5 comments about An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies).

1. Here's the story: gay Jew (really a half-Jew under Nazi racial law) survives Holocaust in Berlin, despite spending lots of time risking his life by helping ferry other Jews to safety in Switzerland. I didn't find this book as enthralling as I had hoped; either the writing style or the translation left something to be desired. In particular, the last half of the book read like a laundry list of lovers and rescued friends. (Unlike another reviewer, I actually liked the pre-Holocaust half of the book better).
   
   Having said that, I still learned something from this book; I got a real sense of the differences between "full Jews" and persons of mixed blood. Full Jews typically got deported to concentration camps, no ifs, ands or buts. But if the experience of Beck and his family is any guide, half-Jews stood a pretty good chance of survival if they kept their noses clean. Because Beck's mother was born Christian (though she converted to Judaism) his parents were never deported (despite numerous close calls), and Beck got in trouble with the Gestapo only because of his rescue activities.
   
   Another interesting fact: throughout the book, Beck mentions various hunchbacks he ran into. What is it about early 20th-century Germany that produced so many hunchbacks?



2. Beck, Gad. "An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Germany, University of Wisconsin Press, 1999.
   
   Triumph of Will
   
   Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
   
   We all have a great deal of trouble understanding the Holocaust and what it did to so many people. We have been slowly getting the stories of the Nazi persecution if gays and if one was both gay and Jewish, he had real troubles. Gad Beck was a man like that but he survived and was able to tell his story as he does so eloquently in "An Underground Life". Even though his book begins slowly, it picks up pace quickly and as you read your mouth falls open to see stories about man's inhumanity to man. When the Nazis began their reign of terror he was living underground and was sought by the Gestapo. Beck was an organizer and helped many who lived illegally by finding them shelter and food as well as providing a listening ear and support in any way that he could. The fact that he was gay was secondary to the fact that he was Jewish.
   In this memoir Beck brings to life both the cruelty to the Jews but the cruelty to the gays as well. This is a shocking and horrifying account as he writes about a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Germany. It is an erotic tale but also shows how love should be considered. This was probably the first time in the modern age that the gay spirit managed to triumph over intolerance and bigotry--even against the greatest crime ever against humanity.
   The fact that Beck survived in itself is miraculous but even more amazing is that he was able to write about what he endured. When Robert Plant published "The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals" in 1986, the door was opened to a new aspect of the Holocaust. Several personal accounts followed, but few have been published that talk about the Nazi treatment of gays ad I imagine that this is because so few survived and those that did could not think about what they had endured. This makes this book that much more valuable.
   Beck's own story is unique in that he was born of a mixed marriage in 1923 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother thereby not Jewish according to strict Orthodox law. Nonetheless, the Nazis did not care--if he had a drop of Jewish blood, as far as they were concerned, he was Jewish. As the Nazi party rose to power and began their housing relocation plan, forced labor and transport to death camps, Beck organized a resistance movement to hide others and to smuggle food and drugs to them, He even once wore a Nazi uniform to rescue a doomed gay man from the camps. He does not in any way disguise his sexuality and he gives details of his own sexual liaisons. He gives us an amazing picture of the horror of Nazi rule. He was one of the fortunate gay men whom his parents loved and accepted his sexuality and was very lucky that the Christian side of his family felt the same. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he was forced to attend a Jewish school to reinforce his identity and to be visible to the ruling party and he immersed himself in Judaism and embraced the idea of the Zionist movement. He also embraced a great many men and he hides nothing about his sex life (except for actual sexual descriptions) as well as writes openly about his secret political activities. He rose in power in the Zionist movement and became a central character in working to establish a Jewish homeland. He survived the Nazis by living illegally in Berlin. Because of that he was able to write this wonderful memoir.
   This is a book that holds you from the beginning to the end, so much so that you want a sequel. He embraced his gayness at the same time that he embraced his Jewish--at a time when it meant death to be either. There are stories of betrayals and back stabbings and secret meetings and the memoir reads like a combination thriller/spy novel. That he survived s incredible and even more incredible is that he endured all that he did.



3. Here is a memoire of life in Berlin during the Nazi regime from the perspective of a gay Jew. Gad Beck was an organizer and friend to many who lived illegally during that period, finding shelter and food and providing friendship and support. That he was openly gay was not important during that period - there were more important thiongs to worry about.
   
