background of Vienna in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and of Hermann Broch's life and on which his writings focus is viscerally, unswervingly, and abundantly made clear. The Nazi soldiers march against the Jewish citizen across each page, one feels. The smell from the concentration camps is not far away.
   
   The three main novels, Sleepwalkers, Death of Virgil, and the Guiltless are intelligently but briefly discussed, and their core values are clearly presented.
   
   The title of the book points to the idea that as Hermann Broch became an old man, he began to doubt he had spent his life in a worthwhile manner through writing literature, and it is clear from a reading of this fantastically lucid book that he certainly gave his all to it, suffering poverty and humiliation for most of his adult life because of his "unfortunate" passion for it.

2 comments about Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores (Kodansha Globe).

1. This is a great book. It's chock full of history told in an easy-to-read style. Leon Harris reveals the struggles and successes of 12 of the earliest Jewish retailers of America including Levi Strauss, Sears, Roebuck, Neiman, Marcus etc. It appeals to readers on many levels. First it is an historic account of the people whose names have become so familiar as store-names that we have forgotten there were ever people with those names. "Merchant Princes" includes many personal anecdotes about the founders of the stores and their families, retailing practices of yester-year and what these merchants did with their incredible wealth. Told by a Jew, about Jews, it reveals in surprisingly candid ways the ostracism of Jews in this country addressing how this all began. It's a book you can put down and pick up at any point without losing the flow. Jews will love it. Gentiles will be impressed. I was!



2. Ken libo has shown an excellent ability to convey jewish history time and time again.. This book is no exception.. It's very readable, and will not let you down. If you want to concieve the struggles and successes of jews and others in the early twentieth century; buy this book.

4 comments about A Life of H. L. A. Hart: The Nightmare and the Noble Dream.

1. Let me begin by saying that I have no connection at all to the author of this book (I feel such disclaimers are needed on Amazon.com). I picked up this book because, as a law professor, I wanted a bit of biographical background on H.L.A. Hart, perhaps the most important legal philosopher of the 20th century. Hart's writings are dense and hard even for experts to understand -- so I expected his biography to be equally dry. I am very happy to say that this book is virtually a page turner. The Da Vinci code it's not, but it is something more valuable -- a fascinating look at a very, very complex individual.
   (...) I found the book particularly engaging because of my interest in legal philosophy, ordinary language philosophy, and Ronald Dworkin. Non-academics might find the author's discussion of these difficult subjects hard to follow and frustrating. However, the author does not obsess about these difficult matters and on the whole handles these technical subjects with grace and a soft touch. I would recommend the book to any person who is interested in the private life of a public philosopher. For those with an interest in legal philosophy and particularly modern positivism, this book is a "must read." Nicola Lacey -- Bravo!



2. For far too long there has not been a full-scale biography of H.L.A. Hart, author of "The Concept of Law." That gap has now been eliminated by this superb biography by Nicola Lacey of LSE. And this is a biography, and not an "intellectual biography" (such as Duxbury's masteful book on Frederick Pollock)which focuses primarily upon the subject's writings and theories--although Lacey addresses Hart's jurisprudential concepts within the framework of developing his life. For those who want to use this volume as an introduction to Hart's substantive work, ample references support the incisive discussion within the text. But the focus here is his life. As such, it is helpful to also read his wife Jennifer Hart's autobiography, "Ask Me No More."
   
   Lacey had access to the most private of Hart's papers, his private diaries. While invaluable insights result, one is almost at times uneasy with the most intimate thoughts that Hart expressed in these writings. Lacey shares this concern, and in a "rule of thumb" describes what guidelines she imposed upon herself in the use of this material. This leads naturally to a second fundamental question--do we really need to know about such intimate issues as sexual orientation in the biography of a jurisprudential thinker? Each reader will have to make their own decision--but one really does get an incomparable insight into Hart the person as a result. In my view, it is healthy to be reminded from time to time that major figures such as Hart are people just like the rest of us and don't reside on some intellectual Olympus.
   
