Book Description
This is a story of the unexpected.In Destined to Witness, Hans Massaquoi has crafted a beautifully rendered memoir -- an astonishing true tale of how he came of age as a black child in Nazi Germany. The son of a prominent African and a German nurse, Hans remained behind with his mother when Hitler came to power, due to concerns about his fragile health, after his father returned to Liberia. Like other German boys, Hans went to school; like other German boys, he swiftly fell under the Fuhrer's spell. So he was crushed to learn that, as a black child, he was ineligible for the Hitler Youth. His path to a secondary education and an eventual profession was blocked. He now lived in fear that, at any moment, he might hear the Gestapo banging on the door -- or Allied bombs falling on his home. Ironic,, moving, and deeply human, Massaquoi's account of this lonely struggle for survival brims with courage and intelligence.
Customer Reviews:
Remarkably Destined.......2007-10-01
It seems impossible that a boy of noticeably dark skin could have survived the period during which the Third Reich reigned. And yet here we have Mr. Massaquoi's account of his personal experiences, candidly and eloquently told. Most vividly in Mr. Massaquoi's accounts are those of his mother, whose courage, resilience, shrewdness and bits of wise common sense left me wholeheartedly moved. Otherwise throughout the book I oftentimes found myself trying to slow my breath, in an attempt to ease my rage at the cruel injustices.
On a personal note, I once found a series of photographs that I bought from a vendor at an East Berlin flea market. They were part of a family album in which one of the family members was a young woman of half-African descent, living in Berlin during the time of the Third Reich. I was so overwhelmed by the photographs, asking myself how it is possible that a dark-skinned woman could have survived a time when the German government was propagating the extermination of anyone of mixed blood. A year later I would have Mr. Massaquoi's memoir to understand how all the more exceptional his survival.
Other thorough eyewitness accounts I recommend are Curzio Malaparte's "Kaputt" and Eric Johnson's "What We Knew".
Thank You, Hans J. Massaquoi.......2007-03-17
Mr. Massaquoi provides us with a very vivid account of his experiences as a child and later as a youth while growing up under Hitler's Nazi regime. I am very grateful to this gentleman for sharing his story and enlightening the world as to how blacks were affected during this era. While he grew up fairly poor, Mr. Massaquoi was rich with other blessings. He was blessed with a nurturing and caring mother and the ability to be resourceful and demonstrated that he really cared about his friends, black, white, Jewish, etc. Again, thank you sir for sharing these experiences. Your biography should serve as inspiration to everyone, regardless of race or creed.
Destine to Witness:Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany.......2007-01-10
I found this to be a very interesting record of Hans Massaquoit's growth and development in Nazi Germany. I learned quite a bit from this reading, for example, I was not familiar with the hundreds of adolescent youth sterilized because of their mixed parentage. The well written book is an easy read, but not easy to put down. What I found interesting was the individual racism Hans experienced in Germany was no worse than the wholesale racism many Afro-Americans experience in America.
Excellent read........2007-01-10
I found this book fascinating and illuminating. Very well written, an easy read and often very moving. A book that leaves you feeling good.
A black kid in Nazi Germany? Yeah - but it's also a story of the strength of normal humans in bizarre societies. His mother shines through. His time in Germany is one aspect, the Liberia experience and the craziness of his U.S. Army entry all combine to show a life that is immensely interesting. Throughout you are struck that you are reading about a German who kept his identity and warmth through to the present day.
An outstanding book at many levels.
Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany.......2007-01-04
Fascinating book. Watching the child who wanted to be a part of the group (Brownshirts) grow into a man of understanding and accomplishment was intriguing. In all of my years of studying the Holocaust, I never saw mention of Black victims nor Black survivors.
Book Description
Jewish teenagers David, Yitzhak, Moshe, Eva, and Anne all kept diaries and were all killed in Hitler's death camps. These are their stories, in their own words. Author Jacob Boas is a Holocaust survivor who was born in the same camp to which Anne Frank was sent. Includes a photo insert.
Customer Reviews:
So far, so good.......2007-06-06
I recently bought this book and I've been reading it during my lunch break at work and so far I'm very interested and it seems like I can't stop reading it! I will probably take it home with me on the weekend and just finish it. It's sad to know what kind of things happened to little kids like them, and at the same time it's amazing to see how they were dealing with their terrible reality and how mature they were for being just kids during this horrible time in History.
I highly recommend it!
Very good.......2007-04-05
I decided to actually read this book after taking Boas' History of the Holocaust course and finding out that he was in fact born at the Westerbork transit camp in Holland, so I figured that since he had a connection with it through his family that he would know how to put together a well made book. And I was correct, this book made me cry, I really liked it. He had talked a little about this book in class and at first it kinda seemed boring, but I'm glad that i didn't listen to my gut feeling and actually went and checked it out. I would recommend anyone that wants to read more of a first hand experience to read this, the letters are very heart touch and sad. I am trying to track down the other books he has written so I can get a little more understanding in addition from what I had learned through his course.
Book=Very GOOD!.......2007-04-02
I thought this book was very good and descriptive in what happened to the teenager's lives and the victims of the Holocaust. It was sad to know how well-off Americans in the U.S. and other fortunate people had it then. When I was reading, it was sad to picture how hard it would be then for not just teenagers but everyone,especially when they talked about how they didn't want to die yet and the shame and humiliation they felt as jews. I liked how Boas described their lives and events so well that I didn't feel I missed out anywhere. I also liked how he would compare the teenagers lives and choices with the others. But I would have liked it more if he would have described more about what the Nazis would do to the victims after they were transported. Otherwhise, I liked this book very much.
We Are Witnesses.......2006-03-16
I am not a big fan of non-fiction history books. I find them hard to concentrate on because there are so many facts that they become overwhelming. But We Are Witnesses is a non-fiction history book that I liked. First, I liked it because it was set during WWII, which is something I am interested in. Secondly, this book is about five teenagers, which I can relate to because I am in the same age group. Each of their diaries was found. They all were Jewish, they all died.
