4 comments about From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Jewish Lives).

1. I thought this book was okay, but for some reason I was not as enthralled by it as "Escape from Sobibor". Maybe this was because I found it difficult to relate to the author of this book so much. It is definitely worth reading, though, for anybody who is interested in knowing about the resistance to the Nazis.



2. I thought this book was amazing. My history teacher recommended this to me after i read 'man's search for meaning'.
   It's an incredibly honest and gripping book on the life of a young man survivng sobibor and the activies around it.
   It will definately make you be thankful for what you have and not to take anything for granted. A truly inspirational book.



3. Mr. Thomas Toivi Blatt gives us a chilling look into what it was like to live and just survive under a barbaric system; one where one's neighbors and friends became their enemies and pursuers in the aim to please the occupation forces of Nazism. Mr. Thomas Toivi Blatt and others like him survived against incredible odds to their survival. It makes one reflect on and cherish each and every day that we live in freedom without the tremendous tyranny that Mr. Thomas Toivi Blatt, his family, and many others endured on a day to day basis for several years. Thank you Mr. Thomas Toivi Blatt for your sincere and honest reflections.



4. Among the most common questions asked of Holocaust survivors are why the Jews didn't fight back: Why, it is wondered, did they let their families go to their death so easily? The recollections of Blatt, a survivor of the extermination camp Sobibor, in Poland, where Jews staged a successful revolt, addresses these questions in a frank and gripping narrative. Blatt's account demonstrates how the Germans kept Jews in Poland subjugated through random terror combined with promises that the status quo would be maintained if the Jews cooperated. By the time Blatt reached Sobibor with his family, it was too late for resistance. Perhaps the most frightening, and dispiriting, part of Blatt's account is how Christian Poles at times robbed, terrorized, or even murdered Jewish fugitives, such as the Sobibor escapees. A chilling narrative; highly recommended for Judaica collections and Holocaust specialists as well as general readers.

No comments about Things We Couldn't Say: A dramatic account of Christian resistance in Holland during WWII.

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!

1 comments about My Heart in a Suitcase (Library of Holocaust Testimonies).

1. Do you know how I can contact Anne L. Fox, author of "My Heart in a Suitcase (Library of Holocaust Testimonies)?" I understand that she is working on a new book on a topic that interests me.

5 comments about I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors.

1. I received my order in a few days and it was in perfect condition. Very reliable seller.



2. All I can say is that I hated the book. The author was so intent to find out all the sordid details of her parent's life during the Holocaust that she never got to know them for who they were. The book is boring and the drawings are silly and juvenile.



3. this book is both illuminating and moving, I have already lent my copy to two other people. An important new voice on the Holocaust and it's survivors and descendants.



4. I too am a child of Holocaust survivors. I read this book (picked up by surprise in a bookstore) in one several hour reading. It is touching, moving, eloquent, great art, and deeply personal. Life and death, of all sorts. Happiness and sadness, of all sorts. I'm deeply appreciative for the author's letting the world in on her (my) life.
   David



5. The Holocaust occurred over six decades ago, and the survivors of this episode are aging and dying. In fact, calling the Holocaust an "episode" seems to be trivializing one of the darkest periods in human history. I apologize for any such characterization. The Holocaust was a monstrosity, an aberration, a blot on the record of humanity. Millions died.
   
   Yet some lived. And these survivors had a life, children, a home.
   
   This book, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, is author Bernice Eisenstein's recollections of growing up in a family that had both mother and father with tattooed arms. Even as a youngster, Eisenstein grappled with the knowledge of her parent's past, the stigma of being defined by this past, and the responsibility of maintaining memories without adding more pain to the world.
   
   I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is not a first person account of experiences during WWII as you can read in Night, by Elie Wiesel, although some of her parent's stories are recounted. However, Eisenstein's experiences and memories are also real. She hungered to understand what her parents experienced. She cried harder than her parents when she watched films about the Holocaust. The Holocaust has shaped members of a succeeding generation.
   
   She exists because of the Holocaust, with her parents finding each other at liberation, and shaping her through their language, actions, and social life.
   
   The book has illustrations throughout... haunting depictions not of life in concentration camps, but how a child (and later a young woman) came to view her heritage.
   
