Book Description
By the late 1930s, Europe sat on the brink of a world war. As the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open port available to them: Shanghai. Once called "the armpit of the world," Shanghai ultimately served as the last resort for tens of thousands of Jews desperate to escape Hitler's "Final Solution." Against this backdrop, 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai, with its promise of safety. But instead of a storybook China, they found overcrowded streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens, and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive.
Customer Reviews:
Spellbinding Memoir.......2005-11-04
I loved reading this memoir. It was an easy read that was character driven and suspenseful. The language was not unnecessarily pretentious, and getting into the story was easy. Further, I knew nothing before reading this book about the European Jews who found a haven of sorts in Shanghai during WWII. While they suffered many indignities, shortages of food, medicine, shelter, and clothing, they were much better off than the European Jews who went to their deaths in the camps. Ironically, they also fared better than non-Jewish citizens of countries allied against Hitler and Japan during the Japanese occupation. Non Jewish civilians of the allied countries or captured POWS participated in tragedies like the Bataan death march. They were interred in Japanese prison camps and subjected to grueling forced labor. There they starved, froze, and died of injury and disease probably in greater number than the Shanghai Jews. The Shanghai Jews were subjected to some but not a great deal of forced labor. They were required to police their own ghetto and dig the occassional ditch. Jews did die because of a lack of medicine, sanitation and adequate nutrition. However, many Chinese civilians suffered the same losses even before the war. Still this does not excuse the ghettoization of the Jews into terribly crowded conditions, rules that precluded most of them from earning a living even though they had skills or precluded them from owning property. Luckily aid from Jews in the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa could reach them. For some this was their only means of support and they lived wretched lives. However, the narrator and her family arrived a little better off than most, and her father was a well liked industrious and optimistic businessman. Her mother took in mending and used her excellent seamstress skills to earn money. She tolerated her reduced circumstances without complaint and focused on the sunnier future she was sure would follow the war's end. When the author's father could not work much after the Japanese occupation, their circumstances were reduced. Because the ghetto was seriously overcrowded most occupants could afford little more space than 100 sq. ft. for every three people. Sanitation was completely lacking, and the description of the "honeypots" was truly odoriferous. Imagine several people suffering from amebic dysyntary using the same water closet outfitted with a rustic chamber pot. The author could have let her story fall into the trap of excessive sentimentality, but she did not. For this and her family's optimism I give her Kudos. I gave this four stars instead of five, because I don't think it rises to the literary level of a five star book. Still I highly recommend it. It is a great novel to take on an airplane, a vacation, or to read on an inclement afternoon. It can be read in a few hours.
MAKE A MIRACLE--You Can Do It!!!!!!!!!!.......2005-07-20
Several months ago I saw the author, Ursula Bacon, on BookTv (C-Span 2). I was very impressed with her; her lecture was excellent; and the true story of her life from the age of 10 to 18 was compelling. So, I immediately ordered her book. But the book sat on my desk for weeks making me feel guilty about not reading it. I too am a writer. So, finally after completing one book and revising another one, I took a break. And what a break that was--when I was transported to the CHINA of 1938-1946! Ms. Bacon, an only child of a Jewish family, left Germany with her parents as Hitler and his cohorts were rounding up Jews and transporting them to Death Camps.
By the time Vati, Dad, and Mutti, Mom, were looking for countries to immigrate to, every country had closed its doors to German Jews except Shanghai, China. And Shanghai was a total mess, worse than anything most Americans would ever see. But Ursula's family lived in the filthy disease-ridden slums and survived by bartering their few possessions for food. Ursula, up until then a very sheltered child, attended a Catholic school where most classes were taught in French. And most of the time she remained optimistic, made many European and Chinese friends of all ages, learned to speak Mandarin Chinese, encouraged her Mutti, and helped Vati with his business endeavors.
Ursula became an adult before becoming a teen! And she encountered many bizarre situations which she handled better than most adults. The worst was when she was 12 or 13 and killed a drunken Japanese soldier with her bare hands when he attacked her as she walked home from a friend's house late at night. She didn't tell her parents, though, because she didn't want to burden them with additional worries.
This intriguing and inspiring survival tale is about Jewish refuges in China during WW II, though it depicts the color of Shanghai and the many nationalities struggling to survive their wartorn world. I didn't want SHANGHAI DIARY to end! However, I couldn't wait to finish it, so I could pass it on to an friend whose daughter adopted the most delightful Chinese girl who I predict will someday be an important leader in some capacity.
The world has grown so small today that every American should go out of his or her way to become acquainted with other cultures and religions. And every American teenager should be given the opportunity to live in a foreign country to learn new languages and cultures. I give this wonderful book MORE than FIVE STARS! And I hope parents will share it with their teens and high school teachers will use it in their classes. Thanks, Ursula! K.J. McWilliams, book reviewer as well as author of Pirates, The Journal of Leroy Jeremiah Jones, a Fugitive Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Darien Dexter Duff, an Emancipated Slave, winner of the Young Adult Fiction 2003 Royal Palm Literary Award.
interesting insight and perspective.......2005-07-07
I have enjoyed this book (only read half so far). I don't know how she might remember such detailed accounts, but she did have a diary. This is an amazing account during a terrible time. Worth reading.
Learn how most Chinese lived - Jewish girl in scheisse.......2005-06-04
This is not the best of wartime stories, but the author, an older Jewish lady now residing in Colorado, certainly has a good memory for the details of life in pre-Communist Shanghai. Her family fled with nothing, having entrusted jewelry to an old family friend, so they arrive in Shanghai with a precious few coins to survive. There are wealthy Jews in Shanghai who provide a very minimum bit of hospice space to sleep and some basic slop to eat, as supplies are stretched with the ever-increasing arrivals from all over Europe.