In We Are Witnesses there are five main characters, David Rubinowicz, Yitzhak Rudashevski, Moshe Flinker, Eva Heyman, and Anne Frank. There is a whole chapter on each one of them. They all have the same big conflict, the Nazis. The Nazis forced the Jews to move into a ghetto, and each character had to do that. They all lived in different parts of Europe. They all had money issues. But each one was unique in their own way. For example, Yitzhak joined a club that would meet and do research projects, and learn a few new things. This was Yitzhak's favorite time of day. Eva Heyman admired her mother and wanted to be just like her. Each day was a struggle to live. There was barely enough food for any of them to eat. They all had to put their faith in God, that He would save them from the power of the Nazis.
Each character had their own religious beliefs but Moshe Flinker's was the most unique of all. He believed that if the Germans kept on taking over more land and the Jews kept on being killed then, when it seemed like all hope was lost, God would save the Jews from the Nazis. Moshe Flinker's story also was one that stuck out in my mind because he almost made it to Vichy France, which was a part of France that was not taken over by the Germans. Another memorable story was when David Rubinowicz was forced to move from his house and into a ghetto, but he many times was able to walk to his old house. One of the times he witnessed a Jew getting shot right in front of him.
From the very beginning of the book, the author tells that all of the characters die. They all did, but their life stories will be something that you never will forget. Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who likes non-fiction history books. There were very good parts to the book but also some bad parts. The bad parts were where it got confusing. For example, when the author got into too much detail about a character's life. Also when Moshe Flinker tried to explain his religious beliefs it got very confusing. Although I knew the deaths of all the characters were certain from the beginning, I wanted to read this book because these people had to live with fear every day. But each one was strong enough to not let that fear get to them, and tried to live their lives like you and me.
Keeping history alive!.......2005-07-21
This set of stories helps keep history alive for teenagers that have no concept of the depth horror that intolerance can achieve. All teens should read it!
Amazon.com
When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), honored as a frontline veteran of World War I, was a distinguished professor at the University of Dresden. A scant few months later he was merely a Jew, protected from deportation to a death camp only by his marriage to an Aryan. He suffered every other indignity to which German Jews were subjected, from losing his job to having his driver's license revoked to being denied permission to own a pet, and all are recorded with bitter clarity in his diary entries, which cover the years 1933 to 1941. (A second volume continuing through 1945 will be published in English in 1999.) The German edition of this book caused a sensation when it was published in 1995, and it's easy to see why: the relentless, quotidian nature of Nazi racism comes through forcefully in Klemperer's litany of daily humiliations and insults, a painful chronicle of situations in which readers can readily imagine themselves. Like Anne Frank, but with a more adult understanding of political fanaticism and human weakness, he makes the abstract horror of genocidal persecution very intimate, very personal, and very real. --Wendy Smith
Book Description
The publication of Victor Klemperer's secret diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. "In its cool, lucid style and power of observation," said The New York Times, "it is the best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years.
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."
This book covers the years from 1933 to 1941. Volume Two, from 1941 to 1945, will be published in 1999.
Customer Reviews:
A must read memoir.......2007-07-08
This is a great memoir that any history buff or historian or anyone should read. It ranks right up there with Anne Frank's diary. It offers a unique view since Mr. Klemperer was married to a German woman during the Holocaust. It is this unique view on the Holocaust that makes this memoir so good.
Fascinating Account of pre-WWII life in Germany.......2007-02-01
Victor Klemperer's diary of pre war Germany provides fascinating insight into what life was like for ordinary citizens in Germany. Interspersed with the mundane aspects of life, e.g., shopping, driving, going to the dentist, etc. are ever increasing examples of the insanity that was Nazi Germany. It was a little difficult to get into, but it soon became a page tuner. The later years are particularly interesting. I couldn't put it down.
Excellent Source for insight on Nazi Germany.......2007-01-10
This Diary was an excellent read for many reasons. It was a good primary source for information on Nazi Germany and at the same time was compelling and extremely interesting. The keeper of this diary was also a great author which makes this diary very easy to read as if it were a memoir. His story is great and it was extremely fun to see historical events through his eyes. Through his diary the reader has the ability to get a feel of what everyday people thought of the Nazis and what their true feelings were toward the National Socialist party. If you do not know a lot about German/Nazi history I would reccomend a refresher course somehow. I read this diary while taking a class on the topic of Nazi Germany and it was extremely interesting for me.
Harrowing reading.......2006-10-28
Anybody who wants to know what it was like to be a Jew under the Nazi regime should read this book and the second volume of Klemperer's diaries.
First the bestiality and the stupidity of the Nazis are shown with a simplicity and an absence of hatred that make them more disgusting. Then the courage, the resilience and the determination of this humble Professor are a lesson of courage, modesty and survival for all. One of the books that left upon me the most lasting impression, hesitating between the joy of the "happy end" and the depression about what I read. These two books should be made compulsory reading in any serious history studies...And no serious historian should avoid to read those two books.
A powerful and uplifting account of life under the Nazis.......2006-10-10
I have read many books on the history of Europe and World War 2, but for the most part they cover the big picture - the major events and key participants. Victor Klemperer's diaries ("I Will Bear Witness") describe how people like himself were tossed about by the arbitrary power of the Nazis. This record of his personal experiences from 1933 to 1945 makes the history come vividly alive in all its horror and sadness.
Through the diaries we see the inexorable erosion of his rights (and the rights of all Jews) and the tyrannies of arbitrary power. Klemperer was forced to give up his car, he was forbidden to use the library, he could not have a phone, his typewriter was confiscated, and Jews had to hand in keys to their trunks.
Each day seemed to bring another "small" persecution, another wearing down of the spirit - except that Klemperer did not succumb, although he often despairs of surviving. He read almost every day and made notes on literary works he planned to write some day - if he survived. He bore witness by recording his actual experiences of tyranny.
