No comments about Leap to Life: Triumph over Nazi Evil.

5 comments about The Periodic Table.

1. Like other reviewers, I sometimes found the science in this book a bit hard to follow. But that was made up for by the general loveliness of Levi's dry wit. My favorite examples-
   
   - "a livered [solidified] paint is much more rebellious, more refractory to your will than a lion in its mad pounce; but, let's admit it, it's also less dangerous."
   
   - "Gina then made a cruel decision: if she couldn't bind herself to the man she cared for, the only one, there would not be any other . . . she forbade herself marriage forever in a refined and merciless manner, that is, by getting married."
   
   -"It was clear that Bonino's story would be far from brief; but I remembered how many long stories I myself had inflicted on people, on those who wanted to listen and those who didn't. I remembered that it is written [Deuteronomy 10:19] 'Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.' and I settled back comfortably in my chair."
   
   - [before the start of the book] "Troubles overcome are good to tell."
   
   This is not a Holocaust memoir like some of Levi's other works; it is a group of [mostly autobiographical] little essays, almost all about Levi's pre- and post-Holocaust life, by a great writer who just happened to have been in Auschwitz.



2. Entertaining, sad, and insightful. What a loss to the world. "Carbon" chapter is fascinating. Began second reading immediately following the first.



3. It's an emblematic title for a book designed whit tales that confection a whole history. The book is a metaphor of the periodic table: elements conform substance so words conform ideas.
   
   Primo Levi is a mentor; he begins a melancholic tale, connecting us with characters and at less expected time we receive a little lesson about chemistry, -it's a good way to spread science, didn't it?- but that's not enough for him so we also get his testimony about how he suffered WWII.
   
   Primo's statement is hard: "... I felt guilty at being man, because man had built Auschwitz..." at last it's not clear if he got peace at his mind; but, I must recognize he is honest, because somewhere in the book he says that Primo Levi writes for Primo Levi.
   
   In conclusion, it's a gentle book wrote to present a testimony of a man who was born Jewish in Italy, studied chemistry and suffered the war.



4. I didn't know what to expect when picking up this book. I'd recently finished the not unrelated Garden of the Finzi-Continis and thought I might find some variant on this. Yes, both books consider Jewish-Italian culture in the years surrounding WWII, with the specter of the holocaust in the background (mainly). But they are quite different. F.C. has at its roots the humanities, and P.T., the sciences. And what I most enjoyed about P.T. was the chemistry. It's a rarity in literature to find a subtle appreciation for the career of the scientist, and Levi succeeds admirably. This book would be an outstanding choice for any science and engineering student to read just to see how one can ply a trade, be it in the laboratory, the mine, or the consulting business. Bravo, Dr. Levi.



5. In this collection of stories, Primo Levi lets go of the Holocaust theme, and tells the story of his life through the prism of his profession as a chemist. As others have said, each chapter is headed up by a different element, and through the properties of that element he explores a theme. There are two chapters--"Lead" and "Mercury"--which are completely fanciful. "Lead" is about a mythical tribe that makes its living mining lead. Not knowing that the metal is deadly, they all ultimately die of a mysterious disease, but they accept it as their fate, the price they pay for fulfilling a special role among men. "Mercury" is about a couple living on a desert island, which holds inexhaustible reserves of mercury, and what happens when two newcomers, one an alchemist, joins them. Both stories are riveting.
   
   I have to admit that I, as well as my very literate book group, lost a lot by having forgotten most if not all of our knowledge of chemistry--not that we had much to begin with. Some familiarity with the science I'm sure reveals a whole new level to the writing.
   
   Some reviewers criticized the lack of insight about the author's time in Auschwitz, but I see that as one of the amazing aspects of this book. For good reason, so many Holocaust survivors are irreversibly marked and changed forever by their experiences. That Levi can write a rich and compelling book that gives weight and significance to the other parts of his life is evidence of an amazingly strong and resilient spirit.

1 comments about Child of a Turbulent Century (Jewish Lives).

1. This is an absolutely fascinating book. Erlich is an engaging and talented writer. This well written and lively memoir covers a broad terrain including pre-WWII Jewish life in Poland Russia, the rise of the Bund (Jewish labor movement), Erlich's emergence as a leading academic in the field of Russian literature, American academic life in the 1950s and beyond, and much more. Highly recommended.

5 comments about A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry.