   We all come from some place. Eisenstein comes from a place darker than we should ever have to see. I hope this book is picked as one to discuss in high schools and colleges.
   
   Never forget.

5 comments about Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943.

1. I'll read this book over and over, I am sure - three times already in a day and a half. The first time I tried to focus on the historical scholarship and impeccable method, but was distracted by thoughts of "But why? Why? It doesn't make sense. They were Germans too."
   
   Again I read it, and was arrested this time by the mechanistic system set up by the Nazis in what was really quite a short time. Every Jew's (and every other citizen's) address was on a card somewhere - every detail of their life was a part of a huge network by means of which all people of a certain category could be swept up with little or no warning with chilling efficiency, and sent away. Then their property was listed, valued, distributed to 'more deserving' citizens, and the state itself recovered every last drop of value from those it had discarded - down to retrieving their security deposits from the gas and electricity companies to be paid into general revenue. Those companies even printed for their own use forms for particularising the amount of the deposit, any unrecovered bills, and any remainder to be sent to the State.
   
   Then, at the third attempt little Marion and her family took all my attention, despite my efforts to resist them, and I wept. This book is quite accessible to any general reader, and Marion Samuel, thanks to the efforts of Gotz Aly, could take her place beside Anne Frank in the lists of books for young folk to read, for slightly different reasons. Anne Frank shows us her own growth and maturity, as well as the effect on others of the horror outside their hiding place. Marion's story is not in her won words, but it shows starkly the power a state apparatus can gather to itself and use to crush parts of its population it takes a dislike to. Would that there had been more of the kind of German described in "Into the tunnel" when a young girl was told forcefully by her father that the sight of Jews being deported was something that struck home at all other Germans, because it could be Catholics like their family next.



2. One of the abiding insights that comes through in Goetz Ally's Into the Tunnel is just how efficient bureaucracies can be at transforming vibrantly alive human beings into impersonal statistics on official forms. In their extermination program, the Nazis, with an eerie fidelity to record-keeping, felt the need to document every detail of the lives they were destroying. That's why Aly is able to trace the unhappy fate of the beautiful little girl, Marion Samuel, who is the protagonist of this unhappy tale.
   
   Such exercises are important; they help to keep memory alive. But Aly's book is more of a model of historical research than a sustained biography that captures who Marion Samuel was. This is as it must be. Nazi documentation records dates when the Samuel family loses its business, moves from one locale to another, and is rounded up for deportation to Auschwitz, but little else. There are few photographs left, and family memories on both Cilly's (Marion's mother) and Ernst's (her father) side have dimmed (or were outright obliterated by the Holocaust). So what we have in this book is a lot of data that leaves us with the sinking awareness that the 12-year old Marion simply disappeared in a wide ocean of bureaucratic files and forms even before she was murdered and incinerated at Auschwitz.
   
   Still, we get glimpses of her, and those glimpses are all the more poignant for being so incomplete. One of her schoolmates recalls that in 1938, a full five years before her murder, an 8-year old Marion was already feeling the burden of the Nazi horror. She remembers (p. 82) that at one point a near-hysterical Marion blurted out her fear that Jews were disappearing into an ominous tunnel. We also know that at the final roundup, Marion was separated for three full days from her parents, and sent to a detention warehouse full of equally parentless children. Marion's mother, Cilly, was sent on to Auschwitz and quite likely was immediately murdered. Marion and her father Ernst were reunited in the same transport that took them both to Auschwitz. One can only imagine the forlornness Marion experienced before she was reunited with her father for their final journey into the tunnel. Both were murdered a week later.
   
   It's good that Aly's work allows us to know something of a child, unspeakably murdered before she barely had a chance to live, who otherwise would've totally disappeared.



3. this was a very moving book. I kept thinking during the book. how could anybody murder 1.5 million children and where were the alleged good people. why did not our country do a great deal more to save the jews of europe. the USA could have saved every jew in germany, austria and czechoslovakia if the state dept. had not been run by anti-semetic officials.