Those who like the dirty details of real life in a poor, overcrowded and ancient civilization will love this book. The author does not mince words at her horror of Chinese sanitation, more actually, the lack thereof. The paragraghs devoted to the honeybuckets, their cleaning, and the stenches of the alleyways could make even a reader vomit. I myself had toured China on the cheap in 1990 and can testify that things had changed little when one got off the main roads of Shanghai - though in the last 15 years, many of the old slums have been torn down to make way for skyscrapers and apartment silos. Going to the bathroom, usually squat Turkish style, was always a nightmare, and always to be postponed until perhaps a Western hotel could be found. Very easy otherwise to lose one's lunch! Oh well, if China was cheap, who cares about a lost lunch?
Not for the young Ursula is China cheap. The father, once a well-off printer and company owner, is now working as a pseudo-wallpaper applier, or rather, with A Chinese Partner, supervising 60 coolies to do the work. The mother has a way with needle and thread, some basic dressmaking, and begins to help other refugees with mending and adjustments. Ursula has learned English in school and from the streets, so she is also employed, as the teenager governess to three high-ranking concubines of a Chinese general. She learns all about the Chinese view of sex, marriage, views of women, and why baby girls are found dumped in the local trashbins all around her Hongkew slum. One days she even found a live, crying girl in the trash, and against all better judgment, fished it out from under the garbage and brought it to a Christian orphanage.
The luck of the refugees go up and down according to the politics and their own individual initiatives. After selling off whatever they managed to smuggle out from Europe (jewelry, winter garments, shoes, books, etc), they must become resourceful in order to eat regularly. All follow with interest whatever bits of news they can garner about the war in Europe, since it quickly moves to their corner of the world.
Then the Japanese arrive and take over Shanghai, with new rules.
Whereas before the Jews could, as foreigners, move freely through Shanghai and conduct business, rent properties, and so on, they are now rounded up and forced to live in one section only of the city, namely, the filthy slum of Hongkew. Families live all in one room, with a sheet hung between to share the room with yet another family "next door". There is no privacy, and Ursula suffers from this. They no longer can manage to do their business freely and become desperate scroungers and scavengers, as indeed are practically all the local Chinese under Japanese rule. A few Jewesses choose to make themselves useful to the Japanese rulers, to get money and presents, but they are despised by their own community.
The last years of the war are spent in this filthy condition, with neighbors and friends dying of the communicable diseases, despair, malnutrition, and random shootings and bombings. Ursula, for example, learned jujitsu, to protect herself against assault by Japanese soldiers. The girls and women learn to never go out alone, and never by night. One evening Ursula makes the mistake to walk back home alone (prescribed routes only for foreigners, by the way), and gets assaulted by a horny soldier. She aims a strong h andchop at his Adam's apple and kills him.
No one the next day commented on one more dead body in the lane, nor asked who could have done it.
My main complaint with Ursula's story is its ending. She and the other refugees dream constantly of USA, with such details as tennis courts, horseback riding and swimming pools, etc. These ideas came presumably from movies, widely shown in Shanghai. Meanwhile, although they're realists, they don't seem to realize that the bulk of the US population in the 1930's was in serious economic stress, with no such lifestyle possible. Even today, not everyone is a spoiled surburbanite by a long shot, especially new arrivals with no money, as they would be.
The fast Happy End, where they all somehow get to America, do well, get married and whatnot, with no struggle implied, is quite a letdown. HEre we have been dragged through the coals of the misery of Chinese life, in its minute details, and suddenly, presto! They somehow get allowed into their dream country (which strings did they pull, how much did it cost, etc.? why the sudden silence on how hard life maneuvers can be?) and do well. Oh? WHat did she study, what work did she find? She mentioned that her father found work with the Denver Post as a printer. Did he know English? Was it hard for him?
What did his wife do?
The main "thrill" of the book is in the details of everyday Chinese life, with its stench, its sexism, its obsessions and superstitions. These come through more clearly for a Western reader than if written by a Chinese, who takes such privations as normal. Indeed, they were, and still are, standard problems for the bulk of China and much of the Third World.
Ursula Bacon's family did not considered themselves Jews in any true religious sense, so their experience is not particularly Jewish, but German. Their German ideas and attitudes come through clearly, especially in their horror of dirt, in their love of literature and knowledge. They are open to all religions and put Ursula, in fact, in a French Catholic school, where she admires the true-believing nuns.
A great read! Just unsatisfactory ending, as if she were trying to wrap it up quickly... so maybe there's a second book coming out of this, the struggle to get a foothold in America, and their shock and horror at some of US customs, disregard for education, plenty of Jew hatred, and so on?
Apparently, also, a movie is coming out on this. Watch for it.
Ursula's Amazing Story.......2005-02-19
"If you can't change it, don't complain." Life is not about events, but it is about people. Life was truly a challenge. To escape Hitler the author and her family escaped to Shanghai, China. She learned to live one day at a time. She had a spirit of dreaming of America. America was a beacon of hope for her during this trying time. After the war she and her parents came to America after a two year struggle to get a visa and they located in Denver.
The author grew up in China as an escapee from Hitler's Germany. In China she learned to be grateful for everything. She had escaped to China as a child of ten. There with her parents she lived with 20,000 other refugees in horrific conditions. But she and her parents survived. The story is told with wonderful courage, sensitivity and even some humor. The author has learned not to hate but to love people, inspite of the hell she suffered caused by Nazi Germany. According to the author the most important emotions to have are love and gratitude. She lives her life with love of people and gratitude for all persons who have helped her during those difficult years.
For those who are interested, there is an author event available on C-Span2 Book TV for this book.
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- The World Must Never Forget
- eleanor's best book ever!
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- This is a book you can not put down!
- Amazing Story that takes your Breath Away.
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Parallel Journeys
Eleanor H. Ayer ,
Helen Waterford , and
Alfons Heck
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ASIN: 0689832362 |
Book Description
She was a young German Jew.
He was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth.