1. Hermann Goering is reputed to have said, "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my pistol."
   This, from one of the most prolific looters of art in recent history, takes some explanation which, as it happens, is not forthcoming.
   However, upon reading of Varian Fry's heroic attempts to keep Europe from "blowing its brains out" by detaining and, certainly, eventually killing intellectuals wholesale, one may have a bit of sympathy for Goering.
   It isn't the art, it's the artists.
   Fry was an odd character from his earliest days when he easily manipulated his parents into letting him avoid school and do whatever it was that his latest whim desired.
   He had an unusual though substantial education, and was a writer and journalist and left-wing intellectual in the Thirties. He was also what used to be called "neurotic" in that he had a number of personality traits we could call counterproductive, if we could ever figure out what Fry might think of as productive. He had a bit of hypochondria, was sometimes hardpressed to make a decision, made friends and lost them over small things, and married an older woman with whom he had a relationship whose aspects, as Marino details them, make the reader squirm, just a bit, over what Marino doesn't detail.
   Whatever he managed to accomplish in those days seems to have been a function of high intelligence and fierce energy, opposed by various personality quirks.
   And then he went to Marseille to rescue European intellectuals.
   His transformation at that point is amazing. From intellectual dilettante, indulging his personal whims, he became, overnight, indistinguishable from a hardened and trained operative of the OSS or the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). Marino does not tell us how that happened, since it is almost certainly inexplicable.
   Unfortunately for Fry and others, the same process did not occur in many of those he tried to help.
   If there is one thing I did not expect in reading this book, it was the difficulty, sometimes the near impossibility, of chivvying various intellectuals through reasonably simple (given the circumstances) procedures that would save their lives.
   Some, told to keep a low profile while things were worked out, paraded themselves in Marseille's restaurants and bars. Others refused simple instructions, or jibbed at the last moment, doing either nothing or something quite stupid. Fry spent a good deal of the time and resources he had--not much of either--in bailing out individuals or repairing or replacing procedures they'd put in jeopardy.
   It is almost too good to be true, in terms of literary contrast, to find that Fry also had a group of British soldiers captured prior to Dunkirk to get out of the France. These men, fit and cheerful, followed directions without question, solved what problems remained, and were successfully sent home. There could have been no greater contrast between ordinary people and intellectuals.
   Any reader who becomes involved in the narrative must, although sixty years and more have gone, become frustrated at the inability of Fry's charges to get out of their own way. One, after having been trouble on the European end, arrived safely in New York and began babbling to all about every secret arrangement Fry had made to get him and others safely out of the Gestapo's clutches.
   Fry, for this period, was clear-minded and hard-headed and full of energy. In periods of crisis, people can go into overdrive for extended periods of time. Eventually, they collapse. Fry, however, managed to work like a fiend for months in circumstances of the greatest stress. He never lost his focus and, indeed, was able to operate outside any constraints that one might have thought his earlier life placed on him. In one case, having been betrayed and done out of a substantial amount of funding, Fry met with some of Marseille's underworld bosses and took out a murder contract on the traitor.
   Eventually, having been sent home by the authorities, he returned to the intellectual's life he'd left, including neuroses, counterproductive activities, odd relationships, and eventual death in obscurity.
   The obscurity is partly a matter of official activity. It wasn't until many years later, when Fry was honored in Israel as one of the Righteous, that Warren Christopher apologized on behalf of the State Department for all the obstructionism Fry had had to face from the United States.
   Fry saved a great many intellectuals from death, providing the West, mostly the United States, with an intellectual boost (some became successful screenwriters as well), by finding within himself a person absolutely invisible to anyone looking at him either before or after his exploits. The greatest mystery of the story is that contradiction.
   The second greatest mystery is why saving intellectuals from certain death is so much like herding cats.
   What is it about them?



2. As the other reviewers indicate, this is an excellent book. The setting of Fry's heroism, Marseille and the environs of the South of France, permit an oblique perspective on the Holocaust, which unfolded principally much farther to the north and the east. Without the overwhelming machinery of the sealed boxcars, the gas chambers, the crematoria, some of the underlying causes of the Holocaust come into focus: the bureacratic obstructionism of the U.S. State department, motivated partly by national self interest and partly by the genteel anti-Semitism of individual Foreign Officers, provides a glimpse into how value-free institutional behaviour can be--a deadly underlying cause in Hitler's rise. The sympathetic behaviour of peasants living on the border and of petty police officers contrasts with the callous, and often actively evil, behaviour of their official leaders.