4. This is a book could've been written by Sophie Scholl, from the White Rose Movement, from heaven-almighty.
   
   I cannot bequeath the tragic nature of how I came to understand this "statistic" but in all due seriousness, why not a statistical analysis of the nearly 2 million dead or wounded, you have to remember, that Iraq and Aftanistan, although it maims, scars and is a horrifying Nazi conquest, particularly Iraq, the Holy Roman Empire lives on, just as the slaughter continues, for all Buddhist protesters in Tibet, and anyone with half a brain, can figure this out: this book is a euphemism for the hatred that sparks wars and all sorts of pogroms, including that of being disabled, very similar to being Jewish, in Nazi Germany.
   
   I highly hated Hitler, until he dies, briefly, very briefly with enough time I have to commute across the internet to show my mother this beautiful book, but I hate him present-tense, as I have no money, to buy it for her.



5. Marion Samuel was eleven years old when she arrived at Auschwitz in March of 1943, she was gassed to death the same day and her body burned in the crematorium. He ashes were thrown into a pit with hundreds of others and then covered over with soil. Their is no marker over where she died.
   
   But who was this child and what was her crime that she should be treated so. She came from a lower middle class family from West Pomerania, near the Baltic Sea where the German-Polish border is today. At the age of six she was a witness to Kristallnacht and forbidden to go to the German Public School she had attended for the last three years. He family lost their business and both her parent's became "unskilled" factory workers. Marion was able to go to a "Jewish" school for two more years, before those were shut down. For the last years of her life she lived in a one room ground floor apartment off an alley. Since her parent's were away each day, she had to fill her time as best she could.
   
   How did she view the world she lived in? Did she wonder why she and her parents were being treated the way they were? Did she have any understanding that she was being punished for a random act of birth? At least we know she was on the same train as her father (who lasted sixty one days in the camp) when she was "evacuated". Thankfully, the horrors at the end for this little girl were tempered by the comfort of a parent.
   
   Hopefully, the people that ordered her death, and carried it out, suffered for what they did.

5 comments about To See You Again: A True Story of Love in a Time of War.

1. An avid reader of historical fiction and non-fiction, especially pertaining to the Holocaust, I found Betty Schimmel's story to be a strong, engaging read. The story of her survival in a concentration camp as a teenager is nothing short of miraculous, as well as the way she rebuilt her life in the years following the war's end.
   
   However, the one thing I *didn't* care for was Schimmel's romance with Richie Kovacs -- the key plot description on the back cover and the situation referenced by the title. Essentially, Richie is young Betty's first love. The two meet when she is only twelve, and their relationship intensifies by the time she is 14. When wartime relocation of Jews caused the couple to become separated, Richie is the only thing that keeps the traumatized Betty going. If only they could find one another, she believes, they'll have their storybook wedding and live happily ever after.
   
   Soon after the war's end, Betty meets Otto Schimmel, another young Holocaust survivor who begs her to marry him. She agrees -- largely because her family adores him, and she believes Richie is dead.
   
   As the years pass, Schimmel remains emotionally withdrawn from the marriage. Her husband slaves away, working endless hours trying to earn enough money to give her and the children a good life, but Schimmel seems to act like she's doing him some kind of favor by sticking around. Otto Schimmel is not Richie Kovacs and never could be, so obviously he's not worth any love or affection.
   
   Eventually, Schimmel does realize that her relationship with Richie is in the past, and that she has a good man in Otto. But overall, her "reminiscing" about Richie tends to take on the feel of sappy teenager, not really looking at reality. Perhaps Richie Kovacs was indeed Betty's "one true love"; or, more realistically, she simply idealized him, because he symbolized the happy life that was so horribly snatched away from her.
   
   Regardless, Schimmel's memoir *is* written in a strong, clear voice, and is truly a story readers are bound to remember for years to come. It would just be much better without focusing upon the Richie angle so much.



2. I have never ever read a book that touched my life like this one, I read this over 12 months ago now and it still has a place in my heart, I wanted the end to be different but I could understand why she did what she did, loved it that much, I am going to visit the area, to anyone thinking about reading this, don't think no more, it is the best book you'll ever read.
   
   Love Amanda



3. What an amazing true story. Incredible, I could not believe how Betty's life has unfolded. I truly great story to read and I highly recommend it.



4. I have read most of this book and it is amazing! Before i read or even heard about this story i met otto and Betty. Their stories are truly amazing and i believe it is wonderful that they are sharing with the future.