Klemperer describes the exercise of raw power, cloaked in the trappings of Nazi law. Any official could do pretty much as he pleased with any Jew. It is almost impossible for those of us living in countries that respect the rule of law, and in which we can assert our rights, to truly feel the powerlessness, fear and humiliation that Klemperer felt almost every day under the Nazis. The Gestapo seem to select victims almost at random, but every persecution is handled with legal punctiliousness.
Reading the diaries today and knowing the history of Germany and the Jews, we are struck by the fact that Klemperer did not flee the country in good time like so many other Jews - and other members of his own family. But at the time, the future was unknown and there were always reasons for him to stay: Lack of money. He was almost 60 and would have felt reluctant, if not unable, to start a new life and earn money in another country. His wife was often sick and clung desperately to her new house. Our lives bind us to place. "Blut and Boden" (blood and soil) as the Nazis put it.
He was a reflective academic, unused until the war started to the rough and tumble of survival. Although the final entries in his diary after the bombing of Dresden show a remarkable feat of endurance in his and Eva's homeless wanderings to seek sanctuary.
The early part of the diary tells of his struggle to get a loan and to build a house. "Don't do it!" I cry silently. Don't you know a terrible war is coming and that the Jews will be rounded up? Don't you know you will be herded into a ghetto? Don't you know that Dresden will be fire-bombed (his new house is made of wood)?
But how could he know? We see the future as a continuation of the past. We cannot know for certain what events of today will have catastrophic consequences in the future. For Klemperer, things got slowly worse over time, each change bearable (if only just) - like boiling a frog. There was no sudden cataclysm that would have prompted even the most timid to flee - until too late.
Today we see small erosions of liberty, justified by the War on Terrorism: secret monitoring of the phone calls of "suspects" is OK, the Geneva Convention does not apply to Guantanamo Bay and "coercion" of prisoners is not torture. The end justifies the means, we are told - although not in such truthful terms. We think that none of these arbitrary exercises of power apply to us. But where will they lead? We do not know. But the experiences of Klemperer under the Nazis show where they have led in the past.
The diary is essentially as Klemperer wrote it - there has been no post facto editing to make it more literary or historically apt. The result is powerful and horrifying to the reader who is like some Olympian God watching Klemperer struggle, knowing the trials to come and the futility of his struggles.
His hopes, fears and vulnerabilities are laid before us, without any editing to remove the embarrassing entries - or other entries that lesser writers would have preferred not to see the light of day, such as his furtive theft of a spoonful of jam in the Jews House in Dresden. This honesty makes the diaries such a powerful and compelling statement.
But despite the ever-present threat of arrest and "evacuation" to Poland, from which no one ever returns and about which only the sketchiest rumours are known, Klemperer finds courage to enjoy the new flowers of spring, the beauty of fresh snow on tree branches, and the pleasures of visiting his friends and fellow victims.
One of the most poignant entries in the diary is for August 1, 1943. He had received an order to come to Gestapo HQ for "questioning". By that stage of the war, virtually no Jew returned from such questioning. Their families were notified that the person was deported and "shot while trying to escape". Some "committed suicide" in the cells before then. With the words "Perhaps this is my last entry", Klemperer records his feelings and his love for his wife Eva.
Every thinking person who is worried about the state of the world today should read this book. In the struggle against terrorism we see governments in liberal democracies encroaching on our liberties, condoning torture, telling lies - all in the name of a greater good, the War on Terror. This is no different in principle to the way Nazis, and all other totalitarian regimes, justified their actions and sought to hide the truth. The propaganda is exactly the same.
Of course the liberal democracies are unlikely to round up people suspected as enemies, put them in concentration camps and torture them - or are they?
We must never take our liberties for granted, nor accept that the end (in the war on terror) justifies the means. Klemperer's diaries are a powerful reminder of where that can lead.
Amazon.com
The second volume of Victor Klemperer's searing diary, kept in secret during the 12 years he suffered under the Nazi regime, covers the period from 1942 to 1945. The humiliations visited on even such "privileged" Jews as Klemperer (whose wife was Aryan) grew increasingly severe, with house searches, arbitrary arrests, and brutal beatings becoming virtually routine. The 60-year-old historian is forced to shovel snow despite his heart condition; hunger gnaws at him as rations are mercilessly cut. Yet he clings to an intellectual life, continuing his reading and making notes on the lies and obfuscations of official Nazi discourse that would become his postwar masterpiece, Lingua Tertii Imperii. "The Russians, who have only just been annihilated, are tremendous and quite inexhaustible opponents," he notes sardonically after reading a mendacious fascist article in 1942. His lengthy account of his escape with his wife from Dresden after the Allied bombings of 1945 unforgettably captures the chaos of World War II's final days and the mixed feelings of a Jew who could never wholeheartedly gloat over the defeat of the nation that had persecuted him. Above all, his unflinching depiction of human nature and society in extremis amply justifies his cherished belief that even the Nazis "cannot prevent language from testifying to the truth." --Wendy Smith
Book Description
Destined to take its place alongside
The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's
Night as one of the great classics of the Holocaust,
I Will Bear Witness is a timeless work of literature, the most eloquent and acute testament to have emerged from Hitler's Germany. Volume Two begins in 1942, the year the Final Solution was formally proposed, and carries us through to the Allied bombing of Dresden and Germany's defeat.
Customer Reviews:
Final Journey to freedom.......2007-09-03
One should read this book only after the first volume covering the years 1933-41. The story of Victor & Eva's survival of detention in the Jews' house, the Dresden bombing and subsequent wanderings stunned me. But Victor's courage in continuing his secret diary for 12 years comes through - as does his humanity ad personal growth.
The diary jotting sryle means you pick it up and read a section at a time, but you will most likely be drawn into finishing it within a short time.