   But always, there is the central enigma of Varian Fry himself--a complex, difficult , troubled man, in many ways a talented failure, who because of his clear moral vision became the catalyst for saving the flower of European artists and writers from the clutches of the Gestapo and their collaborators.

   In another book, Todorov posits that in extreme moral situations, the basic moral unit for effective action is two, because he notes that the rescuers--Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were rarely individuals; often they were husbands and wives. Todorov's idea is the combination of personality traits and practical abilities that produces effective resistence to an overwhelming social climate of evil is beyond the range of a single individual, and that it requires a minimum of two people to act effectively in this kind of environment.

   Interestingly, Fry did organise a staff of incredibly courageous co-workers to help save his "clients", but the intriguing question is whether his very flaws were part of Fry's mysterious ability to distance himself from his society (ie American) and to plunge into effective action to resist Hitler's evil earlier than almost anyone else.

   This intriguing book is very rewarding and worthwhile. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of an occasional passage in which the author, who seems to be almost super-abundantly talented, seems to stray into almost novelistic detail that would seem unlikely to be supported by his research. This is mostly atmospheric, and doesn't cast a shadow on the facts themselves.




3. I encourage anyone interested in WWII to read this book. Especially fascinating to me were the depiction of important characters in pre-war Europe. I gobbled the book, then started looking for more - I would advise against following this book with Varian Fry's own account of this period, because it seems like Marino covered it pretty well.



4. Sometime, not-so-admirable people do incredibly admirable things, and find in themselves qualities that no one, themselves included, knew were there. Such was the case of Varian Fry.

   In August 1940, Varian Fry boarded a plane in New York and flew to Spain, and from there to Marseilles, on a mission that would resonate far beyond his imagination.

   Fry was an historian, involved with "radical" politics: the Spanish Civil War, the looming Holocaust. He went from observing and writing about the coming crises to actively participating in a way that no one who knew him, or even he himself, would have anticipated. Far from being identified as a humanitarian, he was, in fact, an intellectual snob, a classicist by training.

   But he put his life on the line in an effort to save the leading cultural, intellectual, and artistic lights of Europe. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he was getting himself, or his New York sponsors, into, so the evolution of this rather untouchable, remote aesthete into a mover and shaker who consorted with the Marseilles underworld (and enjoyed it!) and worked outside the law is fascinating to observe.

   Varian Fry was personally responsible for saving the lives of, among others, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger, Victor Serge, Heinrich Mann, André Gide, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt... He also saved about 1500 other lesser known people. Altogether, in the year he spent in France before being arrested and kicked out by the Vichy puppets of the Gestapo, he turned himself inside out, discovering in himself a depth of caring and feeling that neither he, nor most of the people who knew him, would have suspected was present.

   The story itself is so riveting that the book would have to be illiterate not to be absorbing. I found it well-written, with fascinating studies of the characters who worked with, and against Fry. It sort of fades out at the end, but then again, so did Fry, after his return to New York. He died in 1967, unrecognized for his work until the year before his death. In 1996, Israel further declared him "Righteous Among the Nations," the only American so honored.




5. If you are interested in the dark events leading to the holocaust, especially French collaboration, this is an absorbing book. For those not quite so familiar with Vichy France it will be an eye opener, for there can be no doubt that many French officials bent over backwards to serve their German masters during those shameful periodic roundups and deportations of the Jews in France. New to this reader, were the descriptions of the horrible conditions of the "refugee camps" in Vichy-controlled France. These were not the infamous concentration camps because detainees could be released, but they were, nonetheless, death camps simply because of shameful conditions and inhuman neglect. In fact, some 3,000 Jews and non- Jews died in those camps in southern France because of the atrocious conditions.