   The narrative is crisp and with the exception of an overly long chapter on Hart's wartime service, never ceases to spark interest. The blending of Hart's theoretical contributions within the context of a biography is a challenge that is more than well met. The fact that Lacey personally knew Hart adds an important dimension as well. Also making apperances are a number of fascinating characters, including Hans Kelsen, Julius Stone, Lon Fuller, Ronald Dworkin and a host of Oxford philosophers. In her "Biographer's Note," Lacey explains a number of key issues she confronted in writing Hart's life, which in itself is an important contribution to the literature on biographical writing. Whether one is particularly interested in legal theory or not, this is simply one of the most extraordinary and important biographies to appear in recent years.



3. I couldn't put this book down. Nicola Lacey is a surprisingly good biographer. "Surprisingly" because Ms. Lacey is not (or was not until now) a professional biographer, but a legal academic.
   
   The book makes you want to dust off "The Concept of Law" again and take up sides in the Hart/Dworkin debate. Because Hart comes across as such a loveable great guy you'll find yourself rooting for him.
   
   On that note, I could have used more legal philosophy, rather than less (as some reviewers suggest), but this is a very minor criticism. I also looked forward to the moment when Ms. Lacey herself would appear on the scene (she knew Hart personally), as she indicated in her preface, but I did not see her.
   
   American readers will be mystified (but only slightly) by Ms. Lacey's not infrequent use of the adjective "shambolic" (may there always be an England!), which if I'm not mistaken means something like it sounds: a bucolic shambles, which is, by the way, not what this book is--it is, rather, an elegantly written biography that is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
   
   And note to Oxford Press: put Hart's "Punishment and Responsibility" back in print! It is only one of the four most important books written on criminal law in the last one hundred years! (the other three being: George Fletcher's "Rethinking Criminal Law", R.A. Duff's "Criminal Attempts", and Michael Moore's "Placing Blame: A General Theory of the Criminal Law".)



4. I agree entirely with the previous reviewers that this was a well written and informative biography of a very humble, very private intellectual. If not for N Lacey, the legion of Hart followers who do not know him personally would guess that he was not only brilliant, but also a kind and wonderful human being. Now, thanks to the book, there can be little doubt that he was indeed so. However, I suspect that the third line from the top of page 349 might be incomplete. It seems to be an editorial oversight that should be rectified in reprints or a second edition.

2 comments about A Jewish Boyhood in Poland: Remembering Kolbuszowa.

1. I really enjoyed this book! It is an intriguing story and vivid depiction of a place that no longer exists except in memory.

   Overall it was highly readable, with a minor exception being that too many anecdotes took place in footnotes, which perhaps could have been included in the body of the text. There is a small amount of repetition; this is much more than made up for by the wealth of interesting details and insights about life in that town, how it changed over time, and then when invaded.

   I think this book would be highly interesting to the general public and especially those who want to know more about: life in towns that were later destroyed by the Nazi's; life in provincial Polish towns/or Galicia before WWII; issues of rememberance and WWII; relations between peasants, Jews, Othodox, ultra-Orthodox, Zionists, and Christians/Catholics, Poles, Germans.

   If you have any relatives that lived in or near Kolbuszowa, than it is an absolute, must-buy. I found it particularly intriguing and a valuable resource regarding family history and issues of memory of WWII, because I had relatives who died in that town and some who were able to leave before its occupation. Feel free to email me if you have questions.




2. I had the honor of hearing Mr. Salsitz speak recently. I was amazed by his story and I wanted to know more so I bought this book. He has a keen memory, and he paints a clear picture of life during his childhood in the backwards town of Kolbuszowa. The book is always interesting and the story it tells is fascinating. I encourage everyone to read this first-hand account of this little slice of life as it existed before the Holocaust.

5 comments about A Life in Pieces: The Making and Unmaking of Binjamin Wilkomirski.

1. I am very interested in the Fragments affair and was eager to read this new account of it. Unfortunately I found this book disappointing. It adds little new to the other published works, notably historian Stefan Maechler's excellent account which was published in English last year. While Eskin has a good style, his narrative is jumbled, he skips around a lot and it is often hard to work out what is going on. Also Eskin virtually ruins his own book by going on endlessly about himself when it is really not relevant to Wilkomirski's story. There are too many unnecessary uses of the words I, me, and myself by Eskin to make this a focussed study of the Fragments affair.



