3 comments about The Parnas: A Scene from the Holocaust.

1. Insightful,analytical and comprehensive portrait of a loving character.Is a masterpiece. Full of drama,but it was a real life drama.The "parnas" was a sensitive man struggling with his own imaginative fears but valiantly facing the real fear.



2. Pisa, Italy. July, 1944. As the Nazis and Allies collide, Giuseppe Pardo Roques, lay leader of Pisa's Jewish community, is a refugee in his own home. Struggling to display strength in spite of a bizarre and debilitating neurosis, the cultured, learned and generous Pardo plays host to several others, Jews and Christians both, seeking shelter from the battle. The Parnas reconstructs Pardo's final days and his ultimate confrontation with the Nazis. At once memoir (the author knew the characters), psychological profile, and meditation on good and evil, the book's defining quality is compassion. I'll read it again.



3. This is an incredible story.

   Silvano Arieti was an extremely gifted, and very well known, psychiatrist. He was born in Pisa, Italy and, as a child, looked to The Parnas--or synagogue leader, Giuseppe Pardo Roques--as a mentor. The Parnas was mentally ill. His illness inspired Arieti's career--which, as it developed, convinced Arieti all the more that "mental illness may...espress the nobility of man."

   Arieti dreamed he would one day cure The Parnas, but The Parnas was murdered by the Nazis in WWII. Decades later, Arieti recreates the last days of The Parnas, providing us with a moving potrait of an incredible man in terrible times.

   While Arieti's conclusions are profound, this book is definately accessible to the high school reader.

No comments about The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, Day.

1 comments about Progeny of Light-Vanished in Darkness.

1. On April 20, 1943, one thousand young Jews were transported from Berlin to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Only seven survived. Eva Brewster and her mother were among the survivors. Her husband and baby daughter were not. Progeny Of Light/Vanished In Darkness is the compelling story of Eva Brewster's cultured and happy youth, the tragic events that led to her capture and transport to Auschwitz, her horrific years in that infamous death camp, and the time following her internment as she began to rebuild her life Ross Brewster, a young British intelligence officer. Progeny Of Light/Vanished In Darkness is an unforgettable, vividly written, candid testament to the unspeakable horror of the Third Reich campaign to exterminate whole populations of "undesirables", as well as a welcome addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature and simple testament to the endurance, sacrifice, and resilience of the human spirit.

No comments about Out of the Shadows: The Legacy of Two Holocaust Survivors.

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

No comments about New Dawn: A Triumph of Life After the Holocaust (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust).

3 comments about Biancastella: A Jewish Partisan in World War II.

1. I could not put this book down! The author wrote a personal and honest story which seemed believable. I recommend it to all.



2. My family came to the U.S. from Austria in 1907. If we had stayed, the majority of us would have been killed. This book is the personal account of a young man from a well to do Jewish family in Vienna. When the Nazis came to Austria his family fled, and when he could no longer flee, he decided to join a partisan group to combat the Nazis in Northern Italy. This book is honest and to the point. As a person who spent six years in the Marines and has a degree in History, I found Burger's accounts to be very real. His first-hand experience with resisting the Nazis is something everyone should read so it never happens again. If the world had reacted to Hitler the way Burger did as a young man, WWII probably would have been avoided. This book should be included as part of the curriculum of every WWII History course.



3. What struck me with this book was its honesty, the warts-and-all view of a boy's attempt at dealing with a nightmare by design; his incredible survival instincts and the places they took him. This book stands as testimony to the reality that Jews did, in fact, stand up in the face of Adolf Hilter through whatever limited or even extraordinary means opportunty presented. You can't write fiction like this first-hand account, though people like Herman Wouk have tried with great market success. The author, for example, chances upon people like Louis Armstrong giving us milestones as a frame of reference, but with a sincerity the best historical fiction writer sorely lacks.

1 comments about Varieties of Fear: Growing up Jewish Under Nazism and Communism.

1. Peter Kenez was my Russian History professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His lectures were always balanced and informative, and were greatly enhanced by his dry wit. Throughout the class he gave small hints of his life before coming to the United States, but never spelled out precisely the details. So it was with great enthusiasm that I read this book, which allowed me to learn the background of a man that I had already come to know. The best aspect of this book is that Professor Kenez's personality shines through - reading it is like listening to the man speak, but without the Hungarian accent. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern European history.

3 comments about Born Jewish: A Childhood in Occupied Europe.