Great Book.......2007-02-09
And I will get the other years of this author's diary. This is not a fast paced WWII battle book; this is the diary of a poor soul who had to live through every moment of a terrible regime, to endure even more when he thought he'd reached his limit. If you're interested in what it was like to live day to day in Hitler's Germany (as a Jew or a gentile)--to understand what it was like to watch it begin and grow and eventually implode--this is an excellent read. I would say it is for those deeply interested in the psychology of the times; not a passing interest. I'll get the other books and read them in order of the years they cover. I really want to understand how the Third Reich could ever BE.
A Courageous, One-of-a-Kind View Inside Nazi Germany.......2006-07-04
This is actually the second volume of Klemperer's diaries, published in two volumes. I highly recommend that you buy both volumes as a set and read from the beginning how a bureaucratic mindset advanced towards ultimate evil.
In the end, Klemperer's diary doesn't fully answer the haunting question, "How could it have happened?" But you will find some definitive answers here to questions that Holocaust scholars have debated over the years.
For example, Klemperer's experience answers the charge that virtually all Aryan Germans knew from the beginning exactly what the Third Reich's intentions were towards the Jews. Klemperer's actual interactions stand as refutation of this blanket indictment. Often when he visited Aryan acquaintances to conduct business - he would then jovially be invited to come back that evening for schnapps. Klemperer had to explain that he couldn't come back later for schnapps - that as a Jew, he was prohibited from boarding any vehicle of public transportation after 6:00 PM, that he had a general curfew, and that of course, he had long since been banned from owning his own car.
Klemperer was always circumspect in recounting these laws he labored under to his "Semitophile" acquaintances. (That's an awkward translation of the German phrase Klemperer probably used to refer to Aryans who were sympathetic to Jews. But it is perhaps the only word that was available to Martin Chalmers, who otherwise has produced a generally fluid translation of Klemperer's journals.) At any rate, Klemperer was careful never to appear too whining or too critical of the restrictions placed on him. He didn't want to alienate these Aryan allies. Nevertheless, he repeatedly found himself in the position of having to enlighten them about the government's latest round of restrictions. And his listeners were almost always genuinely surprised to hear about these laws. Their ignorance in the face of all the anti-Semitic propaganda blared daily from radios, blazoned from the newspapers, seemed to be more a function of people's tendency towards plodding self-preoccupation than an indication of any active complicity with the advancing evil.
I think you'll find that Klemperer's account also carries a very relevant warning to us in our current pursuit of terrorists at all costs. Klemperer survived the early rounds of call-ups for the concentration camps because he was a decorated World War I hero, and because he was married to an Aryan. For these reasons, he was given some initial grudging dispensation from the worst Nazi reprisals. However as the War progressed, his past service to Germany and his Aryan affiliation came to count for less and less. Finally his number was up and he, along with the last handful of Jews remaining around Dresden, were scheduled for transport. The only thing that saved him was the Allied bombing of Dresden. Most local Nazi records were destroyed in this notorious bombardment. So Klemperer and his wife, having survived the bombing, were also able to survive those last most brutal months of the Nazi regime by assuming new identities and wandering through the German countryside from town to town, passing themselves off as a typical displaced Aryan couple. If the Nazis' meticulous records (documenting family lineages and confirming who was where) had remained intact, Klemperer would certainly have been deported to the gas chambers.
So if you don't already have doubts about the increasing surveillance measures being taken in the U.S., presumably to guard against terrorists and other "evildoers" - reading these journals will give you pause. One of the lessons of Klemperer's journal is how tyranny proceeds by little increments of paperwork. Its power is in keeping tabs.
Klemperer risked his life to write the entries in these journals, because it eventually became a capital crime for a Jew to possess paper or any pen/pencil. So it feels almost sacrilegious to make any criticism of this supremely brave and literate account. However I do have one small criticism. And that is Klemperer's common masculine tendency to put his wife in the background of his life. Eva Klemperer comes off in the diary as a shadowy adjunct to the importance of Victor's work producing these pages.
She is mentioned, more frequently in the first volume of the diaries, but this mention is usually limited to reports of the fact that she had another hysterical fit that day, or that she engaged Victor in another round of angry lamentation, or that she suffered some physical malady. He does acknowledge her collaborative bravery. She also risked her life every time she smuggled the pages of his work out of their small assigned apartment into the hands of friends for safekeeping. But we never directly hear Eva's voice in all this. The reader is only left to guess at the actual substance of her outbursts.
You will probably feel impelled to read between the lines to flesh her out. Perhaps Eva wasn't the prettiest girl in school, so she took the one marriage proposal that came her way. She married the intellectually accomplished Victor. Victor was available because Aryan prejudice, even in those early years, already limited him socially. We can imagine her outbursts of recrimination as the Nazi noose grew tighter around their yoked necks. Why did you have to be Jewish? Why have you dragged me down with you? I could have led such a happy life. And instead, look at me - scrounging for rotten potatoes, under constant threat of beatings and death - and all because of you!
If only Eva had written her own diary, we might have had some additional fascinating insights into why and how a couple stays together under such trying circumstances. We might have gained a greater understanding of the ties of love and the chains of having nowhere else to go. As it is, we have only Victor's side of the story. But that is a powerful, must-read insight into how tyranny grows, brick-by-brick, petty edict by petty edict.
The most compelling book I have ever read.......2006-03-22
Because my friends all know what a book-hound I am, people often ask me what my all-time favorite book is. Admittedly the answer to this would change over time, but, at present, "I Will Bear Witness" is the one that first pops into my mind.
I found this very personal account of the days and nights of a German Jewish man--an inoffensive and formerly rather conservative German nationalist academic married to a Gentile--during the Nazi terror regime to be absolutely breathtaking. Indeed, I was so caught up in his account that I took an unexpected day of vacation from work just to not interrupt my reading once I had started.
Further, I found myself sprawled on my bed, as is sometimes customary with me, surrounded by ancillary books, atlases, and maps --a behavior that signifies I'm reading a book that has utterly gripped me and a book that is expanding my horizons.
