Reviews (4)

An excellent biography
I am twelve years old, and I got this book for my bat-mitzva. I loved it and learned a lot and I would recommend it to both adults and children. I particularly liked the way Maimonides helped women during those hard times.

Intelligent, well-researched biography
As a librarian, I was alerted to this excellent biography by Booklist and by The Library Journal, which both gave it excellent reviews. I don't read every book I order, but since I am particularly interseted in Maimonides, I did read it, and with great pleasure. I have studied much of Maimonides' work, and many books that analyzed his work, but Arbel's book is the only one fulfilling the need for a lively biography that really tells about Maimonides, his character and his relationships.

The book is extremely well-written, easy to understand, and will be entirely comprehesible to the secular reader. You don't have to be a Maimonides expert, a philosophy student, or a religious scholar to enjoy it. Yet any scholar will appreciate Arbel's historical research and grasp of the era he discusses.

My only criticism was that I wished the book were longer and continued into the second generation (Maimonides' son, Abraham, was a fascinating character). However, I realized that the book is a part of a series of biographies, the well-received Lives and Legacies (all called "A Spiritual Biography") from Crossroad Publishing, so Arbel probably followed certain guidelines as to length. I am very much looking forward to the publication of Arbel's biography of Rabbi Hillel, which apparently he is writing now.

A New Biography of Maimonides
The appearance of a new biography of Maimonides is always important, if only because it happens infrequently.

What we need, and do not yet have in English, is an excellent and scholarly biography of Maimonides, like Netanyahu's biography of Abarbanel.

Ilil Arbel's new biography, entitled Maimonides, A Spiritual Biography, does not fill that bill. However, for those who are already reading Maimonides, it will fill in the historical gaps reasonably well. The book is based on secondary and tertiary sources, with the exception of the more historically significant items of Maimonides' correspondence and some of the shorter works, which the author shows familiarity with. The author is fluent in Hebrew, and may be an Israeli, it is not clear from the jacket material. That material indicates that she is a "Writer and editor, and has a Ph.D. in the field of mythology and folklore, and is a regular contributor of Judaic myths to Encyclopedia Mythica, her next book is A biography of Hillel, she resides in New York City".

The book comes with a full index and a short bibliography. There are a very few notes, more would have been desirable. I would like to know where she got some of her material. There is a Chronology which she confesses is based on the usual consensus opinions but not based on any research of her own.

I do not think the book will do anyone any harm. She pointedly stays away from giving comment or analysis of the Guide or the Mishneh Torah, and for that reason, I do not understand why she calls this a spiritual biography. The excitement that I get from the works of Maimonides themselves is not well communicated by the author.

What she does do that helps make this book of contemporary significance is the integration of Geniza material from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, about which I recently wrote on in connection with the Spertus College of Judaica exhibit. She does know this material, and has spent some time with the writings of S.D. Goitein, the acknowledged expert in that field. She also has listed in her bibliography several contemporary Israeli books on Maimonides. All of these sources help to provide depth and context in Maimonides' story.

Among these positive attributes I would randomly site her extended treatment of the unending controversies between Maimonides and the Gaon of Baghdad, Shmuel Ben Ali, who was the leader of the Babylonian Academy and saw himself as the universal Jewish authority. She also fills in the personalities of Maimonides son Abraham, and his student Joseph Ibn Aknin, for whom the Guide of the Perplexed was dedicated.

On the controversial issue of Maimonides' feigned conversion to Islam, she fails to explain the meaning of such conversions, and leaves her readers confused. At one point she states flatly we can rest assured that he never converted to Islam, and at other times she indicates just as flatly that he feigned observance of Islam. She should have explained that Islam does not need conversion at all as Islam views people as having an Islamic nature which only needs to be realized. Such realization takes place when the individual acknowledges the formula of the divinity of Allah and the prophecy of Mohammed in a mosque. Maimonides himself writes that since this is all that is required, together with occasional attendance at Mosque prayers, a Jew need not question his own faith if he has to do these acts for the sake of survival.

Admittedly our determination that Maimonides feigned such conversion is based on circumstantial evidence, but it is exceptionally good circumstantial evidence. Apart from his own words in his epistle on the subject, we know for a fact that no Jew, and particularly no Jew of public prominence like Maimonides and his father, could have survived long in Fez, Morocco under the Almohads without feigning Islam. Then there is the well known case, discussed by Arbel, of the prosecution brought by Abul Arab ibn Moisha in Cairo. Moisha had known Maimonides in Fez, as an apparent Muslim, and was shocked to find him as the head of the Jewish community in Cairo. He brought a prosecution against Maimonides for the capital heresy of converting from Islam. Maimonides' protector, El Fadil, Saladin's vizier, was the judge in the case. Arbel states that Fadil's ruling was to declare Maimonides never really adopted the fate or converted but only kept up a fabulous disguise and therefore could not have had a relapse from Islam. What really happened, according to Dr. Joel Kraemer, was that the court ruled coerced conversions were not effective conversions in Islam, citing Quran, and Maimonides could not be held guilty for feigning conversion under coercion.

Like all books nowadays, the editors don't really do any editing, and there are many obvious typographical errors in the text. One howler is the author's apparent inability to distinguish pray from prey (twice!) as in
". . . It prayed on his mind."

The book is neither long nor difficult to read, and the author has a moderately engaging prose style. She seems to be genuinely interested in the details of Maimonides life, and for those reasons the book should be read.

A marvelous, thrilling read
In this exciting, vibrant biography, the author succeeds where all others failed -- she brings Maimonides and his contemporaries to life. A few other books, all of them at least thirty years old, claim to be his biographies, but they are really only discussions of his work, with a few biographical details merely tacked on. Arbel's book, on the other hand, is truly the story of the life of a most interesting man, set against the vast panorama of a turbulent era. The intriguing details, taken from rarely used historical materials, help the reader visualize the scandals, controversies, court intrigues, and wars, as well as the daily lives, fashions, food, entertainment, and houses of people in Spain, Morocco, Israel, and Egypt of the twelfth century.