This is the story of their parallel journey through World War II.
Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck were born just a few miles from each other in the German Rhineland. But their lives took radically different courses: Helen's to the Auschwitz extermination camp; Alfons to a high rank in the Hitler Youth.
While Helen was hiding in Amsterdam, Alfons was a fanatic believer in Hitler's "master race." While she was crammed in a cattle car bound for the death camp Auschwitz, he was a teenage commander of frontline troops, ready to fight and die for the glory of Hitler and the Fatherland. This book tells both of their stories, side-by-side, in an overwhelming account of the nightmare that was WWII. The riveting stories of these two remarkable people must stand as a powerful lesson to us all.
Customer Reviews:
The World Must Never Forget.......2007-03-27
The world must never forget the holocaust. Today some people espouse a theory that the nearly 12,000,000 deaths (6,000,000 of them Jews) at the hands of the Nazi party never happened. This sad, but honest, tale traces the lives of two persons who lived through that era. Helen Waterford was a Jew who experienced the atrocities first hand. Alfons Heck was a high ranking member of Hitler's youth. Both lived to tell their tales. Both met each other after the war. Both told their tales together. This book alternates chapters between the two principle characters so the reader can witness this period through eyes on both sides of the ideological conflict. This is really two books in one. Either story will challenge the mind and heart. Either one of the stories is an important read, but both placed together in this manner makes for a 5-star book. Our local middle school uses this classic in some of the literature classes. You will be richer for having read this book.
eleanor's best book ever!.......2006-08-14
WOW, what a book i would say. It's a very moving book about the memoirs of Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck during WWII.This book should be in high school history not to say only for high schoolers but 12 year olds and up.
An Aryan and Jew become friends.......2006-08-02
This book is not your usual book. It details the lives of Ayran Alfons Heck and Jewish Helen Waterford.
Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth and fought-and even met Adolf Hitler. After the war he was depressed about the things that he and his countrymen did to the Jews and moved first to Canada and then to the U.S.
Helen is a Jew who spend part of the war hiding with her husband. They were eventually caught. Helen's husband did not survive, but Helen did, eventually moving from Holland to the U.S. with her daughter Doris.
While in the U.S Helen read some of the things Alfons wrote about and contacted him leading to a friendship and career as they travel telling their stories to students all over the place.
A very moving book!
This is a book you can not put down!.......2006-06-27
Seriously this book is impossible to stop reading once you pass a certain point. I stayed up 'til seven in the morning reading this book. Mind you I started reading that night around ten or eleven at night. It is seriously that captivating. This book tells some very important and over-all relatively unknown facts about the period surrounding WWII. It is an intriguing and captivating book that I believe every human being high school age and older should read. I also think it should be added to high school curriculums.
Amazing Story that takes your Breath Away........2006-05-03
This was a very touching and sweet story. It is amazing that someone would be that mean to take thousands of lives and destroy them. It is also amazing that [Hitler] would force kids to join the army. I would hate to serve him.
Book Description
To Nini Karpel, growing up in Vienna during the 1920s was a romantic confection. Whether schussing down ski slopes or speaking of politics in coffee houses, she cherished the city of her birth. But in the 1930s an undercurrent of conflict and hate began to seize the former imperial capital. This struggle came to a head when Hitler took possession of neighboring Germany. Anti-Semitism, which Nini and her idealistic friends believed was impossible in the socially advanced world of Vienna, became widespread and virulent.
The Karpel's Jewish identity suddenly made them foreigners in their own homeland. Tormented, disenfranchised, and with a broken heart, Nini and her family sought refuge in a land seven thousand miles across the world.
Shanghai, China, one of the few countries accepting Jewish immigrants, became their new home and refuge. Stepping off the boat, the Karpel family found themselves in a land they could never have imagined. Shanghai presented an incongruent world of immense wealth and privilege for some and poverty for the masses, with opium dens and decadent clubs as well as rampant disease and a raging war between nations.
Ten Green Bottles is the story of Nini Karpel's struggles as she told it to her daughter Vivian so many years ago. This true story depicts the fierce perseverance of one family, victims of the forces of evil, who overcame suffering of biblical proportion to survive. It was a time when ordinary people became heroes.
Customer Reviews:
Not a must read........2007-03-10
The account of a Jewish familys' descent in Vienna through the Nazi hell to the foreign shores of Shanghai is interesting from an historical perspective. The writing is amateurish with the point of view jumping around and the verb tenses as well. It could have used a good editor.
Disappointing.......2006-08-05
The story of the blind hatred and inhumanity whipped up by the Nazis needs to be told - and told often. But it deserves a more nuanced telling than this single-dimensional presentation. This account is all bright colors (first quarter) and darkness (remainder), with little in between.
What is particularly striking is that the narrator makes no effort to relate to the suffering of Shanghai's indigenous Chinese population. Her flat and parenthetical references to the pervasive poverty, disease and oppression reveal little or no interest in the historical or social context that created such dreadful conditions, not to mention any empathy with the people so afflicted. Its detachment is disturbing. Could it be that one's humanity is so degraded by abuse that one cannot see beyond one's own suffering? Perhaps, but without any attempt at explanation it comes across as heartless indifference.
As a tribute by a daughter to a mother and a family who endured hideous persecution the book is a worthy effort. But in providing any real insights it falls sadly short.
Decadence and Poverty of Wartime Shanghai .......2006-05-10
I thoroughly enjoyed "Ten Green Bottles". Unlike other books on Shanghai of that period, I particularly relished the intimate glimpse of the extreme wealth and decadence that was ongoing alongside the abject poverty of the immigrants that fled Europe. Much is written here of how people of many nations with unimaginable wealth made Shanghai their "sumptuous playground" between the stench and filth of the city.
In particular, the author's description of the Bolero Club through the eyes of Nini, who worked as a hostess there, was so exciting and so descriptive and so alive that I was sure I was in the room with some of the most powerful men and glamorous women of the time. Her detailed description of the opium den next door, a "grand salon" established exclusively for the very rich, is breathtaking.