   I found this book at the bookstore of National Haulocost Museum in Washington DC on a recent visit. It fits in perfectly with that museum, in that it fleshes out the life in hiding. If you have an interest in the struggle for human rights and length to which people will go to survive, this is an excellent read.
   
   One fact that is underemphasized in the book is Beck's youth during this period. By the end of the war he was in his younger 20s. Yet he had accomplished so much and had the strength of one much older. Bravo!



4. Gad Beck brought to life not only the cruelty to the jews but also the cruelty of the gay and lesbian people of the Nazi Era. I had to do a research paper for a Holocaust in Literature class I took my junior year in high school...and I was entralled the whole time I read this book. It shocked me, it horrified me...and I loved it.



5. Beck gives us a glimpse of a gay man's coming of age in Nazi Berlin. It is not only erotic but holds up a light by which all aspects of love should be measured. Once again, the Gay Spirit has triumphed over bigotry, intolerance, and in this case even the holocaust.

5 comments about The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English.

1. The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English by Edith Milton
   
   The Kindertransport allowed 10,000 Jewish children to escape the holocaust by leaving Germany for England at the dawn of WW2. These children were uprooted from a country where life had already been frighteningly altered, to be transported to a foreign land on the brink of war. Yet Edith Milton's well written, engaging and often humorous memoir illuminates the surprising generosity and love she and her sister encountered in her new English home with "Uncle Bourke" and "Aunt Helen" and their family.
   
   Readers are struck by the sometimes desperate need of the pre-adolescent Edith to "blend in," especially her efforts to absorb the staid English personae of her adopted family. Milton's memoir includes her post war journey to America and reunion with her brilliant, complicated mother, whose career as a doctor was not only terminated by anti-semitism in Germany, but cut off for years by the American medical establishment's paranoid prejudice against trained Europeans.
   
   Throughout, the author's words draw a rich picture of the life she remembers living, and its fascinating contrast to her adult understanding of what was actually happening. Ultimately this is a story of a young person's realization of her true self.
   
   Edith Milton has an extraordinary ability to write with clarity about things she admits may be conjured by occasionally faulty memory. The fact that this is a personal account of recent history, makes this book something essential to read. The excellent writing makes it a treat.



2. I read a little of this and a little of that..usually avoiding the current best sellers..So, when I read a review of this book, I put it on my Amazon Wish List.A kind person bought it for me as a holiday gift.It was not at all what I expected.This is an absolutely beautiful, touching story not only of the author but of two magnificent,caring people who opened their home and hearts to save 2 children from horror.There is a special place in the hereafter for the Aunt Helen's and Uncle Bourke's..This is an exceptionally well written tribute to two special people.



3. This book was exceedingly well written. It gave one an insight into how the Jewish children fared that were sent to England to escape the Nazi Holocaust. Some were fortunate that their parents also escaped. This childs Mother was able to get to the United States and was reunited with her children. I enjoyed the book very much. Ruth Mirsky



4. Occasionally a bit coy in style, Milton's book is a lovely, poetic, thoughtful account of the author's seven years in England as a Kindertransport refugee. Her Anglophilia is tempered with gentle criticism of Britain's imperial past and the British tendency to suppress emotion, but this is ultimately an appreciation of British society and of the family who took in Edith and her older sister Ruth and saved them from the Nazis. _The Tiger in the Attic_ makes a fine companion volume to Lore Segal's wonderful novel _Other People's Houses_ and should be compelling to anyone interested in the dissection of English manners and mores. I hope Milton, who is in her seventies, will write a second book in which she tells the reader of her further relationship to Uncle Bourke and Aunt Helen; we are left wondering when and whether she ever saw them again, curious to hear more about their lives, and eager to lap up more of Milton's prose.



5. There are many books about the kindertransport, but this one stands out above the others for the great literary value of the writing and the original insights of a truly wise child--the author Edith Milton as a young girl. This is, in fact, not exactly a book about the kindertransport, though it is the Nazi tyranny and a few feverish months leading up to the outbreak of war, when several thousand Jewish children were allowed to leave Germany on the kindertransport that prompts the story. For readers who savor the perfect detail, original characterizations, and clear, elegant language given in pursuit of story, this book about how an ad hoc family lived and even prospered during one of the most dangerous moments in English history will be deeply satisfying. Highest recommendations, too, for yournger readers as a coming of age story. There is nothing here, for all the danger implicit in Edith's young life, for parents to fear.

1 comments about Convoy To Auschwitz: Women of the French Resistance (Women's Life Writings from Around the World).