1. This is a spellbinding account of a Jewish teenager in Belgium, during the war. The second of four boys in a loving Jewish family in Brussels, Liebman gives density and texture to the anxieties, terrors, and perils of life under the Nazis. Always on the run, sometimes together, sometimes apart, Liebman is a superb observer of the venalities and kindnesses that accompany him through these tragic days. It is also a compelling coming of age story. All except the last chapter, which takes advantage of his survivor's status to mount a soap box against racism, with a special target being Zionism (hence Jacqueline Rose's breathless intro). Even aside from its polemics, the chapter feels like it is tacked on to what is otherwise a superb addition to Holocaust memoirs.



2. Born Jewish: A Childhood In Occupied Europe by graphically authored by Marcel Liebman and deftly translated by Liz Heron is a vivid memoir of one man's childhood tale of Nazi control, familial struggle, and the betrayal he faced from more powerful Jews in times already hard. As a revealing and historically important biographical account of international history during the second world war, Born Jewish is an invaluable documentation which is very highly recommended for historians and laymen alike, as each and all may take some interest and understanding in this book. Born Jewish is a compelling and valued addition to the growing library of Holocaust literature so fundamentally necessary if the world is never again to experience genocide on such a massive and methodical scale.



3. The holocaust is a "popular" topic. I don't mean that in the positive sense, but in the publishing sense. Much has been published on the holocaust, Nazi occupation and the party Hitler hosted. History demands that people write it and people demand to hear "the truth" about the past. "Born Jewish" offers something different, something that isn't necessarily in demand, but is neccessary for the canon of work on the war and aftermath of the holocaust.
   Marcel Liebman, for anyone unfamiliar with his other work, is a reknowned Marxist/Leninist/Soviet Union historian and historical analysist. This is clearly, his most personal work, but he does not leave his politics or his academic work at the door. "Born Jewish", as he says, "questions history", not in the sense of the accuracy of the event(Liebman writes how dismayed he is that the world did not fully accept Hannah Arendt's accounts of Jewish collaboration with the Nazi's as having actually happened.) but in the sense of the accuracy of historical accounts of it.
   The new perspective Liebman adds is one often obscured by accounts of Nazi occupation and anti-semitism: that class conflict did not dissolve the day the swastika was raised over Europe's cities. In fact, the Nazi's capitalized on the class difference amongst Jewish populations. For Liebman, the horror of his brother's execution at Auschwitz is intimantly connected with the horrors of exploitation and collaboration within the Jewish community.
   Liebman composes his memories carefully and beautifully, resisting sacrilization of experiences he realizes must answer to history as much as to his own heart, and criticizing the radical Zionism that he was to see flourish during his lifetime.
   The incredible forward by Jacqueline Rose is a great appetite whetter for the book. She sums up the book far better than I ever could: "Amongst other things, this memoir stands as an extraordinary rejoinder to those who insist that Israel is the only and definitive answer to the genocide of the Jews...It is one of the strenghts of [the memoir] that Liebman can be so unerring in this analysis while at the same time acknowledging the point where understanding trails off into uncomprehending terror, where the most painful part of mourning trumps all rational thought."
   I highly reccommend this book for anyone who was interested in the slough of memoirs on the subject. It should be read alongside Judith Butler's new book on mourning, violence, 9/11, anti-semitism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, "Precarious Life".

5 comments about The Stone Pillow : The Life and Times of Jona Lerman.

1. The Stone Pillow is a personal account of the triumphs and tragedies of a family affected by large-scale historical events: Nazism, the Holocaust, World War II, and the founding of the State of Israel. This book describes the struggle of Jona Lerman and the other co-founders of the State of Israel to preserve, protect, and defend a land far away from a war-torn Europe and a discriminatory civil society. While accomplishing that goal might involve smuggling illegal refugees or hiding guns in a toilet, their eyes were always on the prize.

   At a deeper level, the book depicts a tangible shift in consciousness over the twentieth century. In the first chapter, when three Jewish men damage the ritual bathhouse in their small Polish hometown of Tomaszov (so that their non-believer friend Asher might be buried in a respectable Jewish plot), we may laugh at the fact that the rabbi and many others believed that God was the source of the "miracle." The reader of today would tend to uphold a more secular viewpoint, that is, to examine first whether or not other human beings have been responsible for the damage before attributing it to mystical causes.

   But the modern point-of-view is not to be necessarily taken for granted. Recent social thought has been affected by progress in scientific and technological knowledge as well as its evil twin, the misuse of this knowledge. Both human creations have, in large measure, propelled our belief system from a largely "God-centered universe" to a more secular, human-oriented frame of reference. However, this shift in consciousness does not mean that there is no middle ground between the two.

   Hence lies another interpretation of the ritual bathhouse story.

   Perhaps the three young men who did the damage were actually acting on behalf of God. While their impish behavior and self-congratulatory tone may reveal their desire to thumb their noses at the authorities of the day, it is equally likely that they may have had a "superior" understanding of Jewish tradition in contrast to the official religious arbiters. While the truth can never be known, this seeming parable makes it appear likely that God could intervene indirectly in human affairs through the medium of concrete individuals who may or may not be divinely inspired, and with or without their complicity.

   While many Jewish thinkers have traditionally believed that the Jews ought not to return to Israel until the Messiah is present, Jona Lerman and other practical-minded individuals nevertheless decided that they must make a home in Palestine before the Messiah's arrival. We will never know whether the founding of the State of Israel was part, or will be part, of a divine plan (as some believe) or whether its founding was a solely human creation. From a religious perspective, what is even more elusive is discovering whether and how concrete individuals contributing to this effort may or may not be working God's will. But from a secular perspective, Jona Lerman's personal account allows us some insight into how these brave men and women forged a unique place for themselves in Israeli and world history by bucking orthodox religious thought and customs.

   One thing that Jona understood over the years is that there is a middle-ground between the secular and the religious, between reason and faith. Like the three young men who committed acts of vandalism in the small Polish town, Jona and his fellows may have had a "superior" understanding of Jewish tradition: in this particular case, they took the practical road that allowed themselves, their families, and their companions to survive within a world gone awry. Hence, this intimate portrait of Jona and his family-from their escape from Europe to their caring for a seriously ill child in the United States-not only helps us to discover the ways in which people can make history and history can make people but also presents us with the raw material that allows us to examine the nature of history itself.




2. Israel's problems and dilemmas are begging for solutions that seem just out of reach. THE STONE PILLOW is a memoir of Jona Lerman who, in 1934, left Poland and went to Palestine to help recreate a Jewish state. His experiences in the defense forces and as a laborer are related in a compelling human drama that move beyond the historical content, and the reader begins to understand the devastation wrought by religious fanaticism, territorial disputes, and the hostile feelings of Arab foes and friends. Jona proves to be a selfless, ingenious man who made "penny soup" out of wilted greens, carried 80-pound sacks of flour on his back to help feed the hungry during the 1948 siege of Jerusalem, and who remained devoted to Israel even after coming to live in the United states. THE STONE PILLOW is an entertaining and thoughtful saga, masterfully written by Arlene Kurtis, who translated Jona's memoirs into a gripping, timely narrative.



3. In a time when the entire world was locked in the turmoil of World War II and all attention was turned to the unspeakable acts that the Nazi's were committing, a group of pioneers built a country. This book tells a story that is seldom told... one which needs to be remembered and applauded. A handful of people held together by a common belief built a nation which stands today as an ongoing symbol of Jewish pride. When I read the story of this man, I was able to understand the struggle to build a nation and the bond that they maintain with it to this day. The Stone Pillow serves as a tribute to a man who has led a remarkable life, endured so many hardships, and lost so much... but was able to endure and give birth to a family, a country, and an ideal (Zionism) for generations to come.



4. In a time when the entire world was locked in the turmoil of World War II and all attention was turned to the unspeakable acts that the Nazi's were committing, a group of pioneers built a country. This book tells a story that is seldom told... one which needs to be remembered and applauded. A handful of people held together by a common belief built a nation which stands today as an ongoing symbol of Jewish pride. When I read the story of this man, I was able to understand the struggle to build a nation and the bond that they maintain with it to this day. The Stone Pillow serves as a tribute to a man who has led a remarkable life, endured so many hardships, and lost so much... but was able to endure and give birth to a family, a country, and an ideal (Zionism) for generations to come.



5. The Stone Pillow is an interesting biography of Jona Lerman, a Jewish man whose life story spans some important events of the 20th Century. Born into an orthodox wealthy Jewish family in Poland in the early 1900's, he chose to go to Palestine as a pioneer to help establish the Jewish State of Israel. While there he fought in the Haganah, married and had two children. The family he left behind in Poland were killed in concentration camps. Almost devestated when his son contracted Polio, he brought his wife and children to the U.S. to avail his son of the latest treatments. The trials and tribulations of the Lerman Family as immigrants in the U.S. are climaxed by Jona's return to Israel to fight when the country went to war. Co-author Arlene Kurtis did a fine job of making this book interesting reading for all ages. From seniors who have lived through this period of time, to young students who need to learn more about the difficulties of the century, all will find this book very stirring. I enjoyed reading it very much.