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to live the Shanghai of World War II from its lows to its highs.
A story that should not be forgotten.......2005-11-13
This story about the experiences of a Viennese Jewish family in Shanghai perfectly fulfills two raison d'etre of books - on the one hand it allows the reader to enter a time-warp machine and be transplanted to another time and another place and vicariously live through the emotional upheavals, the smells, sights, sounds and most importantly the feelings of fear, frustration, Angst and yes, fortunately also joy, of the main characters. Vivian Kaplan is a master of setting the scene and allowing the reader to slip into the protagonist's skin. I have lived and worked in Vienna and also in Northern China (albeit at a much later time) and Vivian's writing rings true. The chapters in the book are like 3-D images conjured up for the reader (and would make a very gripping screenplay). The other raison d'etre of books is to preserve and hand down important happenings and narrate them in a gripping and thought-provoking manner. The manner in which the Jews in Austria and elsewhere were treated by an Austrian madman who managed to come to power in Germany should never be forgotten. More importantly, we all need to be vigilant that such events happen less and less frequently in the history of humankind. Although familiar with the story of displaced Jews from German-speaking countries as I (like the author) am offspring, I was unable to put down the book. What Nini Karpel's mother had to experience in one short lifetime is more than most people should have to live through. The book also helped me understand the initial inertia of many Jews in Vienna to the anti-Semitic flare-up in the 1920s and 30s. "Oh, we've seen this many times, let's just lie low and wait for it to blow over". Writing in the present tense made the story more immediate. However, despite the fact that the book had its share of gruesome scenes, overall the manner in which Nini viewed the world seemed overly rosy-colored and syrupy sweet. The naive tone that permeates the book distracts from the serious situation in which these refugees find themselves. Even a five-year old would know better than to state 'we are awed by the changes in the baby within his first year. Every day he seems to learn some new word...' p.5. Should the book get reprinted, I suggest a German-speaking editor correct some of the German words. The great Ferris wheel in Vienna is no 'Reisenrad' p.77 and the 'Fuhrer' should be spelled 'Fuehrer'. But overall we are better off for having another story capture the senseless suffering human beings will inflict upon one another.
A Very Outstanding Book.......2005-08-05
Ten Green Bottles is one of the most powerful, emotional, fascinating and beautifully written books I have ever read. Where has this author been?
The story begins in the early 1920s in Vienna where a five year old Jewish girl, called Nini, begins to experience what it is to be the youngest of three sisters. It is written in Nini's voice and throughout the book you seem to live every moment of her life as if you were in her skin. You laugh, cry, feel and experience everything that happens to her as if it were happening to you, yet the book is non-fiction.
The story tells of her life in a growing family and the hardships of her mother in raising her children and carrying on their business after her father's death. As Nini grows into her teenage years, your senses are filled with the excitement of Vienna and the thrill of skiing in the mountains nearby. Then the Nazis come and everything changes.
As Jews are now considered vermin, they must flee the city or they will surely die. With the help of a gentile lawyer they are able to leave Vienna for Shanghai. On arriving in this no-man's land with almost no money, they find themselves in the middle of another war between China and Japan. Living in squalor and trying to survive, their life is made even more miserable. Japan, an ally of Germany, forces them and about 20,000 other Jews into a small ghetto with over 100,000 of the poorest Chinese. The story tells of their life and the life of the Jewish community as they try to make it through to the end of the war under the most deplorable conditions imaginable. They are eventually liberated by the Americans and stay until the Communist takeover in the late 1940s when they leave. The story ends with their exceptionally well written arrival in the white winter of Canada where they do not have to fear anymore.
I read a lot and to me this book was a literary masterpiece. I also learned about a very interesting part of the Holocaust that I had not known.
Book Description
For the 75th anniversary of Anne Frank's birth, an important publishing event - the first full-color visual book celebrating the legacy of Anne and her famous house. The photographs compiled here are in both black-and-white and color; they are vivid and moving, and make a lasting impression. The reader experiences the house and its relics, and sees photos of Anne's family and friends, the people who helped them and the changing Amstrerdam neighborhood where they lived.
Customer Reviews:
Inside Anne Frank's House: An Illustrated Journey Through Anne's World.......2007-06-12
I visited Anne Frank's huis in Amsterdam. This book not only brought me back there, but allowed me to digest the details of what they illustrated. Very moving! A topic people all over the world mustn't forget.
While the book followed the tour of the house, there are areas of the book that seem to have a weak translation into English. I wanted to absorb every written word, but there were areas that were not very clear. But I wouldn't give up the book for that. Thank you Ms Westra! And Thank you Mr. Frank for sharing the story of your precious little girl. I'm sure you are with her now.
Great book, but watch out -- it's got two titles!.......2006-05-09
FYI, for those of you who have been to the Anne Frank House:
Except for the cover, Inside Anne Frank's House is COMPLETELY IDENTICAL to the deluxe edition of a book sold in the Netherlands and on annefrankhouse.org under the title, Anne Frank House: A Museum with a Story. (Here's the link to the other version: [...])
It's a beautiful book, well made and with many, many large photos, and I heartily recommend it. But it's not so beautiful as to warrant inadvertantly buying two, like I did. ;)
WOW THIS BOOK ON ANNE FRANK WAS SO GOOD.......2005-03-07
Look at the subject it says it all. Basically its about the history beyond her, hiding place, diary. The text and photos wre good. Basically knew everything about her, but the main reason bought book is the photos that I haven't seen it yet. Thank you.
An Illustrated Journey.......2005-01-09
I have long been interested in the story of Anne Frank. Over the years I have read many books about her and I continue to reread the diary every year. Recently, this book came to my attention and I gave it a read. There is much about it that impresses.