1. I am so glad that this book was translated to english and published here in the States. Please, don't get me wrong, but it is "nice" to have a book about other victims of the Nazi death camps besides Jewish accounts. It serves to remind us and teach us that others too were sentenced to those Death Camps. Many gypsies, resisters, communists, christians, and lesbians, all from different countries, EVEN GERMANS, were sentenced and died at the camps. This book in particular is a Who's Who, a list of a convoy of resisters (mostly communists) from France (mostly french, but there were other nationalities as well) who lived and died together. Each name has a story, some more than others. Stories from the survivors and from what relatives that could be found after the war.

   It's amazing that this book was first published in 1965 and is only now being published here in the US. But I'm glad I got to read it.

5 comments about For Those I Loved.

1. I just had the "pleasure" of having to remove all my books from my office so the room could be painted. I came across a favorite I had forgotten I owned and must tell you, THIS BOOK will make you realize how much you MUST stop this petty "he said-she said" with those you love.
   FOR THOSE I LOVED by Martin Gray with Max Gallo is one of the most gut wrenching, soul searching books I have ever read.
   It is a Biography of Martin Gray who, in his own words, was living a pleasant life in Warsaw September 1939 when "he and everyone else was plunged into an endless hell of butchers and bombs, corps and concentration camps, a nightmare from which it was impossible to awake. At that period our lives had the resistance of stone, and our stones had the eternity of life."
   Martin Gray did survive that nightmare, but lost his entire family. How he did it builds the exciting first half of the novel. Settling in Southern France after the War he builds a successful life, has a new family and what happens next................. Well, I read this book ten years ago and I'll stop by telling you I have never been able to put it out of my mind. It's a WONDERFUL READ. I just purchased it here again for a friend overseas.



2. This review assumes the veracity of at least most of the book's contents, and is based on the 1972 English-language version.
   
   While in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans attempted to make Gray a Jewish informer (p. 96). He played along.
   
   Then the "resettlement" of Warsaw's Jews to Treblinka began: "Jewish policemen with raised clubs yelling orders: they needed six thousand heads that evening." (p. 101). Those Jews who attempted to hide in their homes were often betrayed by their neighbors or relatives in the Ghetto (p. 103). Gray reports what happened after the Jews in an area had been cleared out: "Afterwards, Ukrainian, Latvian, and Lithuanian SS men and the Jewish police searched the buildings, looting, killing anyone they caught there. They smashed the furniture, wrecked the beds and broke through the walls: they looked for hideouts where families had taken refuge, for gold and jewels." (p. 109).
   
   Gray also describes scenes around the death trains being loaded with human cargo: "I followed them to the hospital to find out. The cattle cars were there, lined up at the platforms, policemen yelling. I recognized the mighty Szmerling, whip held high dashing from the herd to report to the SS. Yet he was a Jew. Like them. Like me. They were shoved into the cars, separated, and if anyone shouted, protested or struggled, they got a blow from an iron bar, or a bullet." (p. 102)
   
   In time, it became Gray's turn. But after escaping from Treblinka by stowing away on a departing supply train, he experienced the incredulity of both Poles and Jews. For instance, near Zambrow, Gray encountered a Jewish work gang with no German guards anywhere near, because "the Germans trust us." (p. 162). They scoffed at the notion of Treblinka.
   
   Polish peasants sometimes denounced or killed Jews known or suspected of thievery. Gray sometimes sought Polish help, while at other times he simply stole from Poles during his treks in the countryside (e. g., p. 158, 183, 184).
   
   There is an account of an alcoholic Polish man who betrayed several Jews (pp. 233-234). The reader may not realize that the Germans encouraged alcoholism among Poles, both to degrade them and also to exploit this dependency as leverage for such collaborative acts as betraying Jews.
   
   Gray's experiences shed light on Jewish-Communist collaboration, a major factor antagonizing Poles against Jews during and after the war. He at first has positive remarks about the AK (p. 187) before lapsing into standard, mostly unsubstantiated, accusations of the AK and NSZ denouncing and killing fugitive Jews. He joins the AL, and includes a photo of himself and Mieczyslaw Moczar in the book. Moczar sends him on a mission to spy on the NSZ, from which he narrowly escapes with his life (pp. 224-226). Later, after the arrival of the Soviet occupants, the NKVD also uses him for espionage: "Do your best, find us the NSZ, the informers, the denouncers, the collaborators, the people who don't like us." (p. 233)



3. I could not put down this beautifully written book. It is an extraordinary story of an extraordinary man. After completing this book, my thought was - here is a 20th century Book of Job. The story is of survival beyond all odds, of suffering beyond one's endurance, and of an improbable faith, yes, the faith in G-d despite the tragedies that would overwhelm and destroy any ordinary human being. A MUST read for all who attempt to comprehend man's ability to endure in the face of horrific evil inflicted by other men, and, tragically, by fate itself.