Arbel obviously likes and admires Maimonides, but she does not worship him, and is not averse to showing his human, less than perfect side. She may run into trouble with the more orthodox rabbis, perhaps, but for the general reader it is a wonderful approach, and you end the book feeling that you have spent some time with a human being, not the demigod that is presented by other authors. I truly enjoyed the book. ... Read more

Book Description

Like most Christians, Mary Blye Howe was uninformed about Jewish ritual and tradition. To satisfy her curiosity she joined a Jewish study group held in the home of a Hasidic rabbi. A Baptist Among the Jews is Howe's first-person account of her eye-opening experience of studying with that welcoming group and how this experience led her to a deeper, richer relationship with her God. While learning about the traditions of Judaism and studying the Torah, Howe discovered a new world of worship and ritual that expanded her experience to include several different Jewish groups, among them Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. She reveled in the joys of arguing with God (even though God always wins), synagogue-hopping on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, and dancing with a sefer torah through the streets of Dallas. Page after page, we join Howe on her religious quest and discover how her once-narrow concept of God has expanded with her ability to read the scriptures and understand this new faith. Howe's profound and transforming experiences helped her develop a new sense of worship— one that eschews spectatorship in favor of participation. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

A terrific read . . .
A Baptist among the Jews is an exuberant, uplifting, and inspiring read for all of us who have found ourselves embarking on a spiritual journey. Mary Howe reveals her excellent grounding in Jewish belief and practice without ever straying far from her own personal experiences. This is one of those rare books that not only engages and absorbs but educates as well. I highly recommend it.

Approaching God
"A Baptist Among the Jews" is a passionate blueprint for achieving ecumenical understanding and cooperation. The author has managed to transcend the confines of her narrow fundamentalist origins and allow herself to experience other approaches to the Divine. And "experience" is the key issue in this fascinating story of the author's acceptance and inclusion by the Jewish community. Howe isn't overly concerned with doctrine or dogma. She doesn't bring a list of theological preconceptions or doctrinal preconditions to her relationship with reform, conservative, orthodox, and even hasidic Jews. That a person can actually come closer to God in a faith tradition other than her own is perhaps the central lesson of her book and one that more people would do well to emulate.

Fantastic book... very informative and filled with heart
This book is so filled with spirit and heart. As it unfolds, the reader is drawn into a deep understanding about spirituality with a sense of humor and feeling.
Great reading for everyone.

Baptist Among the Jews
I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting and informative and gave an easy to read insight into the Jewish faith.

Loved it!
From the first page to the last, this book captivated me with Ms. Howe's experience among the Jewish religion and culture. This book is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand their own faith, be it Christianity or Judaism. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Should be on Everyones Must Read List
This book should be read by everyone. It is informative, well written, and provides information one one of the true heros in the history of mankind. If you read "Shindlers Ark" (or saw the movie) you'll really enjoy this book.

History that is more exciting than the best-selling fiction
As a parent, I know how hard it is to find excellent, high-quality nonfiction books for older children who are at an in-between stage - not quite ready for adult books but too old for "juvenile" books. This true account of Raoul Wallenberg, a man who saved more than 100,000 Jewish men, women and children from extinction during the Holocaust, is gripping and well-written. My kids could NOT put it down and one of them is a reluctant reader, so that says a lot right there. Watching my reluctant reader with his eyes glued to the page compelled me to pick up the book myself and I was glad I did. The author has used actual archival materals and even interviewed Wallenberg's family and friends. There are also photographs included, a special touch that brings a sense of immediacy to the past. Perhaps most importantly, the author has not "talked down" to the older children who are most likely to read this book (although it could be read aloud to younger ones). Adults, too, would find this one fascinating to read. A strong recommendation for this one!

If I could rate this higher than 5 stars I would!
Raoul Wallenberg was just one Swede, and that one Swede saved over 100,000 Jewish people from certain death at the merciless hands of Adolf Eichmann. To this day no one knows what the fate of Wallenberg is. This book was wonderfully written and didn't even seem as though it was non-fiction! I loved this book and I recommend this book to anyone.

This book is one of the best Holocaust books I have read.
This book tell's about Raoul Wallenberg's life, and how he saved the Jewish People during the Jewish people. Raoul was born in 1912. When Raoul grew up his grandfather wanted him to be a banker like himself, but Raoul failed to let his grandfathers dream come true when his grandfather died. Instead Rauol whanted to be an artist. But while he was in Hungary he heard that the Jewish people are being killed by two people. As a sith grader this book needs to incude a biography of the other main characters.

Truth more exciting than fiction
Although this book is based on carefully researched facts, it holds your interest like a spy novel. Schindler saved 1,000. (That's great.) Wallenberg saved 100,000 lives. That's spectacular! Read how he emptied trains headed for death camps, had face to face confrontations with German leaders, and dared to do what no one else would. The gripping story of one of the few real heroes of our day. ... Read more

Book Description

The Israel-Arab Reader is a thorough and up-to-date guide to the continuing crisis in the Middle East. It covers the full spectrum of the Israel-Arab conflict-from the earliest days, through the wars and peacemaking efforts, up to the Israel-PLO and Israel-Jordan peace accords. This comprehensive reference includes speeches, letters, articles, and reports dealing with all the major interests in the area from all of the relevant political parties and world leaders. Completely updated, consolidated, and revised throughout, The Israel-Arab Reader contains new sections on the Wye River agreement, and other recent developments, making it the essential resource on the ongoing conflict.

Historians and Middle East specialists Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin have arranged the material chronologically and without bias. All viewpoints-American, Arab, British, Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinian, and Russian-are accurately presented. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

The key documents
Anyone who wants a truly honest vision of the Arab-Israeli conflict should consider this excellent 580-page Reader, last updated in 2001. It is divided into four sections each of which contains important writings from both sides (sometimes three or more) of the question and goes back more than a century.

The first, for example, runs from 1882 through the end of the British Mandate and includes 69 pages of writings, from the Bilu Group Manifesto, excerpts of Theodore Herzl's Jewish State and a 1905 French journal piece by Negib Azouri to the 1915 letter of Sir Henry McMahon to Hussein the Sherif of Mecca, the Peel Commission report, the US Special Committee on Palestine and the Partition Plan of the UN General Assembly.

The Third section runs from the Camp David Accords to Madrid, including statements from various commissions, the Arab League Jordanian Crown Prince Al-Hassan Bin Talal, and Lebanon and Israel's 1983 truce agreement. Also included is the Hamas charter, the Palestine National Council political resolution and declaration of independence of 1988 and Iraqi speech of Saddam Hussein as well as a 1991 U.S. letter of assurance to the Palestinians.

