Book Club

[hgsuddle]

 I have read quite a few books about the Holocaust.  The best ones I have read are:

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald Balson

The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

Night by Elie Wiesel

Mila 18 by Leon Uris

The Wall by John Hersey

Hitler's Furies - Stories of collaborative women working for the Nazis

[Judaline]

I saw this while looking up something else. How horrible. I couldn't read it. Could anyone?

https://www.amazon.com/Irma-Grese-Holocaust-Secrets-Auschwitz/dp/1503216764/ref=pd_sim_14_11?ie=UTF8...

[sunala]

---

@Judaline wrote:

I saw this while looking up something else. How horrible. I couldn't read it. Could anyone?

https://www.amazon.com/Irma-Grese-Holocaust-Secrets-Auschwitz/dp/1503216764/ref=pd_sim_14_11?ie=UTF8...

---

@Judaline I just looked up this book, and no, I wouldn't read it. I know there were monsters who took enjoyment out of the pain they caused to the innocent, but I can't read about them.

[sunala]

---

@pateacher wrote:

Our book club read this book last year.  Everyone enjoyed the development of the title character.  This book is a good testament to the will to survive. However, some of the passages are graphic.

UNA, by Mary Elizabeth Raines, is one of the few serious novels that features an older woman as the main character. While not about the Holocaust per se, it takes place during that tragic time in history.

Una's pampered, insignificant life revolves around her husband, a retired film director in WWII Germany. When he is suddenly framed by the Nazis, she and her spoiled twelve-year-old granddaughter must flee to the woods. Stripped of everything that had formed her identity, Una is forced to start her life all over again in a tremendous and often brutal struggle for survival. Through a series of challenging ordeals, Una begins to transform from a weak and selfish female into a strong leader, a woman of genuine compassion, and a survivor.

---

@pateacher I just realized I have Una on my Kindle. It was a free (or very inexpensive) ebook a while back, so I got it.

Now I have to get up my courage to read it. The other day I finished reading All My Love, Detrick, by Roberta Kagen. It was very sad, as all holocaust books are, but it seemed as though someone was telling this story rather than writing a book of fiction. I recommend it to those of you that are interested in reading this type of book. It's the first book of a series, but I don't think they are connected in any way.

[sunala]

---

@MacDUFF wrote:

@PamfromCT

Oh, I love Bonhoeffer!  The National Socialists executed him by hanging a few weeks before Allied troops liberated the camps.  He was the real deal.

@LoriLori

@sunala

I had tea with a friend today who recommended this book.  Have you ever read it or heard of it?  (I realize it's quite possible this book has been discussed many times here, but I'm a nooooobie, so bear with me LOL)...

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness

By Simon Wiesenthal

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing.  But even years after the way had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place?

In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past.  Often surprising and always thought provoking, The Sunflower will challenge you to define your beliefs about justice, compassion, and human responsibility.

 @MacDUFF @LoriLori @Judaline @PamfromCT @pateacher @justice 4 all

Simon Weisenthal's writing was like music; it flowed and was so powerful and made you think.

Unless one were in his situation, it's impossible to know how we would behave under the same set of circumstances.  It seems that people were so brave to have lived through the holocaust. I pray that Mr. Weisenthal is resting in peace with his dear family who were taken away from him.

I was just reminded of another book I read for an online book club I belonged to about 10 years ago. It was The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink. We read it way before the movie came out, so our opinions and thoughts weren't colored by the beauty of the actors and their skill in portraying the lovers, which I thought was excellent. I highly recommend reading the book. It made for an excellent book club discussion. If any of you have read it, please let me know. I'd love to hear what you thought of it.

[PamfromCT]

@sunala, Thank you for this recommendation.  I will certainly order and read it.  Surely these topics are evil beyond belief, and so depressing.  But so important to realize what can happen when evil ones gain control and act out in ways that so many of us cannot even begin to imagine.  The power of hatred and choosing to scapegoat a group of innocents for all perceived wrongs.  And the unimaginable horrors that would shame hell.