4. I first heard of this book when I was in college during a course on the autobiography. We didn't read it, and it was only mentioned in passing. The theme of the course was autobiography & truth and we spent a great deal of time discussing what our expectations of authors were in terms of telling the truth.
   
   Martin Gray's book is particularly problematic because it is extremely inspiring. It tells the story of survival and heroism in the face of the Holocaust and sends a strong affirmative message about the ability of victims to take their destiny into their own hands. Very strong, and very moving.
   
   Unfortunately, it appears that there are troubling doubts about the accuracy of Gray's book. We know that he lived in the Warsaw Ghetto. We know that he lost his parents. That something terrible happened to him, nobody questions. However, some of his accounts of Treblinka appear to be impossible. He supposedly saw things at times that they did not yet exist. His role in N.K.V.D. is not mentioned. He also (more understandably) elides the fact that he took some serious "short cuts" (wording from the introduction) in setting up his antique business.
   
   The thing is that as you read the book, there is something very implausible about the feel of the text. He does so much, accomplishes so much, and without the ordinary pacing of ordinary life that seems normal even in the most heroic of men. It is clearly so important to Gray to show that there were Jewish heroes during the Holocaust that it seems possible that he would be willing to stretch the truth in order to make his point.
   
   We will never know how much of For Those I Loved is truth. And that, it seems to me, is too bad. The crazy folks over at the revisionist extreme right have seized on the inaccuracies in Gray's book, and use them to attack other unimpeachable memoirs and accounts of the Holocaust. No matter how noble his mission was in the beginning, it is time for somebody to set the record straight. I personally suspect that the truth would be found to outweigh the lies, but then I generally have high hopes for people. Gray's passion and the strength of his life speaks to his essential sincerity.
   
   For Those I Loved was ghost written by Max Gallo.



5. If it's all a true account of Martin Gray's life experiences, then it's remarkable. If not, as the previous reviewer contends, then it's a shame. I found it an interesting read, giving it the benefit of any doubts. However, the writing is often redundant in it's expressions of despair. Without doubt, such experiences would be despairing, however the frequency of mentioning it is distracting. A long read but not too difficult to get through. A story of many, deep losses.

5 comments about From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry (Indiana-Holocaust Museum Reprint).

1. This book contains selections from seventy of the more than five- hundred Memorial books of Jewish communities in Poland. As the editors make clear in their introduction 'the memorial books' aim to make certain that the destroyed world of Polish Jewry will not be forgotten.
   The books provide in some sense a record of the town they are written about, and often a picture of the people themselves. They connect up with the Jewish traditional Literature of Lamentation. In the words of the authors, " The memorial books came to be seen as substitute gravestones. " The memorial books are structured on a continuum from simple acts of naming to highly elaborated acts of narrative." The authors make clear that even a list of names serves the purpose of remembering. In their introduction the authors quote Shlomo Pultusker," When I review in thought my life in Rozhan, events, splinterrs of half- forgotten memories, appear before my eyes. People , formerly flesh and blood and everyday Jews, were transformed by the tragic events into figures similar to heroes in the dramas one reads.Of all the people of that time, individuals stand out whose names stick in memory..And to these people, most of whose remains lie in no cemetary, may my humble words about them serve as an eternal monument and redeem them from merciless oblivion. With trembling and fear of God I write my modest words, which are no more than a pale reflection of what was in reality."
   
   Three million Polish Jews were murdered in the Shoah.
   These books are the fragmented, inadequate witness of what they were.



2. Fantastic book. Reading it is like exploring the vanished world of polish stetels. Although I found only one chapter regarding Szczebrzeszyn I highly recomend the book. I wish there would be more translations of Yizkor Books.



3. This is a truly splendid compendium of excerpts from various memorial books written after the Holocaust to commemorate the vanished world of Eastern European Jewish life in the shtetlach of Poland. I read it in a sitting and will re-read it in the future. For anyone with the slightest interest in this vanished world, I URGE you to buy this book - give it to your friends, as well.