This book is subtitled An Illustrated Journey Through Anne's World and that seems appropriate. The key attraction of the book are the hundreds of photos that fill its pages, many of which I had never seen before. With its oversize, coffee table book format, and slick pages, it is a beautiful thing to look at. Where the book begins to let the reader down is the text.
Granted, the text is minimal and what there is can be highly informative and descriptive; however, I noticed a number of typos in my edition and many of the pictures were mislabeled (if the label could be found at all). It also seemed like different people were in charge of different sections of the book because there was no consistency to the presentation. I actually liked the structure of the first section of the book, where German history ran in small pictures along the bottom of the pages and the Frank family filled the top. I wish this style would have continued because it was very informative and allowed the reader to make connections but this was dropped rather quickly.
Still, there is a lot to be said for this book. It's cliche that a picture says a thousand words but it is amazing the emotion that is captured in some of these shots, particularly if you know the story behind them.
We Remember, If Only We Would Learn.......2004-12-15
It's an ordinary house, not spectacular at all. It wouldn't be worth photographing at all except for the extraordinary young lady who lived here and who kept a diary during one of those times when the devil was loose on the earth and good men did nothing to stop him.
But because of this young lady and her extraordinary diary this house is a monument, a church if you will, that commemorates not just this girl but all of those who went with her, and all of those who tried to help them.
The book itself is beautifully done, not only a photographic guide but a history, a memorial in its own right with quotations and photographs of objects displayed in the actual exhibition. ==Let us never forget!
Let us also remember the other holocausts that followed to prove that we didn't learn enough: Rwands, Cambodia, Ethnic Cleansing in former Yugoslavia, and what may happen in Iraq between the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds.
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Slow Fire
Susan Neiman
Manufacturer: Schocken
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ASIN: 0805241124
Release Date: 1992-03-10 |
Book Description
In 1485 the Portuguese Crown and Catholic Church began to kidnap Jewish children, forcibly convert the young conscripts, and ship them to São Tomé Island off the African equator to work the government sugar plantations. The collision of slavery, sugar agriculture, and discovery of The Americas transformed this island colony into the nidus of the wholesale black slave trade that infected Africa and Western commerce for the next 350 years. This is a unique and little-known chapter of the Diaspora which also reveals the Medieval Church's complicity in the business of slavery.
São Tomé tells the story of young Marcel Saulo and his sister Leah who were abducted with other children from their synagogue in Lisbon and shipped 4,000 miles to the West-African island.
Customer Reviews:
The road to hell began here.......2007-10-07
Sometime around the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese Inquisition began kidnapping Jewish children from their families and expatriating them to the remote island of Sao Tome off the African coast, where they were forcibly converted to Catholicism and sent to work as slaves on the sugar plantations. When the Western Hemisphere was split between Spain and Portugal with Spain receiving the lion's share of the spoils, the Portuguese realized that while Spain got most of the territory, Portugal could get rich from importing slaves to work the land. Sao Tome became one of the first jump-off points for the voyage through the middle passage, through which 25 million Africans were transported to the Americas on the slave ships.
Paul Cohn tells the story of Sao Tome through a young Portuguese Jew, Marcel Saulo, who is kidnapped and sent to the island at the age of 14, enduring the trials of semi-slavery, ultimately freeing himself and working his own sugar plantation with African servants of his own. How he runs afoul of the island regimes that insist that all blacks be subjugated to slavery while he treats his own servants as free men and women, and his problems with maintaining his Jewish identity and heritage while passing as a Catholic in order to survive the Inquisition, whose long arm reached even as far as Sao Tome, make up the backbone of the story.
Cohn is a gifted storyteller and he has written a page-turner that keeps you interested in the plot from beginning to end. The plot, and the historical background, are fascinating enough to overcome the book's one-dimensional characters and pedestrian writing. Cohn did manage to hold my interest enough to make me want to learn more about this period in history, which makes the book ultimately succeed as a historical novel.
Judy Lind
Memorable Historical Novel.......2007-10-02
Incredible and riveting, this story was a page turner from the beginning to the end. It contains characters you care about and is beautifully written. I loved it. Definitely memorable!!
Little Known History: The Beginning of Slavery.......2007-03-22
São Tomé is an inordinately readable novel based on fact, one of those discoveries that not only introduces a fine author but also reveals information known by all too few of us. In his Foreword author Paul D. Cohn reveals the source of his novel: the Saulo Chronicle was written between 1497 and 1500, the journal history of a young Jewish lad from Portugal who was kidnapped by the Catholic Church as part of the Inquisition and shipped to the West African Island of São Tomé where he endured hardships not only of separation from his family but also the filthy unhealthful living conditions as a slave on the sugar cane plantations and yet survived to witness (and fight against) the inception of the commerce of slavery spurred on by the discovery by his fellow countryman Christopher Columbus of the New World.
Cohn's writing technique is very straightforward and narratively complex while remaining riveting as story telling. His descriptions Marcel Saulo's two month ship journey from Portugal to Africa, the treatment of the Jewish children who were expected to convert to Catholicism once on the island (or be killed), and the gradual adaptation to live in a strange place whose indigenous problems included virulent malaria and typhoid fever in addition to the local wars occurring between separate parts of the island as well as rebellion as the African slaves were brought together to sell to slave traders - all elements that defy belief yet are convincingly recounted. How Saulo met and married a Jewish girl only to lose her to tragedy and subsequently bonded with other girls both Jewish and African and how he managed to maintain his Jewish soul while converting to the Catholic ways in order to survive, challenging in his own way the concept of slavery by treating his 'workers' as free men and women, and how he fought the changes in the island regimes and in Portugal's government of the island all make for a story that is a journey of courage and bravery and faith.
