After reading Sarah Helm's brilliant non-fiction account of Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women, I was curious to discover how it mightAfter reading Sarah Helm's brilliant non-fiction account of Ravensbruck, the Nazi concentration camp for women, I was curious to discover how it might be depicted in fiction. It's quickly apparent that the author's natural bent is for chick lit which throughout the novel makes appearances like damp on a wall and most apparent in the American character and her love affair with "the most beautiful man in the world". It takes most of the novel to understand what she's even doing in this book. Her other two narrators are a fictitious Polish girl, one of the "rabbits" operated on at the camp and the only female Nazi doctor at the camp. This is a real woman she's depicting and possibly the Nazi who most horrified me in the non-fiction account of Ravensbruck. It therefore was a brave move to try to get inside her mind. I can't say the author succeeded as she remains shadowy and there's little insight into how she could carry out such barbaric cruelty. The depiction of the Polish prisoner though is very good, especially her embittered unlikeability after the war. Nowhere near as harrowing as Sarah Helm's book but it's very well researched and written. ...more
One question that sometimes arises about the Holocaust is, why didn't the Jews put up a fight. The answer to this is simple: they did, whenever the opOne question that sometimes arises about the Holocaust is, why didn't the Jews put up a fight. The answer to this is simple: they did, whenever the opportunity arose. And the most famous fight they put up was in the Warsaw Ghetto when they repelled the German army for a month. This novel details life in the ghetto through the eyes of a middle aged man estranged from his family and faith and a young aspiring ballerina of a well-to-do family. For as long as possible both Max and Ala try to cling to their pre-war aspirations and dignity but then arrive the depravities of the deportations and the eventual, momentary euphoric, uprising. It's an exhilarating moment when the Jewish fighters mount a surprise attack on an arrogant and unsuspecting SS division and drive them back out of the ghetto. Hate, as we all know, breeds hate and this novel shows how decent peace-loving individuals can become vengeful killers when treated without even a slither of human regard. A thoroughly engrossing read. ...more
Adina Blady Szwajger's memoir of her life in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation reads like an interview. She was old and ill when she finally decided tAdina Blady Szwajger's memoir of her life in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation reads like an interview. She was old and ill when she finally decided to tell her story and she does it without any filters or artistry often admitting to being confused about chronology and detail. There's a sense of both rawness and hurry as if she's frightened of dying before finishing her story. She was a nurse in one of the children's hospitals in the ghetto and after the deportations and the uprising worked for the Jewish underground outside the ghetto. Her young husband can't stand the strain of hiding anymore and when the Gestapo offer a limited number of Jews passage to Palestine for a large sum of money he volunteers. All these Jews were taken immediately to Auschwitz.
Five stars all the way to Adina who comes across as an amazing young woman. However, I think this is a book for readers who already have some knowledge of the events in Warsaw during WW2 and not a good place to start because of its fragmented nature. She explains at the end why she didn't try to write her memoirs earlier and you realise just how heavy a burden her memories have been to her throughout her life. ...more
Treblinka purports to be a non fiction book but actually reads like a novel. Half of it consists of dialogue which obviously is all invented. That saiTreblinka purports to be a non fiction book but actually reads like a novel. Half of it consists of dialogue which obviously is all invented. That said, Steiner is a very good writer and the novelistic form certainly serves to crank up the tension. I've since read that his book has been dismissed as fiction by at least one survivor of the events he describes. Therefore, it's a hard book to rate. In his favour he did interview an awful lot of people involved. And reading about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising I came to mistrust eye witness accounts. A recurring theme was how many Germans were being slaughtered which always seemed exaggerated and more the result of wishful thinking than fact. It also implied the Jews were well-armed. For me the uprising was such a heroic act of defiance largely because the Jews were very poorly armed and yet still managed to hold the Germans back for a month. It's irrelevant how many Germans they did or did not kill. So, Treblinka is a riveting read and without question provides innumerable insights into how both the Jews working there and their guards behaved. We'll probably never know how many liberties it takes with the truth because so few inmates survived and those who did were peripheral to the revolt itself. There's a preface by Simone de Beauvoir which attests to its quality - "The author has not attempted to do the work of a historian. Each detail is substantiated by the written or oral testimony he has collected and compared. But he has not denied himself a certain directorial freedom." Of course, there's a contradiction there. If not the work of an historian what is it? I confess I'm a little baffled. ...more