Klemperer was (just barely) saved from being sent to a concentration camp due to his marriage to a non-Jew. However, he lived every day under the threat of torture and deportation to a camp and his journal tells of the years of grinding anxiety over his fate and the fate of his wife, friends, and relatives-many of whom were taken. It also speaks to the minutiae of life under the Nazi's--such things as their penchant for legalisms to justify their treatment of the Jews embodied in his incessant embroilment in Nazi demands that he take part in the legalisms of their confiscation of his property. Moreover, as the war draws to a close, he draws a stunning portrait of life as a war refugee--a picture that applies to war refugees the world over throughout time.
Kudos to those who elevated this book to number one among the history choices-it deserves it and in my mind deserves even more.
Life-Affirming, Edge-of-your-seat, Nonstop Reading.......2006-01-30
Victor Klemperer's diary of the years of the Hitler dictatorship and his recording of the day-to-day lives of the Jews of Dresden, his thoughtful and insightful commentary on the methods (particularly the language of the propaganda) of the Third Reich, the heart-wrenching stories of those who were taken away never to be seen again, his experience in the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 and his miraculous journey home should be required reading for everyone about the horrors of tyranny and war. It is also a tribute to the true human spirit and the power of the intellect. Klemperer never lost his determination to live, despite all the blows of terror that were aimed at him, his family, and his friends. That he believed there was something to live for--in the midst of utter barbarity--should inspire all of us to work for a better world. It did me.
A remarkable record of a dark time. Reading it gives one the courage to carry on in the dark times that have come again.
Book Description
During the Nuremberg trials, Dr. Leon Goldensohn–a psychiatrist for the U.S. Army–monitored the mental health of two dozen German leaders charged with carrying out genocide. These recorded conversations have gone largely unexamined for more than fifty years, until Robert Gellately–one of the premier historians of Nazi Germany–made them available to the public in this remarkable collection.
Here are interviews with the likes of Hans Frank, Hermann Goering, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Joachim von Ribbentrop–the highest ranking Nazi officials in the Nuremberg jails. Here too are interviews with lesser-known officials essential to the inner workings of the Third Reich. Candid and often shockingly truthful, The Nuremberg Interviews is a profound addition to our understanding of the Nazi mind and mission.
Customer Reviews:
Worthy, even landmark, addition to Holocaust/Nazi history.......2007-03-22
After World War II the allies and occupied/liberated countries (e.g., Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Greece, the Soviet Union) tried tens of thousands of people (German POWs, Nazi officials, Nazi colloborators, etc.) for war crimes. The records of most of these trials (many of which were summary) are not available for one reason or another. The most notorious of these war crimes trials were the ones before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (scene of the spectacle of the Nazi party day celebrations) in which the U.S., Britain, France, and the USSR jointly prosecuted both organizations (e.g., the SS) and individuals (e.g., Martin Bormann, presumed to be the most powerful man in Germany after Hitler at the end of war, although he was tried "in absentia").
These trials were notorious for two reasons.
First, major players of the Third Reich then in captivity were on trial and attesting to events they were involved in (unlike in normal criminal trials in the U.S., in these trials the accused had no right against self-incrimination and could not refuse to testify or be cross-examined).
Second, documentation of the mass killings in concentration/extermination camps, which some had tried to downplay to that point as propaganda, was divulged to the world for all to see.
Dr. Goldensohn was a psychiatrist who interviewed defendants and witnesses in captivity at the Nuremberg trials on a regular basis. In so doing Dr. Goldensohn's purposes were several: He had to gauge the person's mental spirits (the prosecutors did not want to lose anyone to suicide) and medical well-being, as well as obtain a personal and family history, and prepare a psychological profile.
The results are nothing short of amazing, if not startling. With a few possible exceptions, all of the interviewees tried to distance themselves from the mass killings in one way or another and expressed remorse that they occurred. Their primary excuses were: (1) they knew nothing about them until the end of the war when the inmates in the camps were freed, and (2) they were just following orders, which if disobeyed meant their own death or imprisonment.
The extracts from Dr. Goldenson's contemporaneous interview notes are presented as separate chapters, one for each person. The interviews are primarily independent of each other (they are presented in the book in alphabetical order by defendants and then by witnesses). They can thus be easily read separately or out of order at a leisurely pace without losing the overall context of the book.
The interviews for a particular person vary from 1-2 pages (Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, Kurt Daluege) to over 20 pages (Walther Funk, Hermann Goering, Hjalmar Schacht, Ewald von Kleist) in length, most are about 10-15 pages. Many of the interviewees come off as bland and colorless, one exception is Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering who by turns is remonstrative and bombastic. Each chapter begins with the person's photo, along with a brief description of their positions and titles, and what ultimately happened to them (death, imprisonment, not guilty).
Dr. Goldensohn's work is particularly enchanced by the participation of historian Robert Gellately, who (1) provides as an introduction a 20-plus page insightful and balanced discussion of the background of the trials and interviews, (2) masterfully edits and abridges the interviews presented (they were still in an incomplete format when Dr. Goldensohn died in 1961, some were typed, some were handwritten, and contained errors in spelling and syntax, etc.), and (3) provides useful endnotes on many of the statements of the interviewees (the endnotes explain the context of some of the statements made, expose misstatements or outright falsehoods, and contain references for further reading).
There are a couple of minor shortcomings to the work: (1) Dr. Goldensohn was not fluent in German and had to rely on a translator for what most of the interviewees were saying: thus it is possible "something got lost in the translation"; (2) one must remember that all of the interviewees were on trial for their lives (10 of the 19 "defendants" were sentenced to death as, at subsequent trials, were 5 of the 14 "witnesses"; 7 of the defendants and 7 of the witnesses received jail terms) and probably suspected anything incriminatory they said would be used against them (indeed, there was no patient-doctor confidentiality in these interviews and any statements they made to Dr. Goldensohn could have been used against them although that apparently never happened). (In this regard, for what its worth, two of the most extensive interview notes in the book are those for Hans Fritsche, a minion who worked in the German Propaganda Ministry, and Hjalmar Schact, former president of the Reichsbank (to 1939) and minister without portfolio (to 1943), both of whom were found not guilty.)