If the novel has a flaw it is in the need to edit the number of side stories that flood the pages. Characters arise and disappear so quickly that the reader needs to back reference to keep the flow of the novel in line. But that is a small dent in a novel that commands respect and enlightens the reader. This is an extraordinary accomplishment and pleads for a wide readership. Grady Harp, March 07
A Wonderful Historical Novel.......2006-04-13
Paul Cohn's Sao Tome is a beautifully written, thoroughly researched historical novel. The characters are engaging, the story is compelling, and the descriptions of life on Sao Tome are richly detailed. This book inspired me and moved me to tears. I loved it.
An excitingTale.......2006-02-10
Sao Tome is an exciting read. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Paul Cohn describes the harrowing experiences of a young
Portugese, Jewish boy who was kidnapped and sent to Sao Tome
Island during the Inquisition. The tale, based on historical records, recounts the fate of the children sent from Portugal and also tells the tale of the slaves imported from Africa
to work on the sugar plantations. It is written with sympathy
and shows the reader the unbelievable difficulty of life for those who were victims of the Inquisition and of slavery.
Average customer rating:
- I discovered the fate of my family from someone who saw it first hand
- Incredible Holocaust Story
- Inspiring
- Very Interesting!
|
Never the Last Journey
Felix Zandman , and
David Chanoff
Manufacturer: Schocken
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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Jewish
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Holocaust
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ASIN: 0805241280
Release Date: 1995-05-16 |
Customer Reviews:
I discovered the fate of my family from someone who saw it first hand.......2005-10-06
For many years my mother's family was presumed completely obliterated by the Holocaust until I found Dr. Zandman and his book. I was finally able to put fates with the faces of the people I knew only through aging photographs.
This is a book of horrors and of triumph over adversity. That Dr. Zandman was able to survive what he did and still go on to become the fine international businessman that he did is nothing short of miraculous. Where others would have just ceased to go on he found the courage and the strength to live his life to it's fullest.
The personal stories that he tells of his Great Aunt Sonya and his Grandfather Nochum are absolutely heartwrenching and leave you wondering simply how so many people could hate so much.
Incredible Holocaust Story.......2003-05-05
An ageless and inspiring story of determination, survival, and ultimately triumph. Zandman's story brings home minute details about being Jewish during this horrific period of time--right down to the mindset of most Jewish families in Poland. This book clearly illustrates how subtle, calculating, and conniving Hitler was as he, not all at once, but gradually moved the Jews from their homes, to the ghetto and finally the death camps.
After I read this, the first time, I wanted nothing more than to meet Felix Zandman personally. Even the title inspired me to always push forward and to never give up.
Inspiring.......2000-06-07
As a stock analyst, I've seen many CEO's and heard many success stories. This is a heartwarming story of dedication and triumph unlike that of any other business executive. Despite spending his youth in hiding from Nazis, Dr. Zandman manages to get a PhD., move to America and found a small engineering company that ends up being one of the world's largest suppliers of electronics components.
Very Interesting!.......2000-03-14
Zandman's historical part of this book is great. It gives you a great perspective of his life during the Holocust. More background would have been great. Got the feeling that his business associates have been less than desirable chaps.
Average customer rating:
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Roman's Journey
Roman Halter
Manufacturer: Portobello Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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Holocaust
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ASIN: 1846270324 |
Book Description
In 1937, Edith Westerfeld's parents-before being killed by the Nazis-sent her from Germany to live with relatives in America. Fifty-four years later, Edith decided that it was time to, with her grown daughter Fern, revisit the town she had left so many years before. For Edith the trip was a chance to reconnect and reconcile with her past; for Fern it was a chance to learn what lay behind her mother's silent grief. On their journey, Fern and her mother shared many extraordinary encounters with the townspeople and-more importantly-with one another, closing the divide that had long stood between them.
Customer Reviews:
A Trip Into the Past.......2007-10-07
"Motherland" by Fern Schumer Chapman centers around an intriguing premise, that of a mother and daughter returning to Germany to discover what happened to the family left behind during the war, in an effort to let go of the war that plagues their relationship. The author's mother was sent as a refuge to America a year after her older sister, leaving her grandma and parents to endure the wrath of the Nazis. Feeling abandoned and unloved, the author's mother never returned until the early 1990s, still hesitant to encounter the past.
For Germans, it seems as if WWII and its legacy is always close to the surface; a feeling a guilt pervades their interactions with those from other places due to the constant association with evil they must endure. Mother and daughter certainly encounter that on their journey to the small town where her mother lived her first 12 years of life. The town, while greatly changed, is still home to many former classmates. Escorted around town by a man eager to make amends for his past actions, the two discover that the past is always present, no matter how hard one tries to forget.
Overall, "Motherland" is a quick-paced read, an accounting of the author's attempt to understand her mother. Yet at times the narrative reads as if the author is trying to hard; she was five months pregnant when the journey was made, and perhaps her emotional swings show through too much. The flow is often interrupted by liteary efforts at similes, comparisons which aren't necessary and do not add to the story. However, the story is one that the author needed to discover and one that she needed to tell. It is an interesting look at how someone who wouldn't necessarily qualify as a 'survivor' did survive, but still passed on that legacy of loss and war to her daughter.
My son teenage son even read this one.........2007-08-30
I had begun this book and put it down--to pick it up again was a very good idea. This author has a very readable style. A great book to read if you want
to know about the Holocaust and beyond--just like the title says--it says it all.
Schools use Motherland To Teach About Moral Choices.......2006-05-15
Edith Westerfield Schumer left Germany in 1938 as a twelve-year-old. She left alone. Her parents sent her to America, removing her from the threat of the Nazis in her German homeland. Her Jewish father mistakenly believed that Hitler would acknowledge his service to Germany in World War I. However, most of her family did not survive the persecution or the death camps. Edith never saw her parents again.
She rarely spoke of her childhood. Perhaps so much loss could not be expressed in words. Perhaps she didn't know how to convey to her family what was ripped apart in her past. Her daughter Fern knew little of her heritage.