5. I am a high-school student in Arizona. We had to read this book for school, and the Schimmels came to our class to talk about their experiences as Holocaust survivors.
   I didn't really care that much about the Richie love story once I met them in person. Mr. & Mrs. Schimmel are people devoted to each other and, no matter how it happened, found an incredible love story of their own. I hope someday to have a relationship like theirs is now.
   Their survival really made a difference to the world, since they are here to tell their story. There are a lot of people my age that think the Holocaust never happened. I know it did because I met people who lived through it and spend all their time telling students about the war. It was really touching, and a lot of us were crying hearing about all the terrible things that happened to them and we were all thinking about how we might have been in the same situation.
   I guess the best part of the book is what people will do to survive, but the really cool thing is that Betty took the time to write it and tell everyone about her story.

5 comments about Hitler, the War and the Pope.

1. Although a history book and consequently hard for me to read, this is extremely well researched and clearly demonstrates the absurdity of the claim that Pius XII was "silent" during WWII. In your face, John Cornwell!



2. Rychlak gives the reader the whole truth regarding the role of the Roman Catholic Church during WWII. Much can be said about this book but I draw attention only to his excellent and successsful defense of Aloysius Cardinal Stepinac. Stepinac was the Archbishop of Zagreb, Croatia during WWII and did everything in his power to save Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis. He was later tried and convicted to 16 yrs prison by Tito's regime for alleged collaboration with the nazis, but in reality he was sentenced only because he refused to seperate the catholic Church in Croatia from the vatican to form a national croatian church. Rychlak brings cold hard facts to argue his case, something cornwall and others fail to do and instead rely on post WWII communist propaganda.



3. Like most of the Pius defenses, this book is at best when it sticks to its central modest thesis- that Pius was neither a vicious anti-semite nor a supporter of Hitler. Rychlak points to some modest pronouncements against the holocaust, the help given to Italian Jews, and the lack of evidence of anti-semitism to bolster this argument and largely succeeds. Going beyond that to "we did all we could" the book fails and ignores or fails to rebut some basic arguments.
   
   1. This was a Lutheran Protestant/Catholic Holocaust. It could not have succeeded without the active (and sadly enthusiastic) participation of many Christians including Catholics. While a few helped the victims or spoke against Nazism, far, far, far more took part in identifying, imprisoning and murdering Jews.
   The butcher, the baker, and candlestick maker became Gestapo policemen, prison guards, and informants.
   2. The Pope speaks on matters of religion and his pronoucements should be obeyed. By and large German Catholics went to church, and did not divorce or engage in abortion. Why not tell them they should not imprison and kill Jews and to do so violates church doctrine. The few statements made by the Pope were general statements directed to the world, not to the faithful. What was needed was to tell German Catholics (and supporters in other countries) to stop persecuting and killing Jews and continuing the holocaust. Had the pope told the faithful to stop, the killing could clearly have been reduced. German and Polish Catholics were never told that their obedience to Nazi doctrine violated church teachings, and the concordants between the church and Fascist regimes would indicate the opposite.
   
   3. The bible teaches that those who follow Christ's law may have a share in salvation. Many German Jews converted to Catholicism, their children went to Sunday school, and they attended church as dutiful Catholics and Protestants. Yet when Hitler came, he classified these converted Catholics as Jews: dirty, stinking, filthy Jews only interested in money who had betrayed the Fatherland. These former Jews were forced to wear Jewish starts and not associated with Christians Had religious leaders said that these converted Catholics were part of the church and should be protected, this would have put Catholic doctrine against the state. Instead, in a sad state, former Jews were readily identified in Germany and elsewhere, even to the extent of Gestap going into churches and identifying former Jews with the help of congregants.
   
   4. One thesis is that the mild, quiet oppostion, not really maifesting itself until 1943, was the most effective. Could anyone really believe that. Imagine if in 1935, German stormroopers came into churches and beat up priests. Religious leaders with beards had them cut, religious items were desecrated, and nuns raped. Would Catholics say let's be quiet, don't offend anyone, hopefully this will not get out of hand. If church leaders were taken to concentration camps and killed and Catholics identified and beaten, would we likewise say, keep quiet.
   
   5. The clear conclusion is that the decision was made to jettison the Jews, partly because no one cared, part because they feared the Nazis, and part because many liked the sense of national pride and economic recovery the Nazis had achieved. Few could honestly say that keeping a low profile was the course designed to best protect the Jews.
   