2. When I read Fragments I could not understand how anyone could have believed Binjamin Wilkomirski's story. It was incredible that a child as small as he claimed to have been could have survived a Nazi death camp (much less two) or recalled the things he claimed to remember. By the time I read it, the book had been exposed as fiction. But the tale seemed to me so weak that I doubted I would have found it any more convincing had I read it in 1996, before the scandal broke.

   As a longtime student of the Holocaust, I was therefore fascinated by Wilkomirski's exposure as Bruno Doessekker, the Swiss birth-child of Yvonne Berthe Grosjean, who surrendered her son for adoption in 1945; he was ultimately adopted by the Doessekkers.

   Stefen Maechler's Wilkomirski Affair (2001) provided a superb and thorough expose of the fraud Bruno Grosjean Doessekker perpetrated. Maechler pursued every possible lead, compared each minute detail in Doessekker's narration of "events" with historical records from such leading Holocaust scholars as Raul Hilberg and Lawrence Langer and accounts of other child survivors. He interviewed members of the Doessekker and Grosjean families and more. The most damning evidence Maechler unearthed was that in 1981, Doessekker/Wilkomirski contested the will of Yvonne Grosjean, whom, in a letter to officials in Bern Switzerland, he called "my birth mother." He received a third of her estate.

   Wilkomirski/Doessekker had also used Laura Grabowski, who claimed to have known him in a children's home in Krakow, to "corroborate" his story. 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 Sideshow: The Real Story of Lauren Stratford. Lauren Stratford's Social Security number is the same as that of Grabowski, who used it to make a false survivor's claim. Maechler even found similarities between Satan's Sideshow and Fragments. But Maechler did not answer the question of how Wilkomirski/Doessekker drew people in.

   Blake Eskin masterfully picks up that loose strand from a personal perspective: His maternal great-grandmother Anna Wilbur had immigrated in 1929 to New York from Riga--the Latvian city Wilkomirski/Doesseker said he was from. Her family had changed their surname name from Wilkomirski to Wilbur on their arrival in New York. Moreover, Anna Wilbur's brother and sister-in-law had in 1926 lived at 80 Moskva Street, the same address Wilkomirski/Doessekker claimed as his. Thus was Eskin's family taken in.

   They understandably longed for news of distant relations left behind in Riga, years before the Holocaust. They knew existentially what the Holocaust had done. They had not yet personalized the loss, however. In that context, it is not surprising that Eskin's mother, Eden Force Eskin, and her first cousin once removed, Miriam Vim, wanted to believe that Wilkomirski/Doesseker was Anna Wilbur's long lost nephew.

   Eskin takes readers on his two-fold journey, as he discovers both Doessekker/Wilkomirski's fraud and his family's roots in Riga and Israel. He covers some of the same ground as Maechler, but he adds a human dimension of which Maechler's sturdy reportorial account is devoid.

   This book opens new intellectual and emotional understanding to losses suffered by the world's Jewish community during the Holocaust. Even now, families that once believed they had completely escaped that terrible trauma are discovering whom and what they lost--family, culture, language, and an entire world. Though but one example of that discovery, Eskin's investigations prove somewhat archetypal.

   The Nazi Holocaust extinguished the lives of roughly a third of the Jewish people. Some families, like Eskin's, remained for years oblivious to their personal losses. But Eskin shows that very few were untouched. In that context, it's easy to see why families still hope to find their members among the living. And that context is the only thing that can lay the Wilkomirski/Doessekker fraud to its final and necessary rest. Alyssa A. Lappen




3. I enjoyed "A Life in Pieces" very much! Far from the narrative being jumbled, I found Eskin's weaving together of his personal search for his family's roots, along with the related story of the Wilkomirski hoax, very skillful. The story is told on 2 levels. It was the fraudulent claims of Bruno Grosjean/Doessekker, AKA Binjamin Wilkomirski, which ironically awakened interest in the author's ancestors, since his mother's family name was originally Wilkomirski. After a family reunion to meet the bogus 'relative', the author details his attempts to learn of his family from elderly relatives. This leads ultimately to a visit to Riga, Latvia, where the family's forebears came from. He then moves on to Israel, where long lost relatives, descendents of that remnant of the family that remained in Europe, are located. Eskin's own experience as a 3rd. generation Jewish American mirrors those of many, like myself, whose families had relatives who escaped from or who became victims of the Nazis. This book was written as part memoir. Therefore, his use of 'I', 'me' and 'myself' is wholly appropriate. It is a fascinating story which raises all sorts of troubling philosophical issues. These issues include the plight of former child survivors, false memories, victimhood, and family. Unfortunately, these issues more than ever before, took form with 'Wilkomirski' and his claims. I very strongly recommend this thought provoking work.