The Israel-Arab Reader's last section includes many Arab documents on Oslo and runs through 2001 statements by the Palestinian negotiating team and former President Bill Clinton.

It is hard to argue against reading important original documents, and forming your own opinion. Once you do, you will see many of the factors that have shaped the current Middle East as well as international and U.S. policy. Alyssa A. Lappen

A key to understand the Middle East
From the Manifesto of the Bilu (1882) and Theodore Herzl's "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State) published in 1896, to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yassir Arafat speeches accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1994, this book contains an unique collection of documents that will provide the reader with a better understanding of the Middle East and the conflict between Arabs and Israelis. This last, and fifth, edition, published in 1995 adds new documents covering the most significant events of the 1990-1994 period, including the famous Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles signed in the White House in September of 1993, and although the reader will not find in this edition, any document of later events, this book, already a classic, maintains its place as a documentary history of the Arab-Israeli conflict that is indispensable to understand current Middle East affairs. As they have done with previous editions, historians and Middle East specialist Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin present a selection of key documents that reflect the viewpoints of all involved parties in this dramatic history. A great reference book.

Almost the Perfect Reference
I will not spend a lot of time writing about how valuable a reference this is - the other reviewers on this site have already more than done it justice. Aside from the relative lack of material on early Zionism (also pointed out by one of the other reviewers), this book has most if not all of the relevant documents. I have only one major criticism (the reason I gave the book four stars instead of 5): the almost complete lack of information about the original sources. Apart from a one-liner preceding each document, no information is given regarding 1) the citation of the original work, including page numbers, where appropriate; 2) the language in which the original work was written; 3) if the work was not written in English, credit for the translation, the date thereof, etc. While these may not be of interest to the casual reader, to anyone doing research in the field, if only for a college paper, these details are critical. Furthermore, in an area as controversial as the Arab-Israeli conflict, the ability to trace documents back to the original and verify translations is everything.

Every UN Document
What else can be said about a book that contains every UN and League of Nations document about the Israel-Palestine conflict? It is a necessity as a reference for those engaged and a great book to learn about the conflict and its basic political evolution.

A book worthy of being called objective
If one is a previously biased reader, this book will doubtlessly contain some documents that are upsetting to read on grounds of including inciteful material. However, the only real criticism that I have is that the 3rd edition has several documents that are of interest to those seeking to research the early Mandatory period, such as documents by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the Revisionist Zionist and ideological founder of the Irgun Zvai Leumi. It is understanable though, that as future editions come out the length could get phrohibitively long without pruning some data. As a basic and intermediate level documentary text it is one of the best I have come across. ... Read more

Book Description

"To this day, I don't even know what my mother's real name is."

Helen Fremont was raised as a Roman Catholic. It wasn't until she was an adult, practicing law in Boston, that she discovered her parents were Jewish--Holocaust survivors living invented lives. Not even their names were their own. In this powerful memoir, Helen Fremont delves into the secrets that held her family in a bond of silence for more than four decades, recounting with heartbreaking clarity a remarkable tale of survival, as vivid as fiction but with the resonance of truth.

Driven to uncover their roots, Fremont and her sister pieced together an astonishing story: of Siberian Gulags and Italian royalty, of concentration camps and buried lives. After Long Silence is about the devastating price of hiding the truth; about families; about the steps we take, foolish or wise, to protect ourselves and our loved ones. No one who reads this book can be unmoved, or fail to understand the seductive, damaging power of secrets.

... Read more

Reviews (57)

An Amazing Book
Like Helen Fremont, my parents are also Jewish Holocaust Survivors. However, unlike her, my parents never hid their past. Even with our differences, she does a remarkable job of showing something most children of survivors have in common - how truly difficult it is to "ask" our parents about their past; I label it "a difficult dance" - we, as their children, feel we must know about their past, but we don't want to hurt them by making them spill their guts about the utter inhumantiy they lived through. This is a difficult topic to capture, but Fremont did it magnificently. I also felt tremendous sympathy for her. I truly understand how she felt. The incredible "jolt" (and this is putting it mildly) when she learned her real identity is probably one of the hardest things she has ever had to live through. I hope that committing her story to paper, in the moving way that she did, will help her resolve her background. She should be commended for opening her life to the rest of us.

Understanding the silent & why we must break our own silence
As the son of a survivor, I read this book differently than most. I understand the author's parents need for silence. I also understand the destructiveness of it on the survivors and their children. Ms. Fremont has created a wonderful framework for the telling of HER story.

Those who read this just for the story of her parents are missing the point of writing the book. The silence of her parents - like many survivors of the Shoa - cannot be completely broken, so admittedly the author 'fills in' or 'imagines' details so painful that her parents are unable or unwilling to remember.

This novel is an exploration into the author's movement OUT OF SILENCE. She skillfully represents this personal growth by sharing with the reader her journey into her family's and her own past. It is during this journey as she questions why her parents kept so silent that she puts herself to the ultimate test and breaks her own conspiracy of silence to her parents and family about her sexual orientation. Bravely she works to stop all the silences of her family - silence of Shoa experiences, silences of avoiding one's true identity - so that they may no longer live in the shadow that silence casts.

The book is to be applauded as a journey to self truth. A journey we are always on and must always work at.

Read the book as a tool to remove your own silences.

Silence is deadly
I totally agree with all those who said that this book is an outstanding peace of art. One more example of that there cannot be too 'MANY" books about the Holocaust subject. I understand,however the reluctance and even hostility of Helen and Lara's parents(as well as some of the readers) about the exposing Helen's parents life story.It is definetely painful, as well as possibly embarassing to let the whole world to know their very private life.(even though they have nothing to be ashamed about).But to that you can also add that Lara and Helen have a RIGHT to know about thier roots and their family. So in that respect I agree that their parents made a big mistake by SUPRESSING it all. It seems that they mostly defnding themselves rather than their kids about the truth.When our children are small that is understandable. But it is WRONG to hide the truth about the family once children are all grown up. Amazing story and I wish Zosia and Helen's mom would open up and tell everything. Once they die... no more memory...
(...)

Amazing story of survival
This book would make a great movie. The story of the author's parents during the war is truly a tale worth telling. They've overcome tremendous odds but did not survive unscathed. It made me realize that although people physically survive wars, they are scarred for life. They live with the price of their survival everyday. Theirs is an amazing story, very poignant.