   6. He fails to discuss why in countries with large Catholic populations, the scope of death was the greatest. Poland had a history of anti-semitism, and over one million Polish Jews were identified, largedly by cooperating Polish people, and those Jews, women, men, and children, were tortured, starved, and murdered at Auschwitz, with Catholic prison guards manning the concentration camp, and Catholic guards arranging the murders. To be fair it was not only Catholics, Eastern Orthodox guards, Lutheran guards, and Christians of all types, people who went to church on Sunday, celebrated Easter and Christmas, participated in the murders. They would celebrate communion on Sunday, and during the week helped apprehend, torture, and kill Jews. To call this a Catholic holocaust is inaccurate and incomplete. To call it a Christian holocaust in which Catholics played a vital role is sad but true.
   
   7. One cannot escape the fact however that Catholics participated in the Holocaust and saw no contradiction between the murder of Jews and their religious faith. Catholic religious leaders had a duty to point out this contradiction.
   
   8. To lay the entire burden upon Pope Pius is inaccurate. We should contrast the heroism of a minority who protected and sheltered Jewish victims, against the actions of the majority who took part in destroying the Jewish population of 10 countries, killing so many boys and girls, fathers and mothers, in the process.



4. Ronald J. Rychlak's "Hitler, the War, and the Pope" is a fount of unimpeachable truth. It refutes completely the venomous accusations hurled at the Catholic Church in general, and Pope Pius XII in particular, concerning the Jews. Rychlak's book is sure to infuriate the anti-Catholic media, anti-Catholic "Christians", and all life forms that exist to attack the Church of Christ.

   Indeed, unspoken yet real and critical questions are "What about Protestant America?", and "What about Protestant Germany?"

   PROTESTANT AMERICA

   How can anyone question what the militarily impotent Catholic Church did or did not to stop Hitler's extermination of the Jews, when militarily potent, Protestant America did NOTHING for so long? After all, the facts are unimpeachable, and quite sad:

   1. Hitler invaded Poland in August 1939.
   2. Two months later, in October 1939, Hitler started rounding up Jews in Poland and sending them to concentration camps.
   3. Hitler then proceeded to invade Hungary and other countries, also rounding up the Jews there and sending them to concentration camps.
   4. During 1939, 1940, and 1941, Hitler exterminated at least hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of Jews.
   5. From October 1939 to December 1941, a span of 2 years and 2 months, during which Hitler was exterminating Jews, AMERICA DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
   6. America in fact did not enter the war until December 1941.
   7. And, America did NOT enter the war to save or help the Jews.

   8. Rather, America entered the war solely because its naval fleet in the Pacific had been SUNK.
   9. Thus, America entered the war for reasons having NOTHING to do with the extermination of the Jews that was (and for 2 years and 2 months had been) taking place in Europe.

   Given these facts, how can anyone seriously question the actions of a militarily impotent Church without first - or at the same time - questioning the utter inaction of militarily potent America? As Stalin famously said, "How many divisions does the pope have?" None, of course. But, alas, that is irrelevant to the historically ignorant anti-Catholic.

   PROTESTANT GERMANY

   Likewise, how can anyone seriously question the actions of a Church based outside Germany, with only a minority of faithful in Germany, without first - or at the same time - questioning the actions of the majority Protestants in Germany? Once again, the facts are unimpeachable, and sad:

   1. Germany was a PROTESTANT country.
   2. Hitler was ELECTED by the German people.
   3. In his electoral victory, Hitler received a MAJORITY of the German Protestant vote.
   4. Yet, in his electoral victory, Hitler received only a MINORITY of the German Catholic vote.
   5. Thus, Hitler came to power courtesy of German PROTESTANTS.

   Given these facts, how can anyone seriously question the minority Catholic Church in Germany without first - or at the same time - questioning the majority Protestant churches in Germany? For instance, what did the German Protestant ministers, such as the Lutheran Bishops, know? And, when did they know it? And, what did they do, or not do, to stop the extermination of the Jews?

   Clearly, all these "questions" being asked of the Catholic Church and Pius XII concerning the Jews should first be asked of Protestant America and Protestant Germany. This nonsense about the Catholic Church's alleged "silence" or "inaction" is more than just factually meritless. It is utterly hypocritical, and indeed hilariously so were it not so pathetic.