4. In a word, too much "me", too little on the affair Wilkomirski. As the author recounts, Wilkomirski repeatedly refused to be interviewed, and despite valiant, pushy attempts, Eskin never succeeds in cornering his quarry. But descriptions of these nonencounters do not make for compelling reading. Nor do long ramblings about the extended Wilkomirski family. With little to write about, Eskin falls back on writing about himself, and neither he nor his relatives have a story to tell that merits book length treatment. This is essentially a family memoir piggybacked over the Wilkomirski affair. Eskin plays up his tangential connection to the curious Fragments episode, but the family connection is based on hope, not reality, and the writing, amorphous and rambling, reflects the lack of content.

   Most important, I miss entirely a moral viewpoint. The crux of the issue is evaded: is there an objective truth, or is being a Holocaust survivor an entirely subjective matter of "feeling" like a survivor? The payoff at the end - the discovery of a tangible connection to distant relatives in Israel - is awfully thin stuff for the overlong buildup that preceded it.




5. I was so much looking forward to reading this book to learn the details of the author of Fragments, but ultimately this book left me with more questions than I had before I read it, not to mention bringing up more issues and then leaving them unresolved. For example, was Binjamin tattooed with a number on his arm? We are told that Varena is not Binjamin/Bruno's wife, but then are never told who she is or what connection she has to him. Was any DNA evidence ever made public, or is Binjamin/Bruno's true identity an ongoing mystery? I am reading the article in Granta #66 by Elena Lappin, and in the first few pages have learned that Binjamin/Bruno was married prior to his relationship with Varena and has three children! What a shocker. Why was this not mentioned in Eskin's book? Where are the children now and what do they think about the whole Wilkomirski affair? In any case, this book is passable as an introduction to the case, but I do agree with another reviewer here who stated that Eskin's personal history, other than being the catalyst to his investigation of the Wilkomirski affair, is really not very interesting (and this from a lover of memoirs and family history).

5 comments about The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage.

1. Enhanced with an informative foreword by Christopher R. Browning, The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers And Their Stories Of Courage by folklorist and oral historian Mark Klempner is the account of how many valiant people worked at great personal peril through the Holocaust and Hitler's Reign to save Jewish children and others from being murdered in the Nazi death camps. Guiding readers through the epic and heroic tales of these Dutch rescuers, The Heart Has Reasons vividly recounts deeply terrifying efforts of ten gallantly individual experiences. Superbly presented and an important addition to the growing library of holocaust literature, The Heart Has Reasons is very highly recommended reading, especially for all historians and students of the Dutch involvement in World War II.



2. Mark Klempner is a masterful storyteller. Although 'storyteller' may make you think of fiction, this story is not fiction. Mark has poignantly shared interviews with Dutch resisters and rescuers in a way that won't let you stop thinking about them. He asks big questions and gives important answers about learning from the righteous and from history.



3. The dark cloud of disaster can't hide the brilliant light of joy and altruism in the human spirit. Somedays I don't turn on the news; it's too depressing to bear. But in this book, author Mark Klempner gazes unflinchingly at one of the blackest episodes in human history . . . and finds there hope and lessons for living.
   
   Klempner interviewed ten of the "Righteous Gentiles": people who risked all to save Jewish children from the Nazis. A folklorist and oral historian, Klempner lets his subjects take center stage and tell their stories in their own words. This is precious documentation of the experiences of a generation that is passing on.
   
   As counterpoint, Klempner relates the autobiographical saga of his own search for an ethical compass. This journey led him from the amoral canyons of the Los Angeles music scene to explore his Jewish immigrant roots in Europe. Klempner also includes historical and political essays that place the individual stories in the context of world events. The narratives are not homogenized into a smooth package. Think of these gems as displayed in their natural state, not cut and mounted so as to preserve the authenticity of the historical record.
   
   To sum up, this book contains:
   
   * Fascinating true stories, very accessible to the casual reader.
   
   * Primary source historical material, lovingly preserved.
   