I think if I were in the middle of that hell, and a perpetrator asked for my forgiveness, my answer would be simple.  "It is beyond my humanity to forgive you for the horrors you have inflicted.  You had better plead to God for forgiveness.  And if you profess to be a Christian, let me remind you that Jesus lived and died as an observant Jew."

[Judaline]

This is from my library newsletter:

Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

From the bestselling author of The Widow Cliquot (2008) comes the true story of Irena Sendler--known as “the female Oskar Schindler”—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children in Nazi-occupied Poland from deportation and death during World War II. As a young social worker in 1942, she was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. As she began to understand the fate that awaited Jewish families who were unable to leave, she went from door to door asking them to trust her with their babies and young children. She then smuggled them in coffins and in toolboxes, under overcoats, or through the city's sewers to safe houses and orphanages where their identities were changed until the war was finally over.

[KaliaMonet]

• The Book Thief
• Boy in Striped Pyjamas
• Night
• Number the Stars
• Maus
• The Girl in the Green Sweater

I HIGHLY recommend Irena's Children about Irena Sendler (I got to read an advanced copy of it for a university project). Everyone needs to know about this woman and what she did for the children during the Holocaust. I saw a play-- Life in a Jar (also a book. It's based on the project that students in Kansas did that initially discovered Sendler's story) about her life a few years ago, and it was AMAZING! 

Even though it's a children's book, The Upstairs Room is really good. It's based on the author's experience. There's also the sequel The Journey Back.

[SuperShopper]

I would also recommend a documentary series

SHOAH (the Hebrew & French word for Holocaust). 

Wikipedia says of Shoah: 

"The film primarily consists of [director Claude Lanzmann's] interviews and visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including three extermination camps. It presents testimonies by selected survivors, witnesses, and German perpetrators, often secretly recorded using hidden cameras....

"Shoah was ranked number two on the "50 Greatest Documentaries of All Time" in a December 2015 poll by the British Film Institute."

I saw it as a nine part series that I checked out of my local library.  It is over nine hours in length.  It is highly disturbing, but I felt that I must watch it in honor of those who suffered and perished. 

I became well acquainted with a lovely woman who lived in my community and was a Holocaust survivor.  She was one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz.  She was 14 years old, living with her family in a town in Hungary when the Nazis began rounding up Jews in the spring of 1944.  They were taken in cattle cars to Auschwitz where the men and boys were separated from the women and girls.  She never saw her father and brother again, they perished in the camp.  She and her mother were placed in another line, where at a fork in the pathway, Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death" stood with his baton, motioning individuals into one direction or the other.  Her mother was blonde and spoke German.  As they approached Megele, her mother could see that the old women, the pregnant women, the mothers with small children, and the young girls were being sent one direction, while the women capable of working were sent in the other direction.  She spoke to Mengele in German, telling him that she and her daughter could work.  He directed them away from the line heading to the gas chambers.  They were sent to one of the "labor" camps where they barely survived on starvation rations, making ammunition for the Nazi army, until the camp was liberated in 1945. 

But their woes did not end there.  They could not return to their home.  Europe was filled with wartime refugees, many of whom were placed for years in refugee camps that were not much better than the concentration camps.  My friend met her husband in one of the refugee camps, and years later they were able to come to America to try to have as normal a life as possible after surviving such an incredible nightmare. 

You are to be commended for your desire to know the truth of what was suffered by so many millions at the hands of a cruel ideology.  I am so thankful you posted your question.  I hope to read some of the suggested books as well. 

[Imadickens]

---

@hgsuddle wrote:

 I have read quite a few books about the Holocaust.  The best ones I have read are:

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald Balson

The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

Night by Elie Wiesel

Mila 18 by Leon Uris

The Wall by John Hersey

Hitler's Furies - Stories of collaborative women working for the Nazis

---

A friend just had me read A Meal in Winter which is a quick read. It had a bit of a different slant on it.