5. Thoroughly researched, thoroughly reliable. Rychlak has extensive familiarity with primary sources and he sticks to the incontrovertible facts.
   Please note, in reading some reviews published here, the animosity towards Christianity expressed by several people who obviously haven't read the book. This is a subject that should be approached with a cool head, an acknowledgement of the complexity of the situation, and a willingness to be truthful and fair; Rychlak has done just fine on all counts.

5 comments about Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years.

1. Readers may be interested in these letters that appeared about the Defonseca saga in the Globe:
   [...]
   Taken in by a Holocaust memoir
   March 7, 2008
   
   
   AS A chronicler of Holocaust memoirs, I read the saga of Misha Defonseca and publisher Jane Daniel with interest and more than a little apprehension ("Den of lies," Living/Arts, March 1).
   It is indeed difficult if not impossible to even check on, let alone determine, the veracity of the stories of Holocaust survivors. Nazi records, if there is anything of relevance in them regarding individual survivors, are only just now beginning to come out, as in the case of the recently released Bad Arolsen archives. Often, one has little to rely on besides an occasional lucky link between available records and a traumatized, and perhaps somewhat compromised, elderly memory. Exaggeration, embellishment, and fabrication, which can and do exist in any interviewing, always end disastrously, as we see in this saga, which even drew in the likes of Elie Wiesel.
   Thus, going into the collecting process with hope for monetary success is ambiguous at best and futile at worst. Yes, Daniel has expenses and business concerns. But in most cases, documenting the memoirs of others does not result in financial gain. Certainly with regard to atrocities such as the Holocaust, the preservation of memories holds other rich rewards for both the teller and the scribe, but most authors know to keep their day jobs.
   SUSIE DAVIDSON
   Brookline
   The writer, a journalist for the Jewish Advocate, is the author of "I Refused to Die: Stories of Boston-Area Holocaust Survivors and Soldiers who Liberated the Concentration Camps of World War II" and "Jewish Life in Postwar Germany"
   
   [...]
   
   Misguided view on veracity of Holocaust memories
   
   March 18, 2008
   SUSIE DAVIDSON'S assertion that it is is misguided and should not remain unchallenged ("Taken in by a Holocaust memoir," Letters, March 7). It is also not true that Nazi records "are only just now beginning to come out." Archives have been available in Germany and elsewhere for decades to validate the roundups and deportation of Jews from particular communities in Europe.
   Expecting witnesses who tell of their ordeals on transports and in camps to offer proof that they were in a particular ghetto or camp is like Swiss bank officials demanding that children of survivors whose parents had been gassed furnish copies of the death certificates.
   But most disturbing is Davidson's claim that, when interviewing Holocaust survivors, about all we have to rely on is "a traumatized, and perhaps somewhat compromised, elderly memory." As someone who has spent more than a decade interviewing Holocaust survivors, I have found the exact reverse to be true.
   Misha Defonseca's book is so full of confirmable historical errors that on that basis alone it was possible for informed readers to recognize that her narrative could not be true.
   LAWRENCE L. LANGER,
   West Newton
   The writer is the author of "Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory."
   
   
   Statements regarding verification of Holocaust stories still ring true
   
   I stand by my assertions that were taken to task by Lawrence Langer ("Misguided view on veracity of Holocaust memories," Letters, March 18). My statement that Langer quoted, "it is difficult if not impossible to even check on, let alone determine, the veracity of the stories of Holocaust survivors," concerns, as it states, survivors' actual stories, rather than the Nazi deportation archives Langer mentions (which I have seen, some in actuality, in Germany).
   
   Langer analogizes my statements on lack of supporting documentation to my asking the survivors I have interviewed to furnish proof. I have never done such a thing; to the contrary, over the past several years, I have organized public events, always sold my books at cost, charged no speaker fee though I invited and paid other supporting speakers, and, most importantly, publicly read these stories in forums ranging from the Boston Public Library to myriad bookstores, classrooms, synagogues, senior and veterans' centers in an effort to spread awareness of the bravery of these people during the terrible times they lived through.
   