   * Troubling questions about ethics, psychology and the meaning of life; pat answers not included.
   
   * Inspiration, and proof that in the face of the most horrifying threats imaginable, some people will step forth and risk all to do the right thing.



4. As those who celebrated the construction of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. worked hard to make clear, we are reaching an important point in the history of the world - there will soon be no survivors of the World War II period left alive. The commentary on the presidential elections in France mentioned that this is the first set of candidates for the high office with no experience of the war. This same situation is true for those who experienced the Holocaust, in its various dimensions - there will soon be no one left alive to tell the story directly. In a world where Holocaust denial ebbs and flows, this becomes a problem. Projects such as Mark Klempner's `The Heart Has Reasons' are truly important, in helping to keep alive the memory of those who had direct experience.
   
   Most people in the Western world are familiar with the Diary of Anne Frank, but fewer are aware that there were many stories of heroism among the Dutch during the war. However, the overall survival rate of Jews in Holland was among the lowest in occupied Western Europe. There were people who helped hide and shelter Jewish people, at tremendous risk to their own lives. `Those who decided to help Jews in Holland had to be willing to disobey the Nazi measures and resist the Nazi machinations to relegate Jews to subhuman status. They had to cross the line from being law-abiding citizens to enemies of the state. They had to act from the heart, come what may.' This book is about ten different people who took it upon themselves to come between the Nazi efforts and those who would be victims.
   
   Mark Klempner is listed in the credits as a folklorist and oral historian. Given that narrative theology is a particular interest of mine, his background and method of development fits with my own ideas of how to develop history into a memorable and lasting element of culture. It was also an important development for Klempner. The final paragraph of his introductory piece speaks to this: `Spending time with the rescuers was, for me, a transforming experience. They welcomed me into their homes as though I were someone special - a characteristic inversion - and showered me with hospitality and kindness. I soon was looking at them not only as people who had made history, but also as people who could teach me a different way to live. I've come to think of them as radiant specks around the black hole of the Holocaust, and they've become a radiant presence in my own life as well.'
   
   Klempner presents, after his personal introduction, a chapter on the background of the history, which includes both general history of the development of the Holocaust as well as specifically Dutch history - the NSB (Dutch Fascists), the piece-by-piece encroachment on Dutch rights and Jewish rights during the occupation, and overall development of a resistance to the oppression. The heart of the book, however, is in the ten stories of those who put security, family and life on the line to help those in need.
   
   The names are important, for the Holocaust gets lost in the abstraction of numbers. But all stories are personal. Heiltje Kooistra found inspiration for her actions in her own religious faith - `If you love Jesus, how can you not love the people and tradition out of which Jesus came forth?' Rut Matthijsen was a behind-the-scenes operator in the resistance, who looked past the discrimination: `Years later, when I went to Israel to receive the Yad Vashem award, I was asked, "Why did you help the Jewish people?" The emphasis being on the word Jewish. But that was Adolf Hitler's emphasis. I helped them because they were people.' Hetty Voute spent years in prison for her efforts, as did her friend Gisela Sohnlein. Clara Dijkstra ended up being the second mother to a girl she rescued, a relationship that continues to this day. Some, like Kees Veenstra, are very private about their actions, preferring to consider himself an ordinary person. Janet Kalff tapped into her Quaker background for strength, whereas Mieke Vermeer drew from a Calvinist background. Pieter Meerburg's actions came out of a humanism not borne of religious conviction, but out of respect for life. Theo Leender's relationship with God can sometimes be stormy, but his faith in doing what is right did not falter.
   
   These are not people who looked for personal reward - in fact, just the opposite is the case for several of them. Many remained generous beyond their wartime efforts; Klempner mentions one man who had a stack of fund-raising letters from charities, who always found time to help even the smaller causes with a little bit, saying, `Even a small donation can give a lot of encouragement to people doing good work.'
   
   This book was a gift to me, both spiritually and literally. I was offered the chance to read it months ago, and it took a long time. The stories could not be rushed through as if it were one more text to read; I found myself with tears of anger, frustration, and occasional joy throughout many of the stories (and it is hard to read through tears). Klempner has given rare insight into a side of the Holocaust little known but very important, and very powerful witnesses who give hope to the future.