4. Rarely is a book published that causes an entirely new genre of studies to open up. This was the result of the first edition of this book printed in 1983. Before 1983, some scholars, librarians, and genealogical researchers knew of yizkher bikher in general, but up to that time there had not been a major focus on these books as social, historical, and genealogical sources of first-hand knowledge of destroyed communities, to some extent because of language barriers. But as more lay persons began searching their roots in the late 1970s, with interest building in the 1980s and exploding in the 1990s, they started to tap into these remarkable books. The publication of From a Ruined Garden, containing over 70 translated excerpts from Polish yizkor books, illuminated for many lay persons the lost world depicted in these books from which they had been cut off because they could not read them in their original languages, primarily Yiddish and Hebrew. The first edition has long been out of print, but again, in another bit of fortunate timing, a second, expanded edition has been published.



5. What this book does, like nothing else, is to recreate the diversity of Jewish life in Eastern Europe prior to the Holocaust. Carefully selected excerpts from hundreds of memorial books in the YIVO library, this book isn't just about some shtetl, but about Zionists and Misnagdim and town councils and about town that, well, "most towns have a town fool, our town was so small that our village idiot was only half-crazy."

5 comments about Hope and Honor.

1. I bought this book based on a very good review in "Vietnam" magazine. The story of MG Shachnow's life from surviving the Holocaust to becoming the #1 officer in Special Forces makes for an intriguing biography.
   
   The first part of the book is amazing and provides for a very personal and emotional description of a young boy surviving the holocaust in Lithuania. I highly recommend this first half - the emotions and details are chilling.
   
   The rest of the book covers his military career in a very general way, i.e. without a lot of depth to his experiences. I wish that the book had been made into two volumes, with even more time spent on his childhood and early experiences afterwards as well as a second volume going into much more depth of his experiences as a soldier. To me it seemed that just as a topic was getting interesting, the chapter ended and a new topic was introduced (and then cut off). I would happily have read a 500 page volume 1 and a 500 page volume 2.
   
   The writing style is adictive and the content intriguing. The only criticism is the lack of depth in his military experiences (the main reason I had bought the book).



2. This is an extraordinary story of strength, courage and love under the most trying conditions imaginable. After surviving the Holocaust as a boy in Nazi-controlled Lithuania, Sidney Shachnow eventually emigrated to the U.S. with his family to start a new life. Risking his life in defense of freedom as a career soldier he truly gave back so much to his new homeland. As such Gen Shachnow's story serves to remind us of the real meaning of American patriotism, which, sadly, in not taught in schools the way it formerly was.
   
   This book makes an equally valuable contribution to American literature as Gen. Shachnow made to the U.S. Army. Unlike so many celebrity autobiographies, which are little more than self-agrandizing fluff-fluff, this book presents the story of Gen Shachnow's life in a painfully honest manner. From cover to cover it is the forthright story of a real man and a real human being, warts and all. That Gen. Shachnow has no trouble being as open as he is with his readers further attests to his bravery and character.



3. Excellent book. I have read MG Shachnow's military bio, heard stories about him from other soldiers, and met the man on more than one occasion - but the book brings to life with vivid details the trials and tribulations of a real-life hero. This true story is more captivating than any fictional character and story could be.



4. This is a fascinating tale of survival in Lithuania, and the grit and hussle that Shachnow brought to the US as a teen-ager to rise to the rank of major general in the US Army Special Forces.



5. This is the best book I've read recently and I heartily recommend it.
   
   The first and most harrowing part of the book deals with General Shachnow's childhood and miraculous survival of the Holocaust. The protagonist of the story is primarily Shachnow's mother -- an extraordinary, quick witted and determined woman. It is mainly due to her efforts and incredible daring that both her children (one of whom was a mere toddler) survived, while pretty much everyone around them perished. Her strength through the war and the heartbreaks and challenges of the family's post war experiences were to me the most touching and heartrending aspect of the book. Shachnow does a fine job at crediting his mother's extraordinary sacrifices and bravery, but also touchingly describing her weaknesses and eventual failures.
   