Five Minutes Past the Thousand-Year Reich . . ........2006-01-31
Learning that an America soldier, psychiatrist and MD had the opportunity to examine this Germanic rabble in 1946 was simply too intellectually enticing to ignore, and Robert Gellately's compilation of Dr. Leon Goldensohn's interviews with some major members of the Nazi tribe is just as fascinating and nauseating as I had expected. While `The Nuremburg Interviews' sometimes seems rather like notes from a sophomore psyche class, the book is - in its antiseptic purity - the nearest approximation to explaining the inexplicable, and the nearest to giving some understanding of the incomprehensible.
This lack of editorializing is the book's greatest value. The patients of Dr. Leon Goldensohn (19 of whom are on trial and 10 of whom are just 6 months shy of becoming strange fruit) seem every inch a gentleman . . . Hermann Göring is "friendly, eager to talk, and quite comfortable" while Wilhelm Keitel is "always in a good mood for talking" as Alfred Jodl bleats "you come to see the others but rarely to see me."
To read their interviews is to be struck dumb by their cordial banality. Perhaps most haunting of all is to come to the realization that these men are not monsters but men who acted monstrously in ways that would inspire the devil himself.
Stanley Milgram proved as much in his studies at Yale University and his book "Obedience to Authority." In it, Milgram demonstrated that we are truly a potentially twisted species; frightfully capable of astonishing cruelty when merely nudged in the wrong direction.
`The Nuremburg Interviews' is an ugly read, but an undeniably fascinating one.
The Nuremberg Interviews........2005-10-25
VERY GOOD DETAILS PERTAINING TO THE THOUGHT PROCESSES OF BOTH THE ACCUSED AND THE WITNESSES. WELL ORGANIZED AND WRITTEN IN A MANNER THAT IS EASY TO FOLLOW.
Over familiar ground.......2005-08-02
An interesting presentation if you have not read Gilbert and others. Otherwise, somewhat of a disappointment.
This is the real stuff........2005-07-17
I am not Jewish, nor German, but the issue of what happened in Germany in the Nazi years is a vital one for all of us. (Believe me.)
This book is a very useful collection of interviews. I was enabled to see some light in the murkiness. It also had photographs of the interviewees, which I appreciated very much.
It's hard to describe what I took out of it. It cast so much light on "how it could happen" that I found myself reading passages out loud to people. Large portions I skipped through, in fact I trawled idly, opening what interested me. But the bits that I became absorbed in were very valuable to me. If you are, like me, always trying to find contemporary writings that seem to have the ring of truth about them, this is a must.
My copy has gone AWOL, and I find myself having to buy another.
Average customer rating:
|
Bearing Witness: A Resource Guide to Literature, Poetry, Art, Music, and Videos by Holocaust Victims and Survivors
Philip Rosen , and
Nina Apfelbaum
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Reference
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Holocaust
| Jewish
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Personal Narratives
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Bibliographies & Indexes
| Publishing & Books
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
History
| Bibliographies & Indexes
| Publishing & Books
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Art & Photography
| Bibliographies & Indexes
| Publishing & Books
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
Literature
| Bibliographies & Indexes
| Publishing & Books
| Reference
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Arts & Photography
| Subjects
| Books
All Amazon Upgrade
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
Arts & Photography
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
History
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
Reference
| Amazon Upgrade
| Stores
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
ASIN: 0313310769 |
Book Description
This resource guide will help readers locate over 800 first-person accounts, fiction, poetry, art interpretations, and music by Holocaust victims and survivors, as well as videos relating the testimony and experiences of Holocaust survivors. In addition to the few well-known writers, artists, and musicians whose work so eloquently captures their experience during the Holocaust, this guide will introduce the reader to the lives and work of more than 250 lesser known or unrecognized writers, artists, and musicians from many countries who documented their experience of persecution at the hands of the Nazis. This guide will help students gain firsthand knowledge of what it was like to experience the Holocaust and how ordinary people coped and created art and meaning from the ashes of their lives. The entry on each writer, artist, and musician features a biographical sketch and list of his or her works, with full bibliographic data. Entries on literature and videos are annotated and include recommendations for age-appropriateness. The work is divided into five parts: writers of memoirs, diaries and fiction; poets; artists; composers and musicians; and videos that feature testimony by survivors. Each part features an introductory overview of the artists and art created in that genre out of Holocaust experience. Title, artist/writer, and nationality indexes will help the reader select materials, and an index organized by age-appropriate levels will help teachers and librarians to select literature and videos for students.
Book Description
On September 11, 1939, Max Liebster, a young German Jew, learned firsthand what it meant to be an enemy of the Nazi State. After his arrest, followed by four months of solitary confinement in a Nazi prison, Liebster plummets headlong into the nightmare o
Customer Reviews:
Not ALL "Jehovah's Witnesses".......2007-06-27
While this gentleman's stand is certainly commendable and his story moving, there IS one aspect of the whole "Jehovah's Witnesses" in the concentration camps issue which is never touched upon by these books, but is very important.
Those in the camps referred to as "Jehovah's Witnesses" were in fact Bible Students (Bibelforschers); many whom were NOT affiliated with the WT, then or after. They were all labeled with the same "purple" triangle and lumped together. These faithful Bible Students who suffered and died in these camps too, NEVER associated with the Watchtower organization and were NEVER "Jehovah's Witnesses", a name not yet adopted at the time in Germany. Out of respect for these individuals this distinction SHOULD be made.