A harrowing read about the various ways Jews in Poland were hunted down. The underlying premise of this book, though not overtly stated, is that withoA harrowing read about the various ways Jews in Poland were hunted down. The underlying premise of this book, though not overtly stated, is that without significant help from the Polish population the Germans would not have succeeded in capturing and murdering so many Jews in Poland during the war. The author gives us countless examples of this being the case, often, to his credit, naming and shaming the perpetrators. I'm not sure how many Jews live in Poland these days but frankly I'm surprised any do. Not even German civilians murdered Jews which was far from being the case in Poland. The author concentrates his research on one rural part of Poland where, it would appear, there was little need of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda. It's thoroughly depressing how monstrous people can be. This is the kind of book that makes you despair of the human race....more
This is the story of the Warsaw Ghetto told through a lens of romantic love. Misha and Sophie are model human beings - neither has a bad bone in theirThis is the story of the Warsaw Ghetto told through a lens of romantic love. Misha and Sophie are model human beings - neither has a bad bone in their bodies which I'm afraid didn't make them very interesting or even believable. It felt like they had been created to provide a feel-good feeling in what otherwise is the horrific story of the plight of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. If you know absolutely nothing about events in Warsaw this will no doubt be of interest because often it reads like a non-fiction book. The proliferation of facts and scenes recreated from cinematic portrayals of the ghetto is relentless but rarely unfortunately are they dramatized. In short, there are too many facts and not enough imagination. It's a novel written with a lot of love but little artistry. That said, I was probably the wrong audience. It reads like a novel written for children which perhaps is its purpose seeing as it pays homage to the teacher, child psychologist and children's author Dr Korczak....more
An account of the atrocities committed by the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order police in Poland during WW2. Any book that seeksAn account of the atrocities committed by the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order police in Poland during WW2. Any book that seeks to go behind the scenes of Nazi killing units faces the problem that the men involved invariably lie about their experience. This is very much the case here, with most of the men claiming after the war that they did their best to help Jews. I think if you're going to begin with the premise of "ordinary men" you need to show these men as ordinary. Provide some detail of their lives before the war, which this book doesn't do. The men in this book are just names. We learn nothing much about them. The most interesting aspect was perhaps the evidence of a prevalent macho culture among the men. As if it wasn't so much racial hatred that provoked the violence as the fear of appearing weak and cowardly to one's comrades. Also, it does debunk the often cited defence of war criminals that they had no choice. Men in this police battalion who refused to shoot unarmed civilians were not punished. But essentially this is a cataloguing of atrocities. The latter part of the book is devoted to a lengthy and somewhat repetitive summary and an argument the author is having with another author. Probably there are 100 pages that make an important contribution to Holocaust literature. The other 200 pages were of considerably less interest for me....more
Remarkable true story about a group of orphaned Jewish kids who somehow survive the war in Warsaw by selling cigarettes. My only small gripe was that Remarkable true story about a group of orphaned Jewish kids who somehow survive the war in Warsaw by selling cigarettes. My only small gripe was that the narrative could have been better. Partly this was caused by the high number of the kids. It was difficult distinguishing them at times (imagine a novel with twelve major characters). Nevertheless, a moving and heartwarming read. ...more
Calel Perechodnik was a Jewish policeman in the ghetto of Otwock. He wrote this memoir while in hiding from the Nazis and is deeply pessimistic about Calel Perechodnik was a Jewish policeman in the ghetto of Otwock. He wrote this memoir while in hiding from the Nazis and is deeply pessimistic about his chances of surviving the war. He is beside himself with grief and rage and the unhinged tone of his writing is unlike most Holocaust memoirs in its raw fury and deep shame. This is a man utterly broken in spirit. The pivot of his story is the day the deportations takes place in the ghetto. He persuades his wife and young daughter to come out of their hiding place in a cellar and attend the selections. He has been told by his chief they will not be selected for the transport. But they are selected and he has to watch them sitting on the ground from the other side of a barbed wire fence. To make his guilt and shame still worse, his best friend, in the same situation, takes off his policeman uniform and joins his own wife and children. Calel doesn't follow his example. He stands by watching as his young family are taken to the cattle trucks. When he returns home he discovers his aunt, who remained in the cellar, is still there. She has survived, as would his wife and child had he not intervened.