   The second part of the book, which in some ways is just as touching, deals with the Shachnow family's move first to post-war Germany and then to the US. The immigration experience was particularly rough on General Shachnow, who arrived in the US as an unschooled and traumatized teenager, but managed, through toil and faith to complete high school successfully. Shachnow's parents fared less well. They seemed unable to transition to the new culture and its demands. Shachnow speculates that his mother had used up all her strength and ingenuity to survive and therefore found herself unable to cope with the new world. Shachnow tells us how the graceful heroine of the Kovno Ghetto turns into a nagging, selfish and small-minded woman, whose behavior inhibits her and her husband from succeeding in their new life. In one of the saddest parts of the book, Shachnow describes his break from his family following his marriage to a non-Jewish girl -- an event that his family treated with neither wisdom nor grace.
   
   The final part of the book is devoted to General Shachnow's military career, starting with his enlistment as a private at the end of his high school studies. His rise to the rank of general is described with humility and is of much interest, though, like other reviewers, I wish it was more extensive.
   
   This is an extraordinary book. In part it made me cry (the touching love between the brothers and the terrible heartbreak of Sidney's parents experiences in the US) and in part it made me wonder. But most of all -- the book inspired me. This is the story of the incredible power of love to save lives, to give meaning to existence. It's the story of familial ties and their challenges. This is the story of the ultimate inevitability of success to those who are sufficiently persistent. And finally -- it's the story of true patriotism and leadership. It's a must read.
   
   I heard the book on CD (Blackstone Audio), read by the excellent Brian Emerson.

1 comments about My Name Is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank.

1. Jacqueline van Maarsen is a contemporary of Anne Frank, and only in recent years has begun speaking out more and more about her experiences and interaction with Anne Frank. This book was originally published in the Netherlands in 2003, and now is finally available in the US.
   
   "My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank" (176 pages) is structured in 3 parts: Parts 1 and 3 deal with her mom and dad, respectively, and Part 2, by far the longest, deal with her own experiences living in the years leading up to the war, the war time itself with the occupation of Amsterdam by the Germans, and the aftermath of the war. The author, who is half-Jewish, brings us fascinating insights on what life really was like in those dark days of the late 30 and the 1940s. The author became best friends with Anne, and spent a lot of time with her in the years until Anne and her family went in hiding in the summer of 1942. There are some descriptions in the book regarding her friendship with Anne that I felt were almost too close for comfort. The author never saw Anne again after the Frank family went into hiding (and eventually was betrayed--it's still not clear by whom), but brings us touching, even heart-breaking, descriptions on her post-war dealings with Otto Frank, Anne's father (and the sole survivor of the Frank family). She writes: "He often wept when he was with me. I didn't know how to deal with that." Wow... how could a 16-17 yr old child bring comfort to Anne's dad?
   
   Anne Frank's contributions to history and her influence continue to this day, not only through the on-going sales of her diaries, but also as a result of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam (which I've had a chance to visit and will readily recommend to anyone). Meanwhile, "My Name is Anne, She Said, Anne Frank" is a nice addition to understanding not only the context of Anne Frank better, but even more importantly, to also better understand what life was really like, and the unspeakable crime that was the holocaust, which nevertheless must be spoken about for the sake of our children and our children's children. Highly recommended!

4 comments about Lightning and Ashes.

1. I read John Guzlowski's collection The Language of Mules a couple of years ago and was very pleased to find this collection. He is a very talented poet who should be more widely read and appreciated. The Language of Mules explores the experiences of his parents in the Nazi camps during WWII, a theme which Lightning and Ashes continues to explore, and also his family's experiences on first arrving in America. The images can be stark and dreadful - they are also unforgettable - but there is a lyricism and beauty that makes these multi-stranded in their depiction of this world.
   Just to give a flavour of the writing - an extract from I Dream of My father as He Was When He First Came Here Looking For Work:
   'Remember this: this is what war is./One man has a chicken and another doesn't/One man is hungry and another isn't/One man is alive and another is dead./Isay, there must be more, and he says/"No that's all there is. Everything else/is the fancy clothes they put on the corpse.



2. Lightning And Ashes is not an easy book. Like "lightning," it lights up the sky in shocking flashes. Where it lands it may burn what it strikes, leaving ashes in its wake. Death by war, torture, famine, depression: these are the topics relentlessly faced by the author, himself tragically familiar with these experiences through his parents' survival in World War II. In the opening poem, his mother says "Even though you're a grown man/and a teacher, we saw things/I don't want to tell you about." Well, this poet wants to tell you about them. It's worth listening.



3. 
   One critic dubbed Guzlowski as one of the "great recording angels" of
   our age. This is apt praise for a true poet whose words are simple,
   straightforward, and sing with raw power. Guzlowski's parents met in
   Hitler's labor camps and survived to build a life out of "lightning
   and ashes." This book is his testament to them.
   