Sincerely,
(Bible Student - NOT JW)
Worthwhile reading.......2007-04-19
There's not much I can add to the other reviewer's comments other than to say it's gratifying to know Max and his wife Simone (her autobiography is twice the length of her husband's and also worth reading) are still faithful and loyal Jehovah's Witnesses to this day.
Some witnesses survived the Nazi concentration camps only to succomb to materialism or immorality during the post-war times.
Max wasn't the only Jew to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses. I surmise that a Jew is more likely to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses than they are to become a Mormon. That would make an interesting study.
Better not bitter.......2007-01-10
Max overcame many obstacles to become a fine citizen. Many would have lost hope or became bitter. Truly a fine example for others facing hardships. I also read his wife's (Simone Arnold Liebster's book).
Excellent.......2006-08-10
I do not get to do pleasure reading often. I saw a newspaper article about this man who is still alive & speaking to groups around the world. I thought it might be interesting. What a powerful story of courage to challenge what he had been taught growing & believed was the truth while trying to preserve his own life. I think this is a must read for all that are interested in Nazi Germany. My children will read this book to see what faith in God really means.
A Sad But Beautiful Story.......2006-06-02
First off I am a Jehovah's Witness, and I LOVED this book. While it does have many sad moments, the overall story is beautiful!Why is it beautiful? Because amid the harshest cruelest of circumstances, it is possible to still expierence hope, faith, and love, when one applies Bible principles.
Book Description
In this book the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben looks closely at the literature of the survivors of Auschwitz, probing the philosophical and ethical questions raised by their testimony.
"In its form, this book is a kind of perpetual commentary on testimony. It did not seem possible to proceed otherwise. At a certain point, it became clear that testimony contained at its core an essential lacuna; in other words, the survivors bore witness to something it is impossible to bear witness to. As a consequence, commenting on survivors' testimony necessarily meant interrogating this lacuna or, more precisely, attempting to listen to it. Listening to something absent did not prove fruitless work for this author. Above all, it made it necessary to clear away almost all the doctrines that, since Auschwitz, have been advanced in the name of ethics."
--
Giorgio Agamben
Customer Reviews:
lost-lacanian truly lost.......2006-02-04
Having read Lost-Lacanian's review of Agamben's 'Remnants' and then read the book, I must say that Agamben did not live up to his reviewers opinion of him. The book's argument is compelling in places, but by no means intruiging overall, and far from new. If Agamben aims to adjust ethical terms by using auschwitz as limit situation (which is by no means wrong) he can only do so by 'correcting' actual survivors' testimony, and placing himself in a position of having a truer knowledge of life in the camps than those who were actually there. Auschwitz is by no means simple to write about, and Agamben's book is not worthless, though something of a bad first step towards his proposed project.
Haunting, Captivating, Unspeakable.......2005-04-26
I read this book after having read Agamben's big book "Homo Sacer." I found the analysis of bare life (homo sacer) in that book to be so fascinating that I picked up "Remnants," to see where else Agamben might go. This book is some of the most compelling theory I have read to date. The book has three major categories of analysis: the witness, the musselman (literally, the muslim), and shame. Each of these three categories have to do with the inhuman quality of being human and the speakability of that which is unspeakable. Indeed, Agamben deploys subtle thought in order to construct these internal contradictions that actually played on in the extreme case of Auschwitz. As one might expect from the title, this book is haunting. The testimonials given of the Musselman are particularly disturbing. Indeed, the experiences of Auschwitz is unspeakable. Perhaps, most startling is that Agamben argues our modern political paradigm is basically a sedated Auschwitz in which all of us can be turned into Musselmen, indeed, the musselman is that inhuman potential within our humanity. In short, this book is haunting, captivating, yet, unspeakable in the topics it tackles and the issues with which it wrestles. If you are not acquainted with Agamben, then, you might first be taken off guard by his verse and thesis style. But once you get in the flow, the form of his writing adds to its content.
Book Description
The iron Nazi fist came down fast and hard on Leopold Engleitner, but he would not bend to terror. Unbroken Will describes the life and times of an ordinary man whose belief in God and in nonviolence stood the fiery test of Nazi persecution. In thre
Customer Reviews:
An amazing story.......2007-10-06
I had the privilege of meeting Leopold Engleitner in person at the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC last year. The Austrian government was belatedly honoring him for his stand against Nazi brutality over 60 years ago. Though in a wheelchair and nearly one hundred years old, he exuded an inner strength that compelled him to share his experiences, while he still had a chance to do so. This book does a nice job of letting you get to know Leopold without having to go to Austria to do so.
A true survivor.......2007-05-13
Outstanding biographical material for not only life events, but what makes the core of a man.
a faith strenthener.......2007-01-10
Enjoyed this book immensely. Read it in one day. It strengthens your faith. Realistic, unpredjudiced portrayal of events.
A remarkably encouraging life experience........2007-01-05
Leopold Engleitner was indeed an ordinary man who faced brutal persecution at the hands of the Nazi regime, and for what? Because he was a peaceable man who refused to kill anyone. He suffered interment in three concentration camps where he endured deprivation and abuse such as few have survived and emerged free of animosity toward his captors. How could he do this? He was sustained by his implicit faith in Jehovah God. I was spellbound by the fact that while I was growing up carefree and happy in this country, this man was being treated worse than any animal should be treated. This is a 'must read' for anyone who believes there's even a small chance that something like this could happen again. It shows what we must do to survive.
Faith strenghening.......2006-08-21
Leobold Engleitner is the greatest (besides Jesus himself) example of faith, strengh, and endurance. He certainly took to heart the scripture that states " You must Worship Jehovah your god with you whole heart, whole mind and whole soul". If only the whole world had his strengh to reject the devil and his "system of things"! Just think where we could be!
A must read!