   Yes, I have taken these dear souls at their word. That does not mean I believe that every word is inscribed, and I'm sure the survivors wouldn't either. No memory is perfect. Trauma is affecting. Although I have done my best to verify what survivors in my books have told me, feel that the stories are true, like Langer am highly impressed at their ability to recount their tales, and wholly believe in their sincerity and honesty, I am not afraid to state that I would never take credit for 100 percent, iron-clad verifiability.
   SUSIE DAVIDSON
   Brookline
   
   
   To: letter@globe.com
   Subject: Records, as well as memory, can indeed be fallible
   Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:37:07 +0000
   
   I beg to differ with Lawrence Langer. First, I have a hard time believing that Nazi records released thus far have been all that forthcoming, let alone totally forthright. Second, the sheer breadth of fallout from the deception of Misha DeFonseca alone speaks for the need to be as careful as Susie Davidson has been in her books.
   I recently saw a local public television show try to deal with having had a World War II soldier on the preview hour to Ken Burns' documentary "The War", telling tall tales about his bravery that were soon unveiled as fabrication. This and DeFonseca's book have certainly not been the only instances of unintentional publication and broadcasting of fraudulent or incorrect memoirs in the media, because, as Davidson said, memory, as well as recordkeeping, are not always correct.
   As the nephew and namesake of one of the navigators of the Exodus 1947, whose own story few would believe if it weren't true, I appreciate writers like Davidson who make the effort to verify, admit they can be fallible, and do their work for no personal gain.
   
   FRANK LEVINE
   Malden
   
   
   
   
   I REPRESENTED Misha Defonseca in litigation against Jane Daniel. I worked closely with Defonseca for more than six years. I learned that her memoir was a fabrication when her statement was published in the Globe.
   The article cites Lawrence L. Langer as expressing outrage that anyone could exploit the Holocaust for profit. Langer, an authority on the subject, goes so far as to compare them to Holocaust deniers. I think this is an unfortunate overstatement.
   The irony is that Defonseca's real story seems to be even more compelling than the fabrication. According to the researcher who uncovered the truth, her parents were Catholic members of the Belgian resistance who were captured and killed by Nazis. It is one thing to belong to a group targeted for oppression or genocide and something quite different to choose to align yourself with such a group and share its fate. Whatever our beliefs about our own integrity or moral fiber, there are few among us who would make that choice once we have assumed the obligations of parenthood.
   Defonseca's parents were among this rarest sort of human. Their daughter paid a horrible price for that choice.
   RAMONA HAMBLIN
   Newton
   
   
   
   
   WE AT Wolf Hollow were saddened by the revelation that Misha Defonseca's incredible memoir was an elaborate hoax. Upon meeting her in 1996, we were awed by her story. We were aware of many documented cases of children raised by animals, including chimpanzees, apes, and indeed wolves. Wolves live in packs that mirror our own human families, and are considered the most socially complex nonprimate mammal. In our talks with Defonseca, she demonstrated an intimate knowledge of wolf behavior. Who would not want to believe such a heartwarming story in the midst of one of mankind's darkest times?
   We became close friends with Defonseca, subsequently holding book signings and hosting a film crew from "The Oprah Winfrey Show." We spoke of her when visitors to Wolf Hollow would ask of the validity of tales of wolf-raised children, and even named a wolf puppy Misha. Readers can imagine how shocked we are now.
   For someone to feel the need to create such a story in lieu of reality is the truly sad story. Despite the deception, the Misha that we knew is a warm woman and an advocate for animals, and we trust that that much is still true.
   ZEE SOFFRON
   Assistant director Wolf Hollow
   Ipswich
   
   
   
   
   AFTER READING this story, I was speechless. I have known Misha Defonseca since 1988, when she and her family moved to Millis, and we became close friends. I truly believed her story, and supported her efforts in writing her memoirs.
   One speech she gave stands out in my mind, a night at Brandeis. Several hundred students, faculty, friends, and true Holocaust survivors gathered to hear her story, and many tears were shed as the story unfolded. Holocaust survivors in attendance that evening called out the names of the death camps they were in, and a moment of silence was observed. This experience will live in my memory forever.
   I feel so betrayed, yet my heart is broken for the true Holocaust survivors she used to promote her lies. When her book was published, I felt honored that she put my name in it, and now I am ashamed. I want no association with the lies.
   PATRICIA CUNNINGHAM
   Millis



2. A story in the March 3, 2008 edition of the New York Times (culture section) reveals that this book is a FAKE. The author has admitted as such. Touting this book as a "memoir" is thus mendacious.