Unfortunately, his bitterness extends not only to Poles - his belief is all the uneducated lower classes are happy to see the extermination of the Jews - and his fellow Jews who don't think twice about robbing and betraying each other to stay alive, but also to his own mother and father who disgust him with their egotistic determination to stay alive. During the writing of his memoir his father is captured and shot and he is forced to repent much of what he wrote about him. In short, this is a deeply disturbing book, not least of all for its unflinching criticism of his own people. There are many Holocaust books which give us an account of the triumph of human nature against the most demeaning and desperate odds. This is an account of how that same desperation can bring out the very worst in human nature. In many ways, it's a book that implies that death is preferable to the shameful deeds one has to perform to survive under the barbaric insanity of Nazi rule. ...more
Probably this is a book more for scholars and students than the common reader but what a goldmine of information it is. We tend to have a very simplifProbably this is a book more for scholars and students than the common reader but what a goldmine of information it is. We tend to have a very simplified brutal image of what life was like in the Warsaw Ghetto. This book presents a much richer perspective. One thing that comes across here is how enterprising the Polish Jews were. Given that they were officially denied all raw materials they still managed to create countless workshops where everything from toys to honey to machinery were produced. They also created a thriving cultural life, organised many soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless. This book documents many of these initiatives.
Another thing very apparent is the slow-burning sadistic cynical cruelty of the Nazis, like a cat toying with a wounded bird. One moment they're relaxing restrictions; the next they introduce a still harsher decree. It wasn't enough for them to kill Jews they also had to first humiliate and divide them. It's sad to realise how much infighting there was among the various factions of the Jewish population and how much anger was misdirected away from the Germans as a result. Particularly guilty are some rather self-righteous puritanical men including the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum with his way off-point tirade against Jewish women who wore hats and lipstick in the ghetto. It's odd that when you've got such a clearcut enemy in your midst you should start attacking sideshows.
The maps that come with this book are amazing. On one are shown all the bunkers the Jews built before the final deportations - a veritable underground city of connecting refuges often equipped with electricity, water, air ventilation and even a telephone.
It'll always be a mystery why there was never any kind of riot at the yard where the Warsaw Jews were forced onto the cattle trains. But this book shows how tirelessly and heroically many fought to retain their human dignity through a commitment to social welfare, cultural initiatives and religious rallying. It also brings vividly back to life a part of Warsaw that was literally razed to the ground and no longer exists. ...more
Mordecai Anielewicz has become the poster boy of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. This because he was the leader of the Jewish Fighting OrganMordecai Anielewicz has become the poster boy of the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. This because he was the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organisation. History always has to single out one individual to represent any uprising. However, there's little evidence that he was more courageous or instrumental in what happened than countless other individuals and Yitzhak Zuckerman here tells the story of many of these people. Though he's never critical of Anielewicz you sense he's a bit irritated by all the credit he gets. (Rather than leave his bunker and emerge with guns blazing Anielewicz and his girlfriend took cyanide, which has an unfortunate parallel with the Infamous couple in the Berlin bunker. Other fighters in that bunker escaped and there's a feeling that maybe Anielewicz's nerves were shredded.) Zuckerman, vice leader of the Jewish Fighting Organisation, wasn't in the ghetto when the uprising occurred; he was over on the Aryan side procuring more weapons. Had he died in the ghetto no doubt his fame would be much greater. However, the truth is, in the final count, he eclipses Anielewicz for courage and devotion to the Jewish cause in Poland. Every single day he risks his life providing the means of survival to an entire underground of Jews in hiding.
Incredibly, this book is composed of interviews with Zuckerman. Incredible because it's almost 700 pages long and fabulously detailed. I grew more and more fond of Zuckerman and his wife Zivia and his friend Marek Edelman as the book progressed. At a certain point you perhaps realise it's easier to engage the Nazis in a fight to death than to live every day on the edge of your nerves catering to the needs of Jews in hiding in a city swarming with informers, blackmailers and Gestapo. It's usually, I find, the individuals who don't hold a weapon who are the most courageous of all. The most disturbing event described in this book is perhaps the pogrom carried out by Poles after the war ends when dozens of Jews are murdered in cold blood. Truly unbelievable that there were still people who, having learned about the death camps, were still embracing Nazi racial policies. No surprise that Zuckerman immediately goes to their aid and whisks away the survivors. This book is probably not recommended for anyone simply wanting an overview of the struggles of the Jews in Warsaw. I suspect you already need to have a grasp of the subject to fully appreciate it. This is like the inside story. Also fascinating are the insights into all the various Jewish political organisations. It's interesting that ultimately most of the resistors came from Zionist youth movements while the communists and many of the socialists were largely impotent. Yitzhak Zuckerman, an amazing inspirational man, and his wife Zivia, an amazing inspirational woman. ...more
I've dedicated the last couple of months to reading somewhat exhaustively (obsessively, my wife says!) about life in the Warsaw Ghetto. I've read a coI've dedicated the last couple of months to reading somewhat exhaustively (obsessively, my wife says!) about life in the Warsaw Ghetto. I've read a couple of diaries; this however is a memoir written many years after the war. Goldstein was a member of the socialist Bund party, opposed to the Zionists in that they believed assimilation into European cultures was the way forward. He participated in the Uprising and eventually escaped through the sewers. Thus he provides insights on the complete existence of the Warsaw Ghetto. It's an incredibly powerful book and probably perfect for anyone who has little knowledge of what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto from an insider's perspective. ...more
I don't want to generalise but in my experience women often evoke a more vivid and thus more moving picture of a period of history in journals than meI don't want to generalise but in my experience women often evoke a more vivid and thus more moving picture of a period of history in journals than men because of the importance they grant to visual impressions and memory. Men, when they pick up a pen on the other hand, tend to quickly veer off into the philosophical and the abstract as if writing a text book. They want to establish some kind of objective overview of their situation. You might say men go for the objective while women are more inclined to stay closer to the subjective. Men tend to tell; women to show. And as all of us know who love novels showing is much more engaging than telling. I understand why the author of this journal was continually trying to report all the atrocities he heard about, why he sought to provide the bigger picture but it's often all so impersonal that it lacks roots, ground underfoot. For example, the author has a wife and child. However, we learn nothing about them. In the journals of women they almost always give us vivid pictures of poignant family moments and this is like that close up of a suffering child in a news report. Our feelings of empathy are fully engaged. Perhaps the most poignant moment is when the author's wife doesn't return home one day. He knows she has been caught up in a roundup and remembers she left the house in a "summer dress, carrying his leather briefcase." Suddenly he gives us a detail that makes the tragedy so much more moving. We imagine his wife in her summer dress, carrying his briefcase being herded into the cattle train headed for the gas chambers at Treblinka. So often it's these small details that bring a story to life. Unfortunately, there is no such vivid image of his daughter in the entire journal. She's just an anonymous name and I found this deeply sad.
Don't get me wrong, this is incredibly moving at times, especially as the noose begins tightening. But I would have to say the journals of Mary Berg and Janina Bauman gave me a more vivid and detailed idea of what the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto went through. Because they limited themselves to what they experienced first-hand. I also feel certain we'd have a much richer and more detailed notion of every historical period had women been encouraged to write. ...more
Amazing story written by a remarkable man. George Salton was a twelve year old boy and lived in a small Polish town called Tyczyn when the Nazis arrivAmazing story written by a remarkable man. George Salton was a twelve year old boy and lived in a small Polish town called Tyczyn when the Nazis arrived. I lost count of how many camps he was interned in. Every other month he seemed to be back in a boxcar heading for another unknown destination - these included camps in Poland, France and Germany. What made this an especially riveting read was his narrative skill. It's perhaps less intellectual or philosophical than most Holocaust memoirs. He simply holds fast to the story of his suffering. Some memorable images included arriving in France and being applauded by the local residents who shouted "shame" at the SS guards. He was so moved by the compassion of these people after the vitriol or indifference of his native Poles that it returned to him his will to live at a point when his morale was at its lowest ebb. A bizarre incident was when an elderly Jew who had earlier helped him was dragged away at a rollcall because he had a hernia. No one, of course, ever expected to see him again. However he returned a week later. The Germans had operated successfully on his hernia. When you think of the colossal resources the Nazis put into killing Jews it's astonishing that they went out of their way to heal one. Also tremendously moving was how well the surviving prisoners were treated by the American and British soldiers. "The respect, decency and kindness that I received from the British felt like the miracle of a new dawn." That made me prouder of my countrymen than I've felt for some while. On the other hand, all the Polish Jews in the holding station were detained long after other nationalities had been repatriated because in Poland Poles were killing returning Jews, even with full knowledge of what the Nazis had done. Frankly, it's disgraceful that the present Polish government is trying to rewrite history where the Holocaust is concerned. Of course there were many brave and generous Poles but on the whole anti-semitism was clearly the prevailing attitude in Poland throughout and even after the war. Escaping prisoners, for example, were often caught by Polish farmers and handed back to the Gestapo.
George Salton emigrated to America where he became a member of staff at the Pentagon, overseeing the development of satellite systems. Amazing considering his education was halted by the Nazis and he could barely write a letter at the end of the war....more
Janina Bauman was thirteen when she, her mother and sister were interned in the Warsaw Ghetto and she gives us a deeply moving insight into daily lifeJanina Bauman was thirteen when she, her mother and sister were interned in the Warsaw Ghetto and she gives us a deeply moving insight into daily life behind the walls. It's always the detail which creates an intimacy between the reader and the subject, that helps us understand the nature of the world evoked, and Janina has a fabulous eye in this regard. She also writes tremendously well.
The most depressing aspect of this memoir for me was the behaviour of some of the Poles. Outside the ghetto Jews in hiding were often hunted down by gangs of blackmailers or else charged exorbitant "rent" for the hovels they were forced to stay in. Basically you understand that only the very wealthy Jews had much chance of survival. Clearly racism was rife in Poland and made the Nazi's work a lot easier than in countries like Denmark, Holland, Italy and France. ...more
This began like one of those 1980s epic TV series when the subject matter is fascinating but the script and acting awful. The author gets carried awayThis began like one of those 1980s epic TV series when the subject matter is fascinating but the script and acting awful. The author gets carried away with every character's back story and he shows us in superfluous and often syrupy detail scenes that could have been told in a sentence or two. However once he had settled into his grove and the war narrative began it was a compelling read. He gives us the Warsaw Ghetto from the perspective of both the Jews and the Nazis with the odd Pole thrown in too, culminating in the heroic uprising. Leon Uris isn't the best writer in the world but he did a brilliant job of comprehensively researching his subject and the story is gripping. ...more
An incredibly moving and well written account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Reading this I realised that to call any survivor of that experience luckyAn incredibly moving and well written account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Reading this I realised that to call any survivor of that experience lucky is a complete misnomer. How can anyone feel lucky who has had to endure the murder of virtually all her friends and many members of her own family? Mary Berg survived the Warsaw Ghetto by virtue of the fact that her mother had American citizenship. She was fifteen when she entered the ghetto. This is a harrowing but brilliantly detailed account of what life was like there. ...more
My favourite parts of this overview of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto were the journal entries from those people who participated. These were harroMy favourite parts of this overview of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto were the journal entries from those people who participated. These were harrowing and gave a vivid sense of what these courageous people were going through. Otherwise I found this book a little too detached as if the author in tackling such an emotional subject made a conscious decision to write the account with as much detachment as possible. In this sense it’s history recounted in a conservative conventional fashion. I couldn’t help thinking of Laurent Binet’s brilliant HHhH – a book in which the author gives reign to his personal emotions while writing about the Holocaust and acknowledges the lacunae in his account – a tactic which made his book so gripping. Sometimes it’s not enough to deliver up as many facts as possible; we need our indignation to be expressed in a text
Here we learn there was a fair amount of political bickering among the various Jewish factions, that the Polish underground provided very little support, that vast sections of the Jewish population were against fighting because they were able to delude themselves that things would get better, a fundamental need of the human spirit. Only when the truth could no longer be ignored was a large consensus in favour of fighting back reached.
I often found myself wanting more detail. I wanted to know how they planned and built the underground network of tunnels and bunkers, I wanted to know how they got their weapons and from whom, I wanted to know more about their tactics for fighting the Nazis. The uprising itself is dealt with in only one chapter, albeit a long one. What this book did do is inspire me to buy a couple of accounts of the uprising by people who experienced it first-hand....more
I don't know if the publisher was scrimping on printing costs but the type of the edition I read was so small it hurt my eyes - and add to that the diI don't know if the publisher was scrimping on printing costs but the type of the edition I read was so small it hurt my eyes - and add to that the dialogue isn't broken up by new paragraphs when a new speaker talks and what you get are huge blocks of typescript on every page. The most reader unfriendly novel I’ve ever read. Printed in a normal size font and with conventional paragraph breaks this book would probably run to at least 700 pages. Way too long, in other words.
The danger signs are there from the beginning – endless descriptions of furniture and clothes. I understand all these things were to vanish as 1939 approached and the author felt duty-bound to catalogue them all but I still couldn’t help thinking a better novelist would have been more selective – less is often more after all. The part depicting life in the ghetto was moving but by now I was beginning to have a problem with the tone of the narrative voice – it was too cajoling, too keen to entertain, too whimsical at times for the gravity of the subject. One of the discussion questions at the back of this book states that many people argue the Holocaust is not a subject for a work of fiction and I think I may be one of those. Unless perhaps the author shows subtle artistry in composing his or her novel. Schindler’s List is so moving because it’s true; were it fiction it might, ironically, be offensive. Anya is not a true story. It’s essentially an old fashioned conventional narrative – its prime purpose is to entertain in the way 19th century novels set out to do. And because it’s not a true story suspension of disbelief is another huge problem. Anya just has too much good luck. When I read an account of Jews hiding in Berlin it was very clear you needed good luck as a constant companion to survive but none of those real life people were blessed with the relentless good fortune enjoyed by Anya.
I have to confess I began skim reading it around page 300 and finally gave up. Not for me. ...more
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