5. I just read the following about this book in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies: "Well-written and highly accessible to average readers, it is a book for sharing and giving that would make an excellent choice for book clubs, as well as synagogues and churches interested in interreligious dialogue." As someone who is waiting for it to come out in paperback for use in my book club, I heartily agree.

No comments about Justice Not Vengeance: Recollections.

5 comments about Journal 1935-1944: The Fascist Years.

1. Mikhail Sebastian was the Romanian Walter Benjamin. Trained as a lawyer and a literary critic, Sebastian published a highly-regarded novel at the age of 23. He held one of those literary-functionary jobs requiring very little actual work or presence at the office which Europe once awarded to its philosophers and artists. Like Benjamin, Sebastian was a skittish, highly personable writer: a professional skeptic, an independent thinker, who could amuse himself indefinitely with his own thoughts and company.

   To see the War through Sebastian's eyes in this diary is to finally understand it. The journal - together with Radu Ioanid's recently published history of the Romanian holocaust - certainly explodes the myth that Romania was a "good" place to be Jewish during WW2. In fact, the Antonescu's wartime government - reactive always to the country's popular ultra-fascist Iron Guard - annhilated half the country's Jews, some 150,000 people. The "cut" was purely geographic: Bessarabia and Bukovina, two cities bordering Odessa with large Jewish populations, were targeted for ethnic cleansing; whereas the Jews of Bucharest were merely subject to statutes barring their employment, use of amenities, etc. But what's most extraordinary about the Journals is the way that it gives this kind of victimage-by-chance a human face: curious and halting.

   Over the course of two years, Sebastian is exiled from the inner circles of the Bucharest literati. His close friends and mentors, Nae Ionescu and Mircea Eliade, have become intelletual leaders of the Iron Guard. Sebastian waits in Bucharest, increasingly unemployable due to anti-Semitic statutes and restrictions, borrowing money to pay the rent while fully aware of the massacres and pogroms that were taking place in the northern regions of his country.

   The apartments of Bucharest Jews were confiscated; and then their telephones; and then eventually their skis?! Each week brought new onslaughts of mad and crippling restrictions. Sebastian notes tbe "mute despair that has become a kind of Jewish greeting." He witnesses this, with no illusions, while trying to piece together a subsistence living for himself and his parents, at times writing plays which would be produced under the names of non-Jewish friends, which he was eventually best known for.

   Sebastian never married; he had a number of simultaneous & consecutive affairs with married and independent women, as was the custom at that time and place. He had no children. He has a great sense of vocation as a writer and a thinker, and this Journal comes closer than any document I've read to conveying a sense of the "dazed stupor ... with no room for gestures, feeling, words" that comes from living alongside horror.




2. The fabricated myth, by the Roumanian Nationalists, that Roumania was a "good" place to be for a Jew, during the Holocaust is to be completely and forever forgotten. From the accounts of Mihail Sebastian, it is obvious that the Roumanian intelligentia, the literary circles were filled with Legionairs that spreed antisemitism in a most vicious manner. The German SS Killing Detachments were, according to Eichman's testimony during his trial, abhorred and disgusted by the crude cruelty of the Roumanian troups during the deportation of the Jewish population from Bassarabia to camps in Transnistria. The Roumanian Nation as a whole, is guilty of the extermination of is Jewish population, collectively the Nation should repent just like the Germans. This of course requires self-examination, admission and a certain degree of intelligence. In conclusion, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the true socio-political climat in Roumania during WW2.



3. This is a unique document from any perspective you approach it. I found it particularly revealing about my father's background; Bucharest's middle class before WWII. The author came from a Jewish community who regarded itself as an assimilated part of a basically friendly Rumania. The amicable feelings towards Rumania have always run deep in its Jewish expatriates. Those who immigrated to Israel recreated a piece of pre-war Bucharest in Tel-Aviv. The book's description of a specific social set fascinates, with its elegant frivolity and gregarious bonhomie that was stifled under Ceausescu, but survived in my parent's social circle and in that of the Rumanian Jewish community.

   Sebastian parades a delightful set of characters. From the comical Prince Antoine Bibescu, who walks to theatre among the barbarians "en pantoufles," to the playwright Eugène Ionesco, Sebastian's pen never fails to capture the essence his friends' personalities. Ionesco is mentioned only in passing but his predicament is sobering, if not unique. He was not able to keep his job because of his mother's Jewish background. Ionesco, who never identified himself as Jewish, had not experienced life as a minority and had difficulties dealing with his new status. Apparently he had an emotional breakdown before he finally succeeded in returning to France. I do not think that Ionesco or his biographers ever expounded on that chapter of his life from this perspective. What he had experienced in Rumania at the time may explain the inspiration for his play, Rhinocéros (1958).

   This amusing social tapestry is but a background and introduction to the real drama of this diary. The author portrays the gradual evolution of a very sinister external reality, and more significantly, his own reactions to it. It illustrates a difficult and conflictual internal process of disillusionment, of realigning one's internal alliances, or, perhaps, the creeping realization that your friends are turning into rhinoceroses. As the author discovers during the peak of the persecutions, this is a process many assimilated Jews went through in past centuries under similar circumstances.

   Sebastian refers to his homeland as "a Balkan swamp," where people change political affiliations like they change their shirts (something at which Ionesco's father was particularly good). He makes some lucid observations about Rumanian Jews' easy optimism and, contrary to common belief, the Jews' short memory of past tragedies. This selective amnesia of prior calamities is an attitude prevalent among Rumanian Jews in Israel, who nurture a sympathetic viewpoint about the events described in this book.

   Indeed, this book confronts basic notions many people hold about that era of Rumanian history; making it highly controversial. My parents are a perfect illustration of the strong but contradictory feelings it arouses. My mother, deported from Cernauti (Chernovitz) in Bucovina to a concentration camp with the rest of her family, had no problems accepting Sebastian's account. My father, on the other hand, who hails from Bucharest, responded with disbelief to my reports about my revelations from the text. He remembered many of the events reported, for example the confiscation of the radios and the forced labor, but he refused to put it in any special context. His recollection was suffused with what seemed to me like heavy denial of the meaning and purpose of the regime's behavior. He combined this with a peculiar version of the history of those times, and a disturbing set of rationalizations of events ("it was only the Iron Guard," or, "everybody I knew survived"). He agreed to read the book, but after he received it, changed his mind and refused. Needless to say, my family, like many others, has never reached an agreement about the basic facts of the period. Another way of understanding the kind of condoning spirit displayed by my father is that it is representative of ethnic minorities' traditionally docile attitude towards authority. This deference, accentuated by fear, may also explain how millions of Jews were gullible enough to allow the Nazis to gas them. The Israelis' intransigence represents a backlash against generations of this servile obeisance, not unlike the kind of militant political transformation experienced by American blacks in the 20th century.




4. First of all, the "Journal" is exquisitly written.
   Then, this is The Book for understanding multiple facets of life in war-time Romania, shining light on previously hidden places.

   A note of strong dissagreement with a previuos reviewer's assesment of reasons for which the book is supposedly absent from Romanian bookstores:

   This book is not "out of print" in its original version, it has been printed multiple times (last time in 2002) and is available as we speak. It is being bought off the shelves like fresh bread every time Humanitas re-prints it.
   Thousands and thousands of Romanians bought, read, discussed, reviewed and raved about the Journal. We were changed by it, as any other feeling human would! Countless echoes in the press, radio and TV shows were generated by this publication.

   Sebastian's Journal became a cornerstone of our perception of Romania's past, not just for a handful of passionate readers but for a whole nation.
   Noam, research before you write.




5. A diary can be as interesting as the person who writes it is and Mihail Sebastian is a complex character. I liked the way he documents his love exploits, the illusions and the hopes he has, his love of music as the ultimate refuge, the detailed account of writing his best novel, "The accident", and his plays, the total sincerity and subjectivity. There are so many nuances in the friendships he keeps - like the one with Mircea Eliade, Iron Guard legionaire and his friend for more than 15 years, like Camil Petrescu, colourful and overconfident writer, and many more.
   When reading the diary, you come to know the frivolous Romanian interbellic "elites", the painful exploits of literary creation, friendships streched by political divide, the uncertainty of the war, the humiliation of the Jews during fascism. Besides, Sebastian's writing style is beautiful and easy to follow.
   This book is mostly perceived as an account of the Holochaust in Romania. However, it has much more to offer. Not only the grim and the militant view of the events, but the full caleidoscope of Sebastian's personna.