Read it !
She was hungarian and jew like me, but older. I did not live through all those horrors and the life before the lightening strook that she describes so well. Also very interesting how helping each other saved the three women.
She writes very well and I was recitating with her at hightschool, and hoping and sometimes crying.
And it took so many years to get it out finally from her system and could speak about it. ... Read more

Book Description

Celebrating it thirtieth anniversary, the SHAMIR Publishing House has reprinted the popular autobiography of its editor-in-chief and honorary president, Professor Herman Branover. Leader of the cultural revival of Russian-speaking Jews and world pioneer in magnetohydrodynamics, Branover’s life story of how as a young atheist top scientist in Stalinist USSR he discovered and fought for his Jewish identity is particularly relevant reading for Jews in 2002. His story is a personal victory over anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing. RETURN is an inspiring affirmation of faith that has changed people’s lives. SHAMIR’s enlarged edition contains 32 pages of photographs and philosophic essays. ... Read more

Book Description

"What binds us pushes time away," wrote David Oppenheim to his future wife, Amalie Pollak, on March 24, 1905. Oppenheim, classical scholar, collaborator and then critic of Sigmund Freud, and friend and supporter of Alfred Adler, lived through the heights and depths of Vienna's twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history. He perished in obscurity at a Nazi concentration camp in 1943. More than fifty years later, philosopher Peter Singer set out to explore the life of the grandfather he never knew.

Combining touching family biography with thoughtful reflection on both personal and public questions we face today, Pushing Time Away captures critical moments in Europe's transition from Belle Époque to the Great War, to the rise of Fascism, and the coming of World War II.

Reviews (3)

well-crafted tribute
Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, has written a thoughtful, well-researched portrait of his grandfather, David Oppenheim, who perished in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943. "We all know that six million Jews died," writes Singer in the Prologue, "but that is a mind-numbing statistic. I have a chance to portray one of them as an individual."

His grandfather was a classical scholar in Vienna, a teacher of Greek and Latin at a prestigious gymnasium (high school), and an active participant in the city's psychoanalytic circles as a collaborator, then critic of Sigmund Freud, and a friend and supporter of Alfred Adler, the first of Freud's colleagues to defect from his inner circle over basic disagreements about psychoanalytic theory.

Oppenheim's wife, Amalie (a math and physics scholar in her own right) was also sent to Theresienstadt, but she survived, the only one of Singer's four grandparents to do so. She moved to Australia in 1946, the year Singer was born, and lived with his family for nine years until her death in 1955. Singer went on to study philosophy at Oxford and teach at Monash University in Australia, but always in the background there was a cloud of sadness and silence that hung over his family's recent past. (On his mother's side he comes from a long line of rabbis stretching back to the seventeenth century.)

His aunt's master's thesis about her father inspired Singer to learn more about his grandfather and write this book. Hecollected his grandfather's personal papers, letters between his grandparents before their marriage that he retrieved from his aunt's attic, and letters his grandparents wrote to his parents and aunt after they emigrated to Australia in 1938. Singer also travelled to Vienna to see where his grandparents lived and visit the school where his grandfather taught. He searched for additional pertinent information in the Austrian archives, interviewed his grandfather's surviving students, and went to Theresienstadt to see for himself where his grandfather died. Singer believed that reading through his grandfather's vast collection of writings in German, most of them in longhand that was difficult to read, would be "to undo, in some infinitely small but still quite palpable way, a wrong done by the Holocaust."

The final part of the book describes the departure of the children to Australia in 1938 after the Anschluss, the illusory hope that life would somehow go on, the desperate efforts from faraway Melbourne to save the parents from the impeding catastrophe, and finally Theresienstadt. During his research Singer also learned what happened to his paternal grandparents: the Germans transported them to Lodz in Poland (after that they were probably gassed at Chelmno).

Professor Singer's well-crafted tribute to his grandfather and the lost world of Jewish Vienna is a valuable contribution to Holocaust remembrance and mourning.

--Charles Patterson, Ph.D., author of ETERNAL TREBLINKA: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

The Missing Element
An excellent and important story that needs to be told over and over again.But for those of us who use non-fiction books such as this for research as well, this book lacks a crucial element--an index.I could not recommend this book to someone researching information on the Holocaust because there is no way for someone to retrieve important information without laboriously searching page by page through the book.When will publishers learn what researchers and librarians know, a non-fiction book without an index is not complete?

Compelling and moving memoir
This is a compelling and frequently moving account of the author's grandparents' lives from the turn of the century in Vienna to the middle years of the twentieth century. The grandparents, David and Amalie Oppenheim, had both the good and bad fortune to live through some of the most interesting and tragic times of the last century. As young, educated, middle-class Jews living in Vienna at the beginning of the twentieth century, they experienced the last days of the Hapsburg empire, the intellectual currents of the time and place (including being part of Freud's circle), the first world war, the depression, anti-semitism, Nazism and the Holocaust, as well as the great intellectual achievements of Austro-German culture.

The book is a fascinating account of the period, as well as the curious relationship between David and Amalie, whose homosexual feelings towards others seem to lead them into marriage and children of their own. The final chapters, describing post-Anschluss Vienna, the ghetto conditions in which they were forced to live, and finally Theresienstadt concentration camp are harrowing and moving. As a memoir rather than a history, the book is written well and reads easily; though there are references to other works, it is not in any way dull or academic. The author's frequent comparisons between his grandfather's way of thinking and his own are I feel a little forced, but this is only a minor quibble, especially when the humanity of both the author and the grandparents about whom he is writing is evident. Highly recommended.