Amazon.com
Because Auschwitz was among the most brutal of the concentration camps, ruled by capricious, pure force and not by any discernable political or social structure, the intellectual there "was alone with his intellect ... and there was no social reality that could support and confirm it." In other words, there was no place for the intellect to act, outside of the confines of a person's own skull. Jean Amery's At The Mind's Limits is a focused meditation on the position of the intellectual placed in "a borderline situation, where he has to confirm the reality and effectiveness of his intellect, or to declare its impotence: in Auschwitz." In the camp, Amery writes, "The intellect very abruptly lost its basic quality: its transcendence." Considering this loss, Amery describes his own experience of torture, his reactions of resentment, anger, and bitterness, his loss of any vital sense of metaphysical questions, and his search for some way to maintain moral character and Jewish identity in the absence of such consciousness. --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews:
Disappointing.......2006-10-18
Amery did not only pick up a new French-sounding name, but (although this book was originally written in German) apparently also the circumlocutionary style of the French. If you like a book full of idle verbiage, with arguments beginning nowhere and leading nowhere, and references to passé writers such as Sartre, then this book is for you.
But it's not merely the style that I disliked. All essays (rants, more like) gravitate around Amery's pathological hate for all Germans, past and present. All Germans, except for some four individuals he mentions by name, are inherently bad. Nazis all of them, and torture is the essence of their being. Amery is dissatisfied with the world, because after the war, Germany was not permanently turned into a potato patch as the Morgenthau plan had envisaged it. A typical only child, Amery seems to think that the world should turn around his personal sufferings and frustrations. He hardly ever speaks of his fellow prisoners, and if he does, he belittles them because they are not interested in, let alone able to quote Liliencron or other poets Any Intellectual Should Know. Finally, as could be expected, the post-war generation of Germans is bad, because they do not want to permanently crawl in the dust before Amery.
I regret having spent money on this book.
Jean Amery, the thinker, makes one think.......2006-03-13
Of all the Holocaust books, this book stands above the rest, with the content focused not on the gory details of Nazi atrocities (which are by themselves worth reading if you want to validate the experiences of those who suffered), but rather on the psychological implications of being a victim. Only books by Primo Levi contain this degree of depth of thought and introspection.
An extraordinary meditation on catastrophe........2005-10-24
Prior to reading Amery's book, I thought of myself as thoroughly read in what one French scholar has called "the writing of the disaster," but Amery's may be among the half dozen essential texts in the now overwhelming body of Holocaust literature. A profound meditation on language, on mind, and on disaster in the 20th century.
One to return to.......2005-08-11
Ever since writing a term paper on Amery's "At the Mind's Limits", I have continuously come back to this work. There is a lifetime's worth of contemplation to survey here, not that this is an autobiography or even a complete memoir, but the years of his life on which he writes and the experiences dissected provoke a lifetime's worth of questions, mostly unanswered.
I think of this work as a distinct and great existential accomplishment. It provokes the reader to empathize while simultaneously making him question or even feel guilty for such empathy. How can an intellect, in the modern west at least, empathize with one who has experienced dehumanization to such an unimaginable degree? The short answer is that to try to do so is impossible and even probably detestable, morally speaking.
But isn't the motivation of Amery's expression the prevention of such dehumanization in future? And isn't such prevention dependent on empathetic attempts at least (among other things)?
These are unanswerable contradictions for the reader. But the introspective applications make this a necessary book to read over and over again.
haunting human analysis..........2002-11-18
This man, who lived caught between paralyzing fear and paralyzing anger, refuses to countenance the immoral world he found so horribly crude, ignorant and inadequate. I know of no more unrelenting self-criticism or self-asceticism than portrayed here in this work.
Every "outsider" will recognize immediately that the author talks to him/her. No matter by what standard one is taken as an outsider, here is a priceless analysis of your experience, writ humbly, clearly and painfully.
Every "moralist" will recognize immediately the accusations the authors aims in your direction with too-precise accuracy that will not allow you to wriggle free of the dread implications.
Every "religionist" will recognize the futility of responding in comforting platitude to the undeniable evidence of evil writ hugely in this thin volume.
I know of few intellectuals who will receive the meaning of this work with welcome. To almost all others, it will be set aside with well-explained rationalizations...
But for the reader who knows what "outside" means, what "cataclysm" means, and what "torment" of any stripe whatsoever means, then here you will find a comrade. Here you will find words of encouragement to struggle on...your lot is not as bad as it could be, after all...for here we find our comrade who has endured to the very limits of the mind. And survives, with bright intellect intact and sharp. Uncomfortably so.
A note on the "Auswitz" in the title--Don't allow this word to dissuade you from the universal human experience that is the focus of this work. Any and every human being can take an enhanced image of life and world from this resource.
Books:
- DietMinder Personal Food & Fitness Journal (A Food and Exercise Diary)
- DK Readers: The Story of Anne Frank (Level 3: Reading Alone)
- Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
- Dry: A Memoir
- Eagle Strike (Alex Rider)
- Essential Cases on Human Rights for the Police: Reviews and Summaries of International Cases (The Raoul Wallenberg Institute Professional Guides to Human Rights)
- Following Jesus Without Embarrassing God
- Girl Walking Backwards
- Great Book of Dragon Patterns: The Ultimate Design Sourcebook for Artists and Craftspeople
- Gregor and the Code of Claw (Underland Chronicles, Book 5)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Guitar World Presents: Dimebag Darrell's Riffer Madness
- The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas
- Shut the Door
- The Everglades: River of Grass
- The Four Loves
- Theory of Generalized Inverses Over Commutative Rings
- The Tale of Pale Male: A True Story
- Prince Rupert: Admiral and General-At-Sea
- Structures of the Taxation Systems in the European Union: Data 1995-2003
- Directory of Japanese-Affiliated Companies in the U. S. A. and Canada, 1997-98
Germany's Black Holocaust, 1890-1945: The Untold Truth!
Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experience of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans and African Americans in the Nazi Era (Cross Currents in African American History)
The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis (Sandpiper)
Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender, and Memory in the Third Reich (Social History, Popular Culture, and Politics in Germany)
Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany
