Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family's Journey from War-torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai

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.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto

Average customer rating:

Deterioration
Should be considered for a Required Reading in High School
A truly moving account of one's life in desperate conditions
The most poignant memoir I have read on the Holocaust
Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak reflects horror of Lodz Ghetto

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto
Dawid Sierakowiak
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Poland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0195122852

Book Description

"In the evening I had to prepare food and cook supper, which exhausted me totally. In politics there's absolutely nothing new. Again, out of impatience I feel myself beginning to fall into melancholy. There is really no way out of this for us." This is Dawid Sierakowiak's final diary entry. Soon after writing it, the young author died of tuberculosis, exhaustion, and starvation--the Holocaust syndrome known as "ghetto disease." After the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto, his notebooks were found stacked on a cookstove, ready to be burned for heat. Young Sierakowiak was one of more than 60,000 Jews who perished in that notorious urban slave camp, a man-made hell which was the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe. The diary comprises a remarkable legacy left to humanity by its teenage author. It is one of the most fastidiously detailed accounts ever rendered of modern life in human bondage. Off mountain climbing and studying in southern Poland during the summer of 1939, Dawid begins his diary with a heady enthusiasm to experience life, learn languages, and read great literature. He returns home under the quickly gathering clouds of war. Abruptly Lodz is occupied by the Nazis, and the Sierakowiak family is among the city's 200,000 Jews who are soon forced into a sealed ghetto, completely cut off from the outside world. With intimate, undefended prose, the diary's young author begins to describe the relentless horror of their predicament: his daily struggle to obtain food to survive; trying to make reason out of a world gone mad; coping with the plagues of death and deportation. Repeatedly he rallies himself against fear and pessimism, fighting the cold, disease, and exhaustion which finally consume him. Physical pain and emotional woe hold him constantly at the edge of endurance. Hunger tears Dawid's family apart, turning his father into a thief who steals bread from his wife and children. The wonder of the diary is that every bit of hardship yields wisdom from Dawid's remarkable intellect. Reading it, you become a prisoner with him in the ghetto, and with discomfiting intimacy you begin to experience the incredible process by which the vast majority of the Jews of Europe were annihilated in World War II. Significantly, the youth has no doubt about the consequence of deportation out of the ghetto: "Deportation into lard," he calls it. A committed communist and the unit leader of an underground organization, he crusades for more food for the ghetto's school children. But when invited to pledge his life to a suicide resistance squad, he writes that he cannot become a "professional revolutionary." He owes his strength and life to the care of his family.

Customer Reviews:

Deterioration.......2007-08-22

Teen-ager Dawid Sierakowiak, imprisoned with his family in the Lodz Ghetto, at first carries on a "normal" life, discussing politics with his friends and keeping up with his studies.
More and more restrictions on the population-- illness, lack of food, hygiene, fuel and money, eventually take their toll on everyone. Existence deteriorates to the point at which Dawid knows he will soon die, and he does so 4 months later.
Every aspect of this slow death to the ghetto residents who are not murdered was planned by the Germans.
There are many photographs, which enhance the narrative.

Should be considered for a Required Reading in High School.