3. Here is the article, published yesterday, where the author recants the story. Below, you will find my letter to the Editor of the St Petersburg Times, commenting on the article, and my condensed review of the book.
   
   Author says Holocaust bestseller is made up
   Historians doubted her story of having been raised by wolves.
   Associated Press
   Published March 1, 2008
   
   
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   BRUSSELS - A Belgian writer has admitted that she made up her bestselling "memoir" depicting how, as a Jewish child, she lived with a pack of wolves in the woods during the Holocaust, her lawyers said Friday.
   
   Misha Defonseca's book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.
   
   Her two Brussels-based lawyers, siblings Nathalie and Marc Uyttendaele, said the author acknowledged that her story was not autobiographical and that she did not trek 1,900 miles as a child across Europe with a pack of wolves in search of her deported parents during World War II.
   
   "I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed," Defonseca, 71, said in a written statement. She lives in Dudley, Mass.
   
   Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years.
   
   She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto, killed a Nazi soldier in self-defense and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.
   
   Defonseca says that her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.
   
   "This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving," the statement said. "I ask forgiveness to all who felt betrayed. I beg you to put yourself in my place, of a 4-year-old girl who was very lost."
   
   She said there were moments when she "found it difficult to differentiate between what was real and what was part of my imagination."
   
   Pressure on the author to defend the accuracy of her book had grown in recent weeks.
   
   "I'm not an expert on relations between humans and wolves, but I am a specialist of the persecution of Jews and they (Defonseca's family) can't be found in the archives," Belgian historian Maxime Steinberg told RTL television. "The De Wael family is not Jewish nor were they registered as Jewish."
   
   Defonseca had been asked to write the book by U.S. publisher Jane Daniel in the 1990s, after Daniel heard the writer tell the story in a Massachusetts synagogue.
   
   [Last modified March 1, 2008, 01:19:15]
   
   Here is my letter to the editor regarding this article (and is a short review of the book)
   Subject: Author says Holocaust bestseller is made up
   I first read Misha DeFonseca's memoirs in French as "Survivre avec Les Loups" (Survival with Wolves) in April, 2006. I think I knew, deep down, that several elements of the story had to be fiction, namely: Misha setting off to walk 1,900 miles "to the East" to find her deported parents, her escaping from the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, her being adopted by and raised by a pack of wolves, her witnessing the rape of a Ukrainian girl and Misha's slaying of the attacker, among others. Nonetheless, the book was moving in its depiction of the barbarity of man's treatment of fellow men, the horrors of life during the Nazi Occupation in Eastern Europe, and the hope of a child to be treated like a person instead of like an animal. I am sad that the author felt the need to embellish her story, which could have stood on its truthful merits alone. We must never forget!
   Marianna Steriadis



4. I would like to say that I have known Misha personnally for over 20 years and I could not be more hurt and deceived. And like the people who was closest to her we were lied to the greatest extend. And no, I was not gullible. I was there in Ipswitch along with a team of reporters who also believed her and saw what she could do with animals. Misha is actually remarkable with animals but not with people. She never has. But what I found most distasteful is that people can be angry towards me who was also a victim of her lies. So people don't be so quick to judge and hurt others! I am sorry that my own review of what I believed to be true back in 2001 has influenced others to buy and believe her story as well. And that makes me even sicker just to think about it. Now I have to reconcile my own feelings towards Misha and my family and friends who were also affected by her betrayal. So stop the hatred and blame it on the author, not me and the hundreds of people that invested into Misha's story emotionally and financially as well.



5. I found this book at the library yesterday after I heard the news (I wanted to see it without paying for it). I read through a lot of it to get the sense of what the book was about, and I am stunned that it has taken this long for the truth to come out. Yeah, it's a fascinating story, but come on people.
   
   The people who bought this book should be given a full refund of their purchase in the same way they would be given a refund if they bought a box of cereal and opened it up to find potato chips. After the author and publisher give back all the money, they should then sell the rights to the true story to Hollywood; this entire story sounds like Pan's Labyrinth: a young girl in the most terrible of times escapes through her imagination into a fairytale of her own.

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