"Motherland" tells their story through her daughter Fern's perspective. When her mother finally agrees to return to Germany, Fern accompanies her-hoping to learn about her grandparents, hoping to see aspects of her mother's childhood, hoping to better understand how the Holocaust stole her past when it stole her mother's.
Through their journey Fern and Edith learn much more about each other and about the quest to reconcile the past than they expected, significantly deepening their mother-daughter bond. Fern relates with poignancy how moments from her mother's childhood are revealed during their visit. For the first time she realizes that her mother's inability to speak German without an American accent parallels her inability to speak English without German pronunciations creeping in. Her speech identifies her as different from other Americans-and other Germans. Fern learns her mother's favorite German food only to realize that Edith never learned to cook it before she was sent away. For the first time she hears of her mother's insecurities about leaving her home.
They encounter people from Edith's childhood who through their silence aligned themselves with the Nazis. Their lives still echo with hidden guilt. The mother and daughter speak with others who have never overcome their anger at the Nazis and what they suffered when they tried to help and protect the Jews. The women are struck by how people's lives have never returned to normal.
Their story provides insight into mother-daughter relationships and the role of roots in those relationships. The memoir was named a finalist in 2000 in the National Jewish Book Awards by the Jewish Book Council and a number of schools use Motherland to teach about moral choices.
Edith and Fern acknowledge that the Holocaust has now affected three generations of their family. Somehow those who carry on must remember history and honor those cut down by cruelty, yet let go of the past moving ahead with the new generations into healing.
Mother "can't go home again", daughter watches in perplexity.......2005-07-02
This book covers the return of a Jewess, at 12 years old separated from her parents from the Rheinland on a Kindertransport, to her small hometown, Stockstadt-am-Rhein in 1990. Her daughter, pregnant, goes with her, although unable to speak German, and writes from her younger, American Jewish perspective on this whole process of reclaiming her mother's past, her Heimat (homeland), her Motherland so to speak.
As you can read, most reviewers rave about this book. It is well-written, if a bit too introspective at times (these parts a reader can skip, such as the daughter's thoughts dwelling on herself and her own children). I'd like to make these criticisms for the author, that she may rewrite it perhaps, or if it should be done in a film version, some negative feedback could also perhaps be useful in making a tighter story:
1. The mother's verbatim words should be used in the text, with footnotes underneath for translation into English. Many who read this book know German and do not want to read about the daughter's struggle to make out this or that trival word. Dare I say it, the daughter might have made a better effort to know her mother's language? How else to understand her own roots, her own mother's culture, her longing for her childhood?
2. Don't introduce side issues that remain unresolved. For example, a very intriguing juicy bit is thrown in, that her older sister was sent a year ahead of her to America, adopted by another set of relatives, and now that the two sisters (her mother and her aunt) are now in their late 60's, they still don't get along. This isn't worth delving into, or at least explaining a little bit? WHy leave it hanging? Why bring it up if not to grab the reader's attention? WHy not go and interview the aunt, find out her own bitter memories or reasons for spurning her younger sister an entire lifetime?
2. Why no mention of this author's father? Who was he? How did he influence the family with his own traditions, career or job, attitudes and hobbies, personality? Reading this book, one could think that there was no father in the author's life. If we are to understand her pain as a daughter in not grasping her parents' lives, then surely some mention should be made.
3. Why not explain her mother's cowardice in not giving her own daughter Jewish names? She says she is named Fern (for a relative, Frieda) and Brenda (for another one, Brondl). This is strange to me, for the names "Fern Brenda" certainly don't indicate the great Jewish heritage that the mother wants kept.
Meanwhile, we hear that the German families are naming their kids Joshua and Sara, with no shame or hiding. Strange indeed.
4. Why not look at Germans more as people? Her impression of a silly clerk called the immigrations controller is that of a nasty Nazi, simply because he is German with blue eyes and blonde hair, and stamps their documents with authority. Don't ALL immigration people behave this way in every airport of the world? They're SUPPOSED to be abrupt, to give people unease. Does she call the ones down in Israel with their "brown eyes and dark hair" typical Mossad types? Nasty because they're Jews? I should think not, it's lame stereotyping at best.
Overall, this book needs editting by a non-Jewish, non-German hating professional editor, who can guide Fern into a more balanced presentation of her mother's beloved homeland. Otherwise, the hatred comes through with the stereotypical slights, and weakens the story's validity.
The best angle, if a movie were to be made - hopefully in Germany's Babelsberg and not here in Hollywood, God forbid - the theme of Mini, her childhood friend. Now there's a morality play full of contradictions! Wilhelmine (Mini for short), a child six years older from a dreadfully poor family of seven kids, is sent to be a servant/maid to the well-off Jews, and becomes best friends with the daughter she is meant to serve. Then her friend is sent to America, making Mini 18 and Tiddy 12 when they separate. Mini is so enraged to have lost her adopted sister and family that she spends the rest of her life documenting the Nazis, and whether they're all prosecuted. Her own grown son, nearing 50, feels himself deprived of a proper childhood or mothering because Mini devotes herself to fighting the evils of the past rather than living in the present. She is a living testament to the folly of grudges, which the author's own mother avoiding doing - she purposefully shunned nostalgia for her lost homeland and family, until her 60's.
In many respects, this daughter and her emotions, this author, is the problem in the story. She should rewrite it from the participants' point of view, either her mother's or Mini's, in the third person, and take her own petulant self out of it.
Now THAT would be a mature and interesting novel.
Hey, also, put in some of these pictures that she dwells on!
Vietnam Vet.......2004-10-25
I recently purchased your book and happened to glance at the back cover. From that point on I could not put your book down until I had read it from cover to cover. I was memorized! I AM YOUR MOTHER!
I'm a Vietnam combat veteran and used the same ploy as your mother - denial and never talk about it. My wife and three sons bore the brunt of my walled memories. And, unfortunately, in order to bury Vietnam I also buried most of my youth.