   But French Vichy officials were not the only villains. Americans may be surprised to learn just how anti-Semitic U.S. officialdom was during the early years. One could argue that were it not for the openly anti-Semitic treatment of Jews by our own State Department there would be no book written about Varian Fry. If all of the US officials in France, in the Embassy and various consulates, had a mind set to save the Jews it is quite likely thousands more could have been saved. Varian Fry filled a void. He was fighting two battles, the enemy in France and the enemy at home, in the form of the State Department. It was a shameful period, only fairly recently recognized by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

   This book, about Varian Fry's rescue of the Jews under the auspices of the American Emergency Rescue Committee, raises some questions. Why was he not recognized sooner? And why did many of those Jews rescued seem to turn their backs on him, once saved? Part of the answer is simply that Fry is not a very heroic figure, not even particularly likable. For some he was distant, not easy to know, but he did what he had to do at the time and that did not include being popular with everyone. It is unfortunate that personality flaws probably did play a role early on in the assessment of his role in that period. Even after reading this book, I cannot shake an ambivalent view of Fry as a tragic figure caught very much by accident in an heroic period. Yet, what he did rightfully makes him a hero.

   One must read this book to better understand that tragic period and place. Marseilles was the end of a funnel at the beginning of the war. Jews from all over Europe were spilling into that port city, desperate to get out, their backs against the Mediterranean wall, but not a non-Jewish friend in sight to help. Enter a few good people like Fry. It would suffice to be a hero at that time in that place simply by feeling compassion. Elie Wiesel expressed it when he said, "In those times one climbed to the summit of humanity simply by remaining human."

   There were other heros and heroines to be sure, the cooperative police inspector, the compassionate Prefet official. I had just finished reading Mary Jayne Gold's Memoir of Marseilles, 1940-1941 in which she recounts her version of that same rescue effort. My feeling is that she deserves a little better treatment than Marino gave her. The fact that Fry may have dismissed her should not diminish her contribution. Although deceased now after a long life, she genuinely felt that those were really the only useful years of her life. (See Amazon.com for review of her book, "Crossroads Marseilles, Nineteen Hundred and Forty" by Mary Jayne Gold)

   In short, an absorbing well researched book. Although many of the players on that Marseilles stage have now passed from the scene, including Varian Fry, Marino had the good fortune of being able to interview many of those still living. The book is not at all pedantic, but I do wish to thank the author for expanding my vocabulary with "spavined" and "solipsism".

3 comments about Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews.

1. After returning from a tour of Budapest last summer I returned eager to pick up the story of other diplomats, besides Wallenberg, and others involved in the rescue of jews during the Holocaust. Wallenberg seems to get the most attention probably due to his tragic end but we must remember all who acted in face of great danger. People such as Anger, Lutz, Perlasca and other who were denied proper tribute in the period immediately following the war. My problem with this book is that it lacks notes and an index. Tschuy's account of Lutz published in German may include the needed footnotes but you will not find them here. Readers looking for a documented account should look elsewhere.



2. Well written and intense story of a true hero. Theo Tschuy spent numerous years and traveled behind the iron curtain to conduct research for this book. He met Carl Lutz personally and considered Mr. Lutz's story too tremendous to not write about

   The book flows easily and is a must for history buffs everywhere. Thanks, Uncle Theo!




3. This book represents a very thorough research into the exact details of a rescue operation. As we have been fed countless stories with vastly inflated numbers, this book is a breath of fresh air. The author utilizes his research of archives held by the Swiss government and never before available. The story unfolds of the efforts made by Carl Lutz in saving lives in what is possibly the largest rescue operation of World War II. Without embellishing the heroics of Consul Lutz we are given the details of this story in a very readable fashion. This book authenticates the real number of survivors in Budapest, Hungary based upon the known number found following the war. Prior to this we have been given arbitrary numbers that always total more than the actual number of survivors. This book is a breath of fresh air for the serious reader of Holocaust activities This leaves the reader feeling that indeed there are good people in this world, and that Carl Lutz was one of them. I strongly recommend anyone interested in Holocaust or humanistic stories to read this book.

1 comments about Who Loves You Like This.

1. This is a horrifying personal account of a young girl's experience of the holocaust. She tells her story in direct and unadorned language, simply relating each experience as it occurred. We watch her childhood stripped from her and her belief in humanity almost broken. But Bruck observes her experiences with an acute and truthful eye - she speaks the unspeakable, revealing how under the worst human conditions, kindness and love so rarely shine through. We are faced with unpalatable truths about how close to the surface our savage natures lie. This book should be read for its uncompromising honesty, and the extraordinary story it tells.

No comments about Buchenwald: A Survivor's Memories.

No comments about Music of Another World (Jewish Lives).

2 comments about The Warriors: My Life As A Jewish Soviet Partisan (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust).