One book which Singer refers to frequently is Stefan Zweig's "The World of Yesterday", which I would also highly recommend to anyone interested in the period or subject matter. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

EXCELLENT RESOURCE
I used this book when I was writing the memoir RENA'S PROMISE: A STORY OF SISTERS IN AUSCHWITZ, which is the story of a woman on the first transport of women into Auschwitz. Aside from the Auschwitz Chronicles, this was the only text I could find that spoke of this transport, which was also the very first transport into Auschwitz.
This book helped me further my research and provided me with invaluable information that allowed the survivor I was writing about to validate many facts that she remembered--thereby validating her story, her memories and the truth that women were targeted far more rigorously than men. It is amazing any of them survived.

crucial for feminist studies, the holocaust, minority lit.
This anthology is fascinating, moving, sad, horrifying and inspiring. It revises our notion of what Holocaust literature is, and shows us how very differently women experienced and wrote about it. The book's second section contains excellent essays about women and the Holocaust. In short, a must for feminist readers and anyone interested in Holocaust studies, genocide studies, and the literature of witness. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The Last Album by Ann Weiss contains images selected from a collection of about 2,400 personal photographs that belonged to Jews who taken to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The pictures were found after the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945. No other such collection is known to exist, because personal photographs were among the property that was systematically destroyed when Jews arrived at the camps. It is difficult to describe the experience of seeing these photographs, whose power lies in their subjects' innocence: "Regard these doomed and ferociously normal people," writes Leon Wieseltier (author of Kaddish), in his foreword to the book. The people in the pictures are relaxing at the beach, playing the piano, getting married, looking in the mirror, climbing mountains, climbing trees. Wieseltier explains what kinds of knowledge, love, and memory are at play in the experience of paging through The Last Album: "We do not know the names of the people in these photographs, but we know something just as precious, just as binding: we know the objects of their devotion, who and what they loyally loved. We have been initiated by their deaths into their intimacies. We remember what they wished to remember; and in the memory of their memory, they live." --Michael Joseph Gross ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Memorial Day
I read this book by chance, yesterday, Memorial Day 2003.
Been crying.
It's like Schindler's List or Sophie's choice.
How could they do it?
How can we let them continue doing it?
The animals still are around us, although using another names, another symbols, another motivations.
I kept reading, hoping to find some of the people to be safe at the end, but almost everybody was killed.
Binim, Rozak, Mayer, Bronka, so many of you.
I miss you, my friends.

Should be required reading
After reading this book, I feel this should be in every house in every country. You hear so much about the people and the numbers killed that sometimes it doesn't seem real but this book makes it very real. The pictures are so powerful and at the same time so ordinary - they could be pictures of anyone's parents or grandparents. The most haunting pictures are those of the children - you have to wonder how many survived. The stories of the survivors bring it all home - "There's the aunt of the little girl I used to babysit", etc. I found it amazing that these pictures did survive 40, 50 years before being discovered again. Anyone who denies the Holocaust happened should read this book and then try to still say it never happened. Thank you Ann Weiss for bringing these pictures and the stores behind them out of the darkness.

The Last Album
"The last Album" by Ann Weiss is well organized and well written. It contains 400 remarkable
photographs that were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau by victims in 1943. These photographs were taken
prior to the Holocaust and depict people bursting with life. This is an extremely unique book, and contains material that was lovingly researched for a period of 15 years. The beauty of this book is that the
photographs and the research accomplished brings to life people that were lost during the dreadful time of
the Holocaust. The book like the author is soft, sweet, articulate and brilliant

Amazing piece of history..............
This book is an amazing piece of history. The fact that so many photos brought into Auschwitz have survived is phenomenol as all personal effects were automotically burned by the Nazis murderers. When viewing the photos in this book, which were brought in by those of the Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport, it would also be advisable to read Tadeusz Borokowski's book "This way to the gas ladies & gentleman' as this book covers the particular Sosnowiec-Bendzin transport and outlines in gruesome and terrifying detail what became of many of those on this transport. The photographs bring back to life many who are gone and also tells you those who survived, which is a relief to realise that some of those from the Polish ghettos made it. These photos bring back a lost world that will never return and along with Roman Vishniac's collection of photographs are a piece of history that is very much worth investing in.

A Face Is More Than a Name: The People of Bendin
The whole world knows the face of Anne Frank whose life and writings have been the subject of numerous books, plays and films. But what about those nameless, faceless other millions whose voices were silenced by Nazi barbarity in a government-sponsored policy of mass murder? Ann Weiss, a soccer-mom from suburban Philadelphia and the daughter of survivors from Poland, on a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1987 found, quite by chance, an album filled with hundreds of photos of families and individuals living normal lives until three days in August, 1943, when the entire Jewish community of Bendin, Poland, was transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Photos of this kind are rarer than gold, for in the words of one survivor, "They (the Nazis) didn't want to destroy us only but also all of our words, our lives, our memories. For this alone I can never forgive them." While many books about the Holocaust focus on broken remnants of the victims' physical existence, Weiss's extraordinary album restores to them their smiles, laughter and songs. With painstaking research and dedication over a period of fourteen years, Weiss learned their names and family histories. The result is nothing less than a miracle: a restoration to the world of the living, in spirit at least, of these beautiful people of Bendin whose dreams were shattered by events that seem incomprehensible to us today. In one especially touching photo, Artur Huppert holds his twenty-month-old son, Peterle, on his shoulder for the boy's grandparents with the inscription, "Healthy and strong to the age of 120. Radiant as the moon." The rest would be silence if it were not for Weiss's project of remembrance. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Finally I have a better understanding!
It reads very easily and you feel right along with Jacob on his journey to understand the Messiah of Israel.I pray that everyone would have an encounter with a person like Jeff. To me, the biggest question regarding the New Testament that Jeff asks is "How can you (the Jews) have such a fixed idea regarding something that you do not know anything about?How can you issue such a terrible verdict on Yeshua and on the New Covenant, when you do not have the faintest idea about them?It's too bad that you condemn a book that you have never seen."Jacob replies "We Jews are forbidden even to hold that book in our hands!It's a Gentile book, and we must not defile our hands with it." I didn't know the Jews felt this way.God says seek and you shall find.For all of us we must look for the answers ourselves, nottake some other person's word as truth.This is such an eye-opening book and I do believe that everyone who reads this book will have a better understanding of the Jewish faith with love.God Bless You Jacob, Thank you.

Praise be to God!
Jacob Damkani has written an excellent book of apologetics for why Jesus is the Messiah. I particularly enjoyed the insight on the Jewish faith. I found it sad to realize how far away many Jews are from their Father andhow they just miss the true joy and happiness they could have by getting toknow Him personally.I was very helped by the book to realize thedifficulties and obstacles the Jew faces. Thanks you, Jacob for yourhonesty in portaying what went on for you and how Jesus can change lives,even today! Praises be to God! ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Historical What-ifs
In 1971, I was a public high school senior who had dropped out of the Catholic School system after ten years of Catholic indoctrination and an excellent high school education under the Sistine Jesuits. I took an English elective entitled, "The Bible as Literature." Our first reading was "The Passover Plot."