   In the prologue poem, "My Mother Reads My Poem 'Cattle Train to
   Magdeburg'" the poet's mother shares a few of her memories, but only a
   few:
   
   Even though you're a grown man
   and a teacher, we saw things
   I don't want to tell you about.
   
   Guzlowski describes his mother as "the poet of dead ends, old despairs/written in whispers..." His father is "a man held together/with stitches he laced himself."
   
   This is a masterful work, poignant and beautiful. Highly recommended.



4. John Guzlowski's "Lightning and Ashes" is an important and beautiful book that should be widely read.
   
   Guzlowski's Polish-Catholic parents were victimized by the Nazis. His father, an orphan farm worker, became a slave laborer in the Buchenwald Concentration District. His mother, the child of a forest ranger, was also pressed into slave labor. Guzlowski himself was born as a Displaced Person after WW II. Eventually, his family made their way to the United States, where Guzlowski became a professor and poet.
   
   Fans of good writing and, indeed, anyone who has ever looked at his or her parents or grandparents and thought, "What were their lives like before I was born? What are they thinking about when they get that faraway look in their eyes?" will find much to love in this book.
   
   I didn't finish this book feeling as if I'd read yet another history of the Holocaust. I finished this book feeling as if I'd read a book about family, and about love, about the mysteries of the parent-child relationship, and, indeed, about the mysteries of the child-sibling-parent relationship.
   
   Guzlowski's poems about his witnessing his mother's abuse of his sister, and his pleading with his sister not to cry, transcend any given time or place. These are poems about family, and accurate, intimate snapshots of families under exceptional stress -- in this case, the stress of post-World War Two readjustment -- provide uniquely valuable insight into our own families.
   
   Guzlowski's poetry is easy to read. This is not the kind of poetry that requires its reader to have an advanced degree in obscure terminology to understand. Guzlowski uses vocabulary that a peasant or worker would use to name the items in his world: a chicken, a stove, a club, blood. Guzlowski's sentence structure is basic, as the examples, below, show:
   
   "These men belonged to the Germans
   the way a mule belonged to the Germans."
   
   "We soldiers are only human. We love
   to kill. It is the hidden God in each of us."
   
   "Dear Baby Jesus,
   If You have any pity left
   bestow it, please, on my wife.
   She suffers from the war.
   
   You know about her mother,
   and her sister and the baby,
   and the things
   she's told no one."
   
   Guzlowski's basic vocabulary and sentence structure reflect how aged peasants often talk. In this aesthetic choice, Guzlowski honors his parents. He communicates to us, his readers, that the language of peasants is good enough to communicate big, hard ideas and feelings.
   
   Guzlowski's basic words and sentences also reflect how American children hear their immigrant parents, who communicating across gulfs of language and experience, must revert to the lowest common denominators of speech.
   
   Guzlowski's basic language also reflects attempts at understanding by those of us who did not live through WW II or the Holocaust. Big words and complex sentences give way; what we hear and remember are images, for example, a girl discovering a sister's body parts sliced off and left lying in the dirt beside her corpse.
   
   Again, simple language. No attempts to sensationalize or sentimentalize.
   
   Guzlowski's "Lightning and Ashes" is among the best writing out there that attempts to come to terms with the hardest events of recent history. That's reason enough to read it.
   
   There are other reasons to purchase and read this book, though. The experience of Polish Catholics under the Nazis during World War Two has been distorted beyond recognition in recent "historical" texts that have sold outlandish numbers of copies and received the kind of press attention usually devoted to dysfunctional starlets. Guzlowski's slender volume of poems stands as corrective to those powerful, popular lies.
   
   There will be some measure of justice for the maligned dead when books like "Lightning and Ashes" receive as much attention as those other books whose titles I won't mention here.
   
   These dead are very patient in their wait for justice.
   
   Just ... buy and read this book. And pass it on.

No comments about Mark It with a Stone: A Moving Account of a Young Boy's Struggle to Survive the Nazi Death Camps.

5 comments about Passport to Life: Autobiographical Reflections on the Holocaust.

1. Passport to Life is a must read. It is clearly written and engaging. Dr. Tanay's story of survival is moving and reminds us all of how the genocide of the Nazi's must never be forgotten. Like the story of Passover, it must be retold over and over to remind new generations of the risk. This is especially true post 9-11. His last few chapters begin to look at the modern problem of Islamic fundamentalists and hopefully foreshadow another great book.