1. There is a wealth of information in this book, notably a detailed map of relevant locations. I primarily focus on matters not elaborated by other reviewers.
   
   Zissman describes a time a prewar Poland during which he had a rosy view of Communism. He does not explain how he could have thought this in view of such things as the ruthless totalitarianism and the removal of Jews from top positions in the Soviet Union by Stalin in the mid-1930's. Or how could he be ignorant of these facts?
   
   In 1939, the Soviets occupied then-eastern Poland, a territory with a mixed Polish-Byelorussian-Jewish population. Zissman essentially confirms some historians (e. g., Jerzy Robert Nowak) as to the major cause of Jews being sent to Siberia: Jews manifesting their intent of going to the German-occupied zone (p. 29).
   
   Zissman describes the existence of a Polish militia which briefly served the Germans after their 1941 invasion: "Then they began arresting those who had worked for the Soviets." (pp. 41-42). Later, the Germans shot the Poles along with the Jews (p. 47). Poles who continued to serve the Germans clearly did it under duress: "If he [the Polish guard] dared show any mercy to the Jews, they [the Germans] would shoot him or send him to a concentration camp." (p. 53)
   
   In common with some other Jewish sources (e. g.,Deliverance: The Diary of Michael Maik, a True Story), Zissman confirms the fact that Germans, not Poles, were the main killers of Jedwabne's Jews: "Later on, some Jews who had fled Jedwabno for Derechin told us that when the Germans first entered their town, they had herded all the Jews into a barn and set it ablaze. Anyone who tried to get out was cut down by machine-gun fire." (p. 42). [The discovery of WWI-vintage bullet casings at the site doesn't disprove their connection with the Jedwabne massacre. The Germans probably relegated obsolete weaponry to the shootings of unarmed civilians.]
   
   Bor Komorowski gave an order for the AK to liquidate bandits who were preying on Polish farmers. Apropos to this, Zissman mentions bandit bands of Soviet soldiers who had been trapped behind German lines after the 1941 invasion (p. 78). Later, Zissman was a member of one of the "pozorny" groups that masqueraded as the AK: "When carrying out `bombings' [bandit raids], we impersonated Polish Underground fighters, the point being to discredit the White Poles with the farmers. From the farms, besides food and clothing, we took naphtha, saws, and axes--the farmers would miss these things most of all." (p. 149). How many crimes attributed to the AK (including the killings of fugitive Jews) were actually the deeds of the "pozornys"?
   
   After the Soviet "liberation" of Poland in 1944, Zissman was approached by a Jewish NKVD officer and invited to join (pp. 161-162). He did.
   
   Zissman comments on the reaction to Jewish owners returning for their properties: "Besides not wanting to give up their loot, they [current owners] feared being sent to Siberia as collaborators. Many were ready to kill any returning Jews." (p. 161). Could the fear of being accused of Nazi collaboration, ipso facto for possessing Jewish property, been itself, in many other such instances, a significant motivator for killing returning Jewish owners?



2. Too often have I read memoirs from Jewish partisans who served either with the Poles, Ukrainians or in this case Russians and Byelorussia and the sad fact that they had to face anti-semitism within these partisan groups and detachments. Again and again they would prove themselves to be resilient fighters, brave soldiers, and heroic warriors when the time came in the heat of battle. Some lived through it all but many more would die and their stories need to be heard, understood and remembered. Not only suffering from the Germans and their local collaborators but also at the hands of the same people whom they sought out for help and protecting and more so to simply join to seek vengeance. This book is a small glimpse into that world, a world where the enemy might be a man you called a friend not too long ago and someone whom you entrusted your life to in a split second decision when had yet to lose faith in humanity and the generous spirit you know people must have deep down inside. Yet the end result more often than not was betrayal, death, starvation, torture, and torment. Stories abound of the dozens of actions undertaken by these partisans and the huge amount of damage they were able to do to the Germans and locals who were helping them. At the same time we are also told about the German responses to these actions, local people who might have had nothing to do with it were robbed, beaten, and killed for simply being at the wrong place and at the wrong time. War is war, I only wish that the author had included everything in this book, sadly he himself says that he left out stories of 'cruelty, inhumanity, and atrocity.' I think that was a mistake on his part, the more we know the better informed we'll be and hopefully we might avert something like this from ever happening again.

No comments about The Little Yellow Train: Survival and Escape from Nazi France (June 1940-March 1944).