I found the book to be highly interesting in its presentation of the historical facts of the time (history has always been my passion), and its subjective interpretation of the life of Jesus. Keep in mind that my background had been the religous indoctrination of the Catholic Church, which had been the preeminet spiritual and temporal leader of Europe until Martin Luther happened along. Also, keep in mind that Protestants are considered to be heretics of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Anyway, my take on the whole matter is quite simple. I am sure most of us remember the old school game where you wisper a message in someones ear and have that person pass it to ten people. At the end of the line you ask the last person to reveal the message, and your original message has been totally twisted around. The same with history. Here we are two thousand years later after Jesus' presumable death at the
"brutal" hands of the Romans whose empire is also dead, and, more importantly, still waiting for his "SECOND COMING" as Christian believers, and no one can really say with sound accuracy if he lived or if he was just a myth.

The bottom line really is quite simple. Regardless of his existence, a religion was started, and our modern world is now caught up in the grips of a terrorist inspired JIHAD. The crusades revisited. Jews against Moslems, and Moslems against Christians---an age old story. Yet, all three religions claim to be descended from Abraham, but are killing each other against the precept of "Thou shallt not kill thy neighbor." The more lethal the weapon, the better.

Oh, and now we have a movie, "The Passion," which is exploiting the violent side of our souls in order to get a message out or is it the old Hollywood story--to make a bigger buck and be the all-time money grosser.

When will we as so-called educated, enlightened humans ever learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sorry, if this was not an exact review of the book, and more like a polemical takeoff of my feelings on the book...but,...

In conclusion, the book does make an interesting read for someone who is open-minded enough to accept or reject the authors precepts. It should be read along with other books on the subject. Like the Constitution and the Bible, it is a matter of one's own interpretation. For historical research, I give it four stars, and for his "subjective" analysis and conclusion, I give the book three stars.

4 stars because it took some real testicular fortitude to
write this book in 1965, and to try and provide the thesis with scholarly support.Schonfield does exactly that.I'm not sure I can buy into all of what he is saying, but there certainly exists an aura of plausibility.Indeed, if one reads the Koran and some of the Indian texts that exist, Schonfield's book isn't so revolutionary.Specifically, Indians to this day claim that Jesus is buried in their country.Is it true? who knows, but we do know that contemporaneous writings from immediately after the crucifixtion refer to Jesus in India.Who knows, maybe it is all bunk.I think one thing is for certain--that Gospels as published today, don't match up with their original Greek manuscripts.I suspect that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between the Gospels and Schonfield's view.

Once It Was a Bombshell
When _The Passover Plot_ first came out back around 1965, it hit like a bombshell. Right away Schonfield tells his readers that the book is "the outcome of an endeavor which has extended over 40 years to discover who the 'man' (quotes mine) really was. However, rather than publishing this in a scholarly book, Schonfield aims his writing toward the general public in a commercial enterprise. What this means is that the author gets to make unsubstantiated assertions and does not have to field points of view contrary to his own.

So for Schonfield, Jesus became a Galilean who was caught up by his times. There was a great deal of messianic expectancy in Galilee and the Scriptures were reinterpreted to pertain to current events. One can find this same technique in the Dead Sea Scroll pesharim. For the pious in Israel, Rome was the archenemy,
the Fourth Kingdom foretold by Daniel 7. Jesus came to believe that he was the Messiah endowed with the spirit of wisdom. According to the Scriptures, he would die on the cross and then be resurrected. This would save Israel from the Romans.

With meticulous detail Jesus plans his own execution and resurrection. Yes, there would be torture, but that was predicted by Scripture. But crucifixion was not always fatal. Josephus records an interesting story about some who were saved after being crucified. Jesus planned to stay on the cross for only a few hours. He would try to appear dead. The vinegar on the sponge was supposed to be a drug. Then he would try to get into the hands of some close, trusted friends who would resuscitate him. The plan would have worked had not Jesus been thrust in the side with a lance. For a short period of time on Saturday night Jesus regained consciousness and then succumbed.

I have a few objections to Schonfield's book. For the moment I will grant that he was writing as a historian and not as a theologian. Among other things, this allows him to not consider anything which might be known as miraculous.

My first objection is that Schonfield has to account for the formation of the early church. He does this by quickly sketching in a few post-resurrectional stories. The angel at the tomb is really the young man who gave Jesus the vinegar at the cross. The man encountered by Mary in the garden is a Jesus imperson-ator as are the man encountered by the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

All of this was supposed to have been planned by Jesus at least some of which was planned on Saturday night when Jesus regained consciousness for a short period of time. Proposing these posthumous manipulation of events stretches credulity. Moreover the whole theory proposes that there were the Twelve Disciples and then there was an inner circle closer to Jesus. One would think that later traditions would know something more about them than an obscure comment.

My second objection is that Schonfield writes that the Romans were the enemy of the pious of Israel. But on page 143 Jesus manipulates the situation so that the Chief Priests were forced to move against him. Then on page 145 the Chief Priests have bring "strong pressure" on Pilate so they pack his courtyard with their own henchmen. This sounds like Jesus had another opponent than Rome.

Now I will get back to the idea that Schonfield was writing as a historian rather than a theologian. Schonfield is a Jewish Nazorean. He starts out his book with a question that he asked of his "Christian friends" if it would not be enough if they believed in One God and believed in Jesus as his messianic messenger. On page 141 he points out that early Nazoreans knew nothing of Trinitarianism. He concludes Part 1 of his book with a short homily about "the young Jew, there was the Man." So on the contrary, Schonfield permeates his book with his theology.

This book should never have made the explosion that it did.

Apparently it's not supposed to be a fictional book
In this book Hugh Schonfield delivers a theory that portrays Jesus as a deceiver who bent the rules in order to fulfill prophecy. According to Schonfield's story, Jesus planned His own resurrection, which was apparently foiled when He was accidentally pierced on the cross by a soldier. However, the disciples--what would a dead Jesus look like anyway? Schonfield asks--wanted so badly to believe in the resurrection that they mistakenly thought they saw Jesus and began what we today call Christianity.

Pity the poor Christians today, Schonfield seems to be saying. Here they are, believing in a nonhistorical fairy tale. If his story is correct, then the Christian is truly the most pitied of all people, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff. But if he is wrong, there is a terrible price to pay. Yet I believe that history shows the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, or even the spiritual resurrection theory as much more likely possibilities than what Schonfield has to offer.