2. When you pick up this book you will not be able to put it down. The "story" is a moment-to-moment recounting of daily survival. The situations that this young boy finds himself in are beyond the imagination of most people who have grown up in a country like America. The resourcefulness and intelligence necessary for a young teenager to survive each day, not knowing what will become of him the next, are not only an amazing and fascinating story, but a LIFE of a child. Not only did Dr. Tanay survive, he also saved his mother, sister and close childhood friend. His father suffered at the hands of Amos Goeth, infamously renowned for his role in the Plascow camp depicted in Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Dr. Tanay's insight into his own plight, the plight of European Jewry as well as the psyche of hatred in religion and ideological movements is intelligent, moving and educational. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the human spirit and the analysis of societal and religious movements that can lead to assertions, beliefs and actions that are generated by arrogance of opinion.



3. Bring your thinking cap and your Kleenex box as this autobiographic analysis of the Holocaust years will grab both your intellect and your emotional senses. The writing style generates empathy and is sophisticated, yet easy reading. Amazing is Dr. Tanay's ability to add palatible, forensic psychological analysis to the terrifying events of his youth. His emphasis on thoroughness and accuracy is startling. His accomplishments as an adult, he recognizes, are dwarfed by his accomplishments in just four years during his teens. This very detailed and personal story of luck, skill, ingenuity, deception, devotion and love makes unique and fascinating reading. This should make a great film- I hope Spielberg is reading. This is a required read for Holocaust scholars and a desired read for those who "enjoy" a story of a boy's ability and will to be a survivor.



4. "PASSPORT to LIFE' by Dr. Emanuel Tanay brilliantly describes the heroic survival of an adolescent to save himself, his younger sister and his mother, through unbelievable circumstances, during the German occupation of Poland and Hungary in WWII.
   This autobiographical story describes a different type of holocaust survival, than those in the Nazi concentration camps.
   Mark Fintel (A holocaust survivor)



5. Passport To Life: Autobiographical Reflections on the Holocaust is the firsthand story of Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a successful forensic psychiatrist and a Jew who survived the depredations of Nazi genocide during World War II, when he was only a child. After the war, his experienced hatred and the threat of murder in his native Poland, but relative peace and asylum in Germany, and later moved to America. Sixty years later, his testimony is not only a narration of and reflection upon the genocidal atrocities he personally witnessed and experienced. It reveals the struggles of survivors to cling to life to be heroic and resourceful, in a situation where lack of power and arms among Jews in general meant that direct resistance against the Nazis would only guarantee personal extermination. Passport To Life is also an erudite and scholarly treatise on the nature of hatred, and the core human impulses that are all too easily channeled into sadistic and masochistic fervor ("you have to be carefully taught not to hate", the author warns), whether by organized religion, ideology, totalitarian government, or other sources. Passport To Life is particularly vital in that it deconstructs mythologies that have arisen about the Holocaust. For example, the author was personally present in Warsaw at the time the Uprising began, and warns against characterizing it as a true rebellion, since it claimed the lives of very few German soldiers and had zero military impact upon the course of the war. Rather, he characterizes it as a mass suicide of Jews who preferred to die from German guns rather than be sent to Treblinka. Since World War II there has been a tendency to overdramatize or exaggerate Christian rescues of Jewish people; Tanay respects the nobility of those who did so but also carefully delineates examples in which the truth is lost to the need to mythologize history and a few make good men into saints rather than confront the overall horror of what really happened. Tanay further dissects with clinical expertise the nature of hared itself, demonstrating that the most virulent hatreds are perpetrated against individuals or groups the hater knows nothing about, or believes fantasies about; hatred is not borne of logic or reason, and therefore rationality is no defense against it. Emphasizing the critical importance of broadcasting a counter-message to the many widespread propaganda of hate today, including but not limited to hatred against unbelievers spread within specific Islamic states, Passport To Life offers the key to understanding and hopefully preventing worse geneocidal deprevations in the future. Though it deals with complex psychological issues, Passport To Life is written in plain terms that invite no confusion regardless of the readers' level of familiarity with history or psychology. Passport To Life is far, far more than an autobiographical memoir. It is more than a record of Holocaust atrocities. It is quite literally the embodiment of its title, an indispensible contribution to Holocaust literature shelves and psychology shelves, and bears the absolute highest recommendation to school libraries, public libraries, Holocaust literature collections, scholars and lay readers alike. Do not pass up this book.