I recently retired and the unexpected free time has caused my walls to crumble and my nights are filled with nightmares. Part of my counseling is to write about my trauma. You have inspired me to take these outpourings, organize them and get them published. I intend to "look fear in the face" and share my burden with others who may face the same hardships I do. Like your mom, I want to "be here now."
Book Description
In early 1939, after Kristallnacht, young Inge Joseph's family in Germany is broken apart, and her desperate mother sends her alone to Brussels to live with wealthy relatives. But she soon finds herself one of a hundred Jewish children fleeing for their lives following Hitler's invasions of Belgium and France.
For a time, in 1941 and 1942, it seems as if Inge and the others have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, as they find shelter through the Swiss Red Cross in an idyllic fifteenth-century French château. Inge even finds love there. But the rumors and horrors of the Holocaust are never far away, and eventually French gendarmes surprise the children, taking them from their protectors to a nearby transit camp. In their desperate attempts to escape, Inge and her boyfriend face unexpected life-and-death decisions — wrenching decisions that will haunt Inge for the rest of her life.
This powerful, never-before-told memoir is based on Inge's own sixty-six-page manuscript, found after her death; David Gumpert has also drawn from Inge's personal letters, from the recollections of friends, relatives, and people who were with her in Europe, and from his own close relationship with his aunt.
One of the most dramatic stories of Christian rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust, Inge is at the same time a totally frank account of the life and feelings of a teenage girl struggling to survive the Holocaust on her own — and of how the effects of that experience reverberated through her life and on into the lives of her descendants. No matter how or why one reads it, Inge is a story of survival not soon to be forgotten.
Customer Reviews:
Hard to put down!.......2007-03-20
I won't go into a synopsis since the readers before me have very detailed ones.
I checked this one out from the local library. I could not put it down. I was able to finish in 2 days. I found myself following her on her journey. The book is very well written and really involves the reader in what life may have been like for her. I am purchasing this one to keep on my shelf. Definitely worth reading and rereading.
Holocaust Story You Can't Forget.......2006-06-21
This book takes you into the life of Inge Joseph who lived threw the Holocaust, but ultimitly could not get past it.
Inge Joseph was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1925. She had an older sister and loving parents. When she was young Hitler took power and her life changed. In 1936 her father got arrested and shortly afterwards her sister then 16 went to live in America eventually living in Chicago.
Inge and her mother remained in Darmstadt with the help of her father's wealthy cousin. During this time however Inge left Darmstadt and went to live with her cousin in Belgium. After only living with him a short time he and his wife sent her to live in a hostil run by Mr. and Mrs. Frank (no relation to Anne.) After living there a while, the Nazis invaded Belgium and the Franks sent the girls to France with a group of boys from another hostil in the town they lived in.
The 100 kids went to France and stayed in a barn for a while, until the Swiss Red Cross got involved helping them with food, and finding them a castle to live in.
Life was not easy in the barn or castle, but Inge and some of her friends found love. During the time in the castle the oldest of the children were arrested and sent to a concentration camp, but managed to go back to Chateau le Haille (the castle). Several months later the person in charge decided that the oldest ones needed to escape.
After a failed escape leading to the deaths of Inge's friend and boyfriend Inge made it to Switzerland and finally to the United States to reunite with her father and sister.
Inge tried to get over her experiences, married a Austrian Jew and adopted a daughter named Julie, and also became a nurse. Unfortunitly she was not able to and became addicted to medication that caused her to die in 1983.
A very interesting story, one can't forget
A different look at the Holocaust.......2006-02-25
Most books on the Holocaust reflect the horrible trials of those murdered or sent to Concentration Camps. This is a story of a young girl sent by her family to Belgium from Germany before the war. She is tossed into the whirlwind of war and her separation from her family is greatly traumatic for her. She faces her difficult teen years as a refugee in Southern France. The North of France is occupied by the Nazis, who ultimately control the French Government, both north and south. Each year she grows closer to her 18th birthday, she is painfully aware of the French laws will allow her to be turned over to the Nazis and deported. She is not alone in her travail. This story tells of the genuine goodness of those who helped shelter her and get her and many of her friends to Switzerland. There is love, loss and decency. A really different prospective. Should be read by all.
Inge A Girl's Journey Through Nazi Europe.......2004-05-11
Much has been written about the millions who were murdered during the Nazis' Holocaust bestiality yet we know less about the effect on thousands of child survivors who suffered separation from family, deprivation and often multiple escapes during World War II. In "Inge" author Gumpert vividly portrays the anxieties and trauma of an innocent young girl under the duress of separation, escape and living on the margin. Inge discovers herself and turns from introvert to courageous escape artist, outwitting adult persecutioners. We also learn about selfless and heroic rescuers. It is fascinating to discover her interactions with peers and even the advent of teenage love during her turbulent youth.
The book vividly presents the gripping dangers and escapades of Inge's teenage years. Even more important, the author reveals Inge's lifelong and unsuccessful struggle to cope with the memories. One feels the author has perhaps finally provided the peace and redemption which escaped Inge during her lifetime.
As a fellow teenage refugee with Inge in 1940-41 (her first love was my best friend Walter), I knew the facts, but I am deeply moved by the compelling story told by this book.
A gripping story of a young girl dealing with the holocaust........2004-05-10
This is a book you cannot put down, not the Ann Frank type of
story but of a young girl dealing all on her own with the abandonment of her family, the uncertainty of her family's whereabouts during the war, a love affair with an uncertain
outcome, and the unhappy misery that should not befall a
15- or 16-year old. Because of the tenacity of some kind-hearted
Swiss Red Cross workers she is restored to freedom in Switzerland
and is able to start her training in her life's ambition.
But how she gets there is a cliff-hanger and shows the misery
of the Holocaust in an entirely different light. A true story,
a sad one, but also eventually uplifting.
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