In effect, Schonfield is calling into question the integrity of both Jesus and his disciples. Was Jesus really a deceiver? Was He looking for popularity? If so, then why did He not accept the accolades of the people that He received on Palm Sunday and just become their political ruler? Certainly it could have ended no more tragically than what really took place. Jesus' popularity would have given Him an edge in trying to overthrow the Roman government in the Judean region, and perhaps He could have been more successful than the many other "messiahs" who, for the most part, were all unsuccessful and eventually lost their lives. But to claim that Jesus was in this for the power or because He Himself was under dillusional thoughts is not very historical at all.

Another problem with Schonfield's theory is that there were many events not under Jesus' control for this theory to take place. Here is a man whose very birth was predicted in scripture (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2). What He would say on the cross and other circumstances of His death were also very clearly predicted (Psalm 22, Isaiah 53). His life fulfilled these things. Despite His death and the "plot" wallowing in shambles, everything is supposed to work out just right? Are we to believe that Thomas really touches Jesus, but this really wasn't Jesus? (John 20:26ff) So why does Thomas take the gospel message to India and die a martyr's death? To make everything work, Thomas and the other disciples must have been complete dolts, which is the only possible way it would have worked. With Jesus out of the picture, there is no way in the world this could have fooled so many different people, including the more than 500 who saw Jesus at one time (1 Cor. 15:1-7).

All in all, I believe that a person will have to own a lot of faith in order to believe The Passover Plot. If the author was not serious about his research, it would almost be a fun theory. But Schonfield shows how far off a person can get by reading into history and creating one's own "what if" theory. To me, believing in the many eyewitness accounts of Jesus' resurrection appearances, the evidence of the power of changed lives because of this resurrection, and a tomb where no body could be found is a much better risk of faith than believing anything Schonfield has to offer. Unless you're curious to see how Schonfield explains his theory, I just don't recommend this book.

Likely Fiction ... But More Believable Than the Gospels
An interesting analysis of the Passion story, this book is most valuable for the background information it gives about the state of the world where and when Jesus lived. The faked death by crucifixion notion seems a trifle far-fetched, but not nearly so outlandish as the story in the Gospels of the return from death and the invention of the notion of the Second Coming to cover up the historical fact that the Romans crushed the Jewish Messiah like a grape, and he did not save his people. Anything that pokes a few more holes in fundamentalism is worth the price of admission. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

An exquisitely detailed look at a fascinating man
A highly enjoyable book. Thomson paints an extremely detailed picture but does not attempt to create a mythic figure out of Levi. He is presented in 3 dimensions with all his strengths and weaknesses. Extremely rich look at the assimilated Jewish community of Turin suddenly being cast as the enemy of the Fascist state. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description

On the Border chronicles a radical political education in a time and place charged with idealism and danger. One of the most renowned figures of the Israeli left, Warschawski is known commonly by his nom de guerre Mikado. A Polish Frenchman and a rabbi's son, he went to Jerusalem as a young man to study Talmud. Warschawski recounts how he became radicalized, and muses on the vibrancy of border cultures that welcome and engage with strangers-where languages exchange phrases and people trade foods.

Warschawski's involvement in radical politics led to inspiring alliances with Jews, Muslims, Christians and atheists. Yet as the border lines hardened and Mikado became a movement leader, he became targeted by the Shin Bet, Israel's notorious intelligence agents, who eventually arrested him. Incarcerated and interrogated for 20 days, Mikado gives his readers an insider's view of the psychological and political pressures that Shin Bet brought to bear, even on Jews, and never lets you forget the severity of treatment that his Palestinian colleagues faced.

Throughout his story, Warschawski remains something of a scholar, a philosopher schooled in Talmudic reasoning, ready to argue, always searching for the larger meaning of justice and decency. The lessons he draws from his experience on the border between Israel and Palestine should be instructive for all the places where cultures rub against each other for better and worse. Warschawski's perspective offers hope for the rich cultural and political exchange that these places offer their inhabitants, and hope indeed for his adopted land.

Winner of Le Prix des Amis du Monde Diplomatique (2002).

Michel Warschawski founded the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Israeli organization that disseminates information, research, and political analysis on Palestinian and Israeli societies as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while promoting cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis.

Reviews (3)

Memoir of the Israeli Radical Left
In this memoir, Michel Warschawski does a very good job of laying out the history of the radical left movement in Israel, through his own involvement in it. Not as bold as "Toward an Open Tomb," I think, but very readable and educational.

Take a journey On the Border
From time to time ossified positions assumed over the Israel-Palestine conflict get a good rattling, and light pours in. Juliano Mer Khamis' film "Arna's Children" forces its viewers to look beyond rigid certaintiesand boundaries, and Michel Warchawski's "On the Border" has a similar effect on readers.

Warschawski's reflective journey from the insulated Jewish community of Strasbourg where his father was chief rabbi to Jerusalem to pursue Talmudic studies becomes what he call a "long march" along the borders that divide not just Israelis and Palestinians, but Jews of Europe and Jews of the Orient, and the religious from the secular. This beautifully crafted memoir chartshis evolving consciousness from the 1960s to the start of the second Intifada. Weaving together probing observations of Israeli society and its colonizing mission with a description of his own political choices and their consequences, he conveys faith in a future in which the term "Israeli-Palestinian" does not immediately invoke the word "conflict." The more this book is read, the more likely we are to get there.

A look at the world from the viewpoint of a revolutionary
There have been revolutionaries for ages.And there will be revolutionaries in the future.What impresses me about many of them is the arbitrariness of their causes.That's the feeling I have about this book in particular.

Can left-wingers fight against human rights?Can they be colonialists?Albert Memmi, in his book, "Portrait du Colonise," says they can.And the author quotes Memmi here, and agrees with him.However, Warschawski portrays Memmi and his fellow Zionists as the colonialists!

I guess I can play this game as well, and say that the author is a colonialist.But I'm not sure what the author means by that word.In any case, I think the author is trying to protect the world from human rights.He dismisses Jewish attempts to protect their rights to life, liberty, and property as "tribalism."However, these rights are actually universal, not tribal.These rights ought to apply to all humans in a colorblind world.

We're told that the author is for "peace."But enshrining the tyranny his sort of peace would mean is more than a little frightening.

