No comments about The Story of Darkness (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series).

1 comments about The Lost 500 Years: What Happened Between the Old and New Testaments.

1. Helps fill in some of the gaps in a nice way.

1 comments about Louis I. Kahn's Trenton Jewish Community Center: Building Studies 6.

1. This is a great book about one of Kahn's overlooked masterpieces! It's easy to read and incredibly well-researched. I think it's a shame that I haven't seen this book in more museum bookshops. While Solomon mainly focuses on the one work, the book addresses many important issues related to Kahn's career, his religion, and spirituality.

No comments about For Heaven's Sake: The Chief Rabbi's Diary.

No comments about In Jewish Texas: A Family Memoir.

5 comments about Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex.

1. Also published under the title "Tales from the House Behind," this is a collection of juvenile/young adult stories that Anne Frank worked on during her years in hiding in the annex with her family and fellow fugitives. It proves that this young girl had an incredible gift for writing, and that had she lived she probably would have been received the Noble Prize for Literature. Her stories were often candid indictments of her own family life, such as Kitty, which tells the story of a young girl who day-dreams and a mother who wants her child to listen and obey rather than dream. Anne's essays show an in-depth understanding of human nature, surprising for one so young. This is a poignant book filled with fables, short stories, essays and even part of an unfinished novel. It's worth reading after you have read "The Diary of Anne Frank" simply because the diary will give you more insight to this amazing girl's life. However "Tales from the Secret Annex" stands on its own too, and like the diary should be on every school child's list of books to read.



2. In her now famous Diary, Anne Frank said "I want to go on living even after my death". As of 1998, The Diary of Anne Frank had reached sales of 25 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. (source: TIME, October 5, 1998). It has been required classroom reading for half a century now! In a way, her wish has come to pass.
   This subsequent publication "Tales From The Secret Annex" combines short stories, reminiscences/vignettes, and even an unfinished novel to show us yet another dimension to this remarkable person. Reading these stories and little essays confirmed my personal opinion that Anne Frank was a childhood genius with unlimited potential to achieve anything she would have set her mind to. It's hard to imagine this thirteen year old girl writing with such depth and perception, while living in seclusion, terror and fear for her life. She was writing from her heart, not with an expectation of being published. And yet these stories shine with a polished brilliance, and a certain unforgettable quality. I read this book for the first time 8 years ago, and have returned to it now, remembering the stories as though I had read them just last week. My favorite is entitled "Kathy". In three short pages, Anne captures every emotion experienced by a kid who is misunderstood by her mother, assaulted by schoolyard bullies who mock and rob her and cause her to lose the gift she was bringing home to her mother.

   Here is how she ends her essay entitled "Give":
   "If only our country and then Europe and finally the whole world would realize that people were really kindly disposed toward one another, that they are all equal and everything else is transitory!
   Open your eyes... give of yourself, give as much as you can! And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness! No one has ever become poor from giving! If you do this, then in a few generations no one will need to pity the beggar children anymore, because they will not exist!
   There is plenty of room for everyone in the world, enough money, riches, and beauty for all to share! God has made enough for everyone. Let us all begin by sharing it fairly." (written March 26, 1944).

   Anne was sent to Bergen-Belsen, where some time during March 1945, she, her sister Margot and hundreds of other prisoners were stricken with typhus. Their captors, preoccupied with the advancing Allies, left them to die.
   World... read her book!




3. Ok, so Anne's diary will almost always out shadow other stories shes written, and with good reason, but the stories here are rather well written. The 1st half of the book contains actuall stories she was writting, some short, some long, and part of an unfinished novel. The 2nd half of the story is memories of events that happend to her in her life that she wrote down.
   Anyone who likes her diary should really give her stories a read.



4. I truly enjoyed Anne Frank's Diary, now I have had the privilege to read her tales. A talent in it's purest form. I believe it was Anne Frank who said she wanted to be famous and/or to live on after her death, and of course she has in so many ways. Her diary has sold millions upon millions of copies around the world, her story told in a broadway play, countless films and documentary's.To me it looks like Anne has gotten her wish, she has lived on, more than she'll ever know. I like so many other's have wondered what kind of person Anne Frank would have been if she had survived, of course we will never know, but her diary and her story's were left behind to be discovered and to be told to everyone around the world, what a good person we could have a had on this planet, a great and talented young girl who was taken away but not forgotten.



5. This wonderful little book is a collection of Anne Frank's lesser known writings , found in a seperate volume.
   It shows what a phenomenal young writer she was , and hints what a great author she may have been had she been allowed to live.
   
   The book consists of fables and short stories as well as personal reminiscenses and essays.
   
   They range from 'Kitty' - Anne's reflections on the blonde little girl next door , to beautiful fairy tales (which remind me a bit of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales) like 'The Wise Old Dwarf' and 'The Fairy'-all have a wonderful lesson enclosed within.
   
   'Paula's Plane Trip' and 'Cady's Life' focus on the adventures of young girls during wartime , the latter touching on the holocaust which later swallowed up Anne's young life.
   
   A constant theme in the book is Anne's conviction that relaxing and connecting with nature , can ease one's mind from any difficulties.
   
   In 'Personal Remininscinces and Essays' Anne Frank lets us know a little bit more about life in the little house where she and other Jews hid for some years from Nazi terror.
   In a particularly poignant passage , she remarks that after the war , she would get together photos of the people in the house, which is why she spent so little time on physical description of the house's inhabitants. Anne was confident she would survive the war , and recontinue her life.
   
   A remarkable testament to the wonderful life of a child whose life was cut so short.

2 comments about We're Alive and Life Goes On: A Theresienstadt Diary.

1. I did not like the book, I want to read the original, I thought the translation by Mrs Ziaia was not convincing



2. I don't know how others read this book but.. I thought it was exceptional! It's an incredible translation - although my german ist fast.... I would say that for us english speakers, the voice is sincere and the story is incredible. I felt that nothing was lost - that is to say I dove in, I was fascinated and intrigued. My sympathies were involved and my heart felt for EVERY character. A definite must-read!

5 comments about Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor.

1. A very poignant and interesting memoir. You can never imagine what these poor people went through to survive and re-establish their lives. A worthwhile read.



2. This is an incredible story which while simply written,
   encompasses all of the best and worst of what humans are capable of. The unbelievable love between and mother and her child is the overwhelming power that pervades the narrative. A gift to anyone who needs to understand what that period of history was all about.
   Patti Sacher



3. Bitter Freedom
   Jafa Wallach
   Paperback: 209 pages
   Publisher: Hermitage Publishers; First edition (April 25, 2006)
   Language: English
   ISBN-10: 1557791570
   ISBN-13: 978-1557791573
   
   Although I have read many first-hand account books written by holocaust survivors, I found Bitter Freedom to be the most compelling story of it's kind since The Diaries of Anne Frank. The book moved me like no other.
   Bitter Freedom is written in straight-forward prose by a mother survivor (Jafa Wallach) who shortly after the WWll ended, sat down and wrote the personal history of her family's lucky and often miraculous survival of the Holocaust. In letter form to her daughter- (Rena Wallach Bernstein) too young at the time to know the adult horrors of in which they survived, Mrs. Wallach pens an incredibly honest and poignant memoir.
   "The years have gone by and yet the memory of how it all began remains vivid, fearfully close, as though it all happened yesterday. We were at home, apartment #3 Jagielonska Street in the town of Sanok Poland, listening to radio bulletins of Hitler's attack. You, my daughter, were just one year old. You looked up at our anxious faces, your father's and mine, but you could not have understood how deeply frightened we were. You repeated after us, in your baby lisp, "war, war"-the ugliest word in human speech. It wasn't long after that German planes began to pay their deadly visits to our little town of Sanok."
   
   The book transports you back in history allowing you a glimpse of what everyday families were seeing, feeling and experiencing during this horrific time of war. The Jews of conquered Europe were taken by surprise never dreaming that civilized man could do to their fellow human beings what was now being done to them. Terror and mayhem swept Europe, and so swiftly had Hitler come east and so complete was his control of the lands he occupied- there was literally no where to run-no where to hide. Those hunted were now trapped in their own villages.
   
   Escaping the terror was made especially difficult because many people of the Nazi controlled villages were deeply and historically ingrained with hate for certain groups of their fellow countrymen. The Nazis used this hate to their advantage by turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend. Christian against Jew. Those of the hated lucky enough to survive, did so only with the help of others who chose to put their own lives, and those of their families at risk to save their friends and neighbors. Very few were willing to take that risk.
   
   Fortunately for the Wallach family One Christian man- a mechanic named Jozef "Jozio" Zwonarz did choose to put his own life and family at risk to save five fellow human beings. As he concealed four adults under the very noses of the Gestapo, he desperately schemed to save the life of the fifth family member, a four year old child. (Rena Wallach)
   With parents and daughter now separated, the nightmare for this family was complete. There was nothing left for them to do. Their very lives were now in the hands of God and an auto mechanic named Jozio.
   
   Bitter Freedom is a touching memoir, a suspenseful thriller, and an accurate historical novel all in one. Although the story took place more than 60 years ago, Jafa Wallach's messages to the reader are timeless and wonderfully relevant in today's world where war is in the news every day.
   
   I predict that Bitter Freedom will eventually be on the top of every school's reading list. There are lessons here for all of us.
   A must read.
   
   
   
   



4. I just finished reading Bitter Memories, and this is a definite for everyone to share with their family. What this family saw and lived through is awe inspiring and will leave you looking at your own lives. It will make you appreciate where we live and gives a new look at what the Holocaust victims went through. There are so many who will deny that the Holocaust ever took place, but Mrs Wallach and her daughter will help you see through their memories just how horrible it truly was.



5. A very powerful story about the Holocaust that is well-written and gives intimate detail. It's marvelous that the mother wrote down her entire story in 1959 and then was able to live to see it published. I also enjoyed the Afterward, written by the daughter, giving her impressions and what she remembered from this utterly tragic period from which almost no Jew escaped. The fact that each town was carefully named, each incident described in detail, made the story come to life for the reader who could well imagine himself/herself there at the time. The copy-editing done on this book was excellent; I only found two tiny errors.

3 comments about A Wolf in the Attic: The Legacy of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust.

1. "A Wolf in the Attic", a memoir by Dr. Sophia Richman adds a valuable perspective to the literature of the Holocaust. Dr. Richman was a hidden child in Poland who survived to tell her story of what it meant to transcend such an ordeal and then go on to try to strive for and fit in with normal life. This work is a unique exposition of a journey to overcome a traumatic past and to engage fully in life under renewed circumstances yet with the past just under the surface. The process of coming to terms with this dicotomy is at the heart of the work and is very moving. Dr. Richman has created a compelling narrative which reveals the two faceted experience of a life of achievement and momentum amidst unconscious symbols of tragedy. The fact that the author was successful in so many ways in overcoming her trauma is an inspiration. Her story is a special one amongst Holocaust memoirs. Dr. Richman's work is highly recommended for its humanity, complexity and poignancy.



2. I thought the book was excellent! I have read dozens of books about the Holocaust and this document certainly offers a different and vital perspective that has not previously been covered in the literature. As you progress through the book, it is quite clear that the after-effects for Holocaust survivors are persistent and nagging, and greatly affect them for the rest of their lives. Sophia Richman's experience demonstrates that tragic events that surround young children can stalk in their minds like "A Wolf in the Attic".



3. "Memoirs, the signature literary form of the 21st century, speak to us
   privately of the most intimate aspects of life. The fact that Sophia Richman is a
   child survivor of the Holocaust as well as a psychoanalyst and applies both of these vantage points to her life narrative, takes this memoir into new territory.
   She writes of the realms of childhood, adolescence and adulthood through the
   prism of someone whose very existence once depended on keeping a
   secret. This is an engaging and very special book in the memoir literature and one that will inspire
   readers as well as writers who have difficulty formulating and then articulating their
   own story."

5 comments about An Echo in My Blood: The Search for My Family's Hidden Past.

1. This book goes far beyond conventional memoir. The author's story shows how our world today is tangled with the past, and that we drag the past along with us, whether we know it or not. Through vivid personal stories, the writer shows how events as disparate as the Jewish pogroms in Russia, the McCarthy blacklist, and the current environmental crisis are all connected. He reminds us that we all share the inherited pain of immigration. A beautifully written, sad and funny, important book.



2. I am a descendent of the family that Mr Weisman writes about. How ironic, that I discovered this book through a distant relative who knew I was looking for information on my great grandparents, on my mother's side. I am named for Bess Goldman, a relative of Mr. Weisman. I asked hundreds of questions about my family while my grandparents were alive, and most were stonewalled. After resigning myself to never knowing the truth, I read this book, and many mysteries are finally solved. I am now 56 and for most of my life the story of my family was concealed from me, I never knew why. In those days, living in denial saved you from the truth. I must be a distant cousin to Mr. Weisman, I had many relatives my grandparents would never tell me about, I never knew why they fled the Ukraine. this book has provided answers to lingering questions, echos, so to speak. I will be sending each my two children this book and will share it with remaining family members. Mr. Weisman's research is inspiring. I admire his tenacity in delving into the past with such enthusiasm. This book could be anybody's family, it is a microcosm of our journey from elsewhere to America. Pamela Price Lechtman



3. How deeply moved my wife and I have been by this momentous, beautiful book, which both of us have found to be truly unforgettable. Echo in the blood, indeed. Weisman has found a way to widen a story that is essentially "personal" and familial by ramifying that story in multiple dimensions -- geo-politically, ecologically, historically and racially (the euphemism is "culturally," but this is a book that is unabashedly concerned with the complex meanings of racial inheritance). Most staggering to me are the book's accounts of visiting the weirdly transformed Ukrainian landscape around Chernobyl, the passages that combine the author's father's letters from combat in World-War-Two-era Europe with descriptions of the ongoing lives of relatives at home in Minnesota, and the chapters detailing (with intricate, agonizing subtlety) the deaths of his parents, one then the other. My wife's strongest response was a whole-body recognition of a certain truth, in which the book immerses its reader: As a people, as a species, we are making war on each other and on the living earth. Every one of us carries the burden and the damage of that war into our future. This is extraordinary writing, extraordinarily difficult to make sing, and Alan Weisman has brought it to song.



4. I surpsed myself and finished this
   book as I was going to stop on several
   ocassions. His vinettes of imprtant
   history(the Russian civil war,the Chicago
   convention,the Unamerican Committee) were
   incredible. I take issue with the extent
   of his family history which was confusing
   and tiring.



5. Weisman is a good writer, with an amazing true story to tell. A journalist traveling to the Ukraine to investigate the Chernobyl disaster (an amazing story in its own right), he decides to visit his ancestral town of Elizavetgrad (Yelisavethgrad). This takes him on an unexpected odyssey of self-discovery and family history.

   His insights into Jewish life (in Chicago and Russia) are especially engaging. Some readers will tire of his sometimes relentless left-wing agenda, but I was glad I didn't let that distract from the really fine cultural portrait he has composed.