Abraham Lincoln once said that those who deny rights to others do not deserve those rights for themselves.But I don't want to deny rights to anyone.I simply want to get people to argue for equal rights for everyone.And I want them to insist on the same rights for themselves as for everyone else, not more and not less. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Fascinating Words From an Engineer of the Final Solution
In many works attempting to discuss the minds behind the Nazi Final Solution, the reader is harnessed with the task of sorting facts from assumptions and interpretations that too often color an otherwise accurate book. However, Eichmann Interrogated allows the reader to study the words of one of the most notorious actors of Hitler's plans for genocide and mass murder. While reading the transcripts of Eichmann's interrogations at the hands of Israeli police, I attempted to try and understand what would cause Eichmann, a man who in his earlier years had a fascination for Jewish culture, to turn evil and attempt to destroy a whole race of people. Although the transcripts don't provide an answer to such a complex question, they did provide a means to study Eichmann. Through out the interrogation, Eichmann consistently denied his role in carrying out the Final Solution. Rather than admit to any actual killings of Jews, Eichmann stuck to a story which maintained that he was simply a soldier following orders, and even then, his only task was to ensure that the trains containing the Jews were running accurately. I found it also interesting to read that Eichmann claims to have provided alternatives to the wholesale slaughter of the Jews, such as exportation of all Jews to the African island of Mauritius, or the strangely Zionistic support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Although the truth about Eichmann and his motivations will never be clear, the transcripts of his interrogation, although possibly filled with lies, provides an interesting historical document for those wishing to learn more about the psychology of the engineers of the Final Solution.

Truth be known...
Adolf Eichmann was the main character behind the deportation of the jews to concentration and extermination camps during the second world war. With that in mind, one better understands the historic and sociological value of a book made of the transcripts of his interrogation at the hands of the israeli police prior to Eichmann execution at the conclusion of his trial. However several things wich I will now detail diminish the impact of this neverteless important work.
The first of these diminishing factor is Eichmann himself... Eichmann lies constantly all trough the transcript and try to weasel is way out of most of what he consider to be potentially damming evidence for his trial... Given the man's weak intellect most of his lies are unimaginative and most of the time he doesn't even realize he is not making any sense and denying evidence already backed by numerous witness and written evidence... He doesn't even have the common sense to realise what constitute dammaging evidence and what doesn't and he sometimes argue against or refute very technical details of little importance and yet not realize that by his own previous admission he has already confirmed the most important charges against him. All through the book Eichmann shows himself to be an uninteresting bore of little character or imagination. Totally selfish he constantly blame others for his wrong doings. He is also completely unrepentant (One gets the impression that under the same circunstance Eichmann who do it all over again, as he doesn't even seem to grasp the importance of his part in the holocaust)
Another factor that raise question about the value of this book is the circumstances in which the transcript were obtained from Eichmann. Even considering the disgusting nature of the character, one must admit that sending secret agent to kidnap him from Argentina (with not respect for the sovereignty of that country)and to bring him to trial on such short notice, trial which ended by Eichmann execution, might raise questions about the impartiality of the israeli authority and the fairness of the procedings. Incidentally, Capt. Avner Less the man who interviewed Eichmann had lost several direct family members to the extermination camps ... So are the extract presented in this book truthfull representation of what really took place in the interogation process? Probably, but one must nevertheless not forget the circumstances in which Eichmann's words were obtained...
In conclusion, the transcript will be of limited interest to people trying to get a better picture of the holocaust and the role Eichmann played in it. Eichmann's constant lying and droning on and on in his answers leave very little interesting facts and you will get a better picture of the holocaust or the role Eichmann played in it in other books. However this book will be of great interest to anybody interested in knowing and undersanding more of the personality and mind of a man who is responsable for the death of 6 million jews. Reading this book makes one realise the rather unconfortable fact that a man like A. Eichmann is not exceptionnal but rather a very dull, very normal man, the kind of promotion chasing heartless civil servant like there are hundreds in every big city ...

Just a normal man??
The Israeli agents involved in his capture couldn't believe that such an unremarkable man could be the one with the blood of six million Jews on his hands - This book reveals how he could! This is one of the best books I have read in a long time, not (I agree) everyone's cup of tea but definately mine! Once started I couldn't put the thing down. I was locked to it with disbelief at the way Eichmann could rationalise all his actions (almost justify them) and distance himself from the end product of the conveyor-belt he claimed to be....just the transporter of! I know others have written not particularly savoury reviews of this book, but if you are in any way interested in the Holocaust then reading of the bringing to justice of one of it's most notorious perpetrators will be time well spent. Highly recommended...............Fascinating!

Nutritive but rather distasteful
Yuck. Reading this is like eating liver and onions ~ a wonderful aroma, and a few tasty morsels, but for the most part to be choked down a little bit at a time. I don't know why i picked this up at this particular time; perhaps it resonated because i had recently finished "Schindler's List" and was interested in knowing more. Now i know...very little more. Eichmann spends almost the entire transcript of the interrogation avoiding questions, claiming to be a minor official with no decision-making capacity, remembering arranging transportation of Jews with no reference to what happened to them afterwards, and justifying every action he ever took by Befehlsnotstand ~ being legally constrained to follow the orders he was given. This is the record of a man who was, apparently, happy enough to participate in evil once he had been brought into it ~ in his defence, it doesn't appear that Eichmann went out of his way to become the Reich specialist on Jewish questions ~ but was unwilling either to renounce it when given the chance or to stay with it unrepentant to the end, as Himmler et al did. I literally had to read this in small doses, because he was so casual about this actions, and yet so unwilling to see the consequences of any action taken; the interrogator, one Avner Less, must have wanted to shake the prisoner and ask him, just once, to listen and think.

A fascinating first-hand examination of his defense.
This book is essentially one extended interview (the actual sessions spanned almost a year). Eichmann acknowledges his role in the SS, yet he denies the most horrific charges against him. He presents himself as a soldier first, and spins out a defense that is a combination of: (1) his repeated, mantra-like claim of loyally following orders; and (2) his insistence that his responsibility was "relocation/emmigration," and he knew nothing about the subsequent exterminations. Most disturbing (and galling) is his constantly blaming events on others, such as other Nazis who had testified against him. He claims that because the British were blocking Jews from entering Palestine, he was forced to resettle Jews elsewhere, leading to the Final Solution. Eichmann is repeatedly confronted by evidence (documents and testimony) that contradict him. It is interesting to read his denials and spin. Also maddeningly frustrating. The historical notes are good, although I would have appreciated a bit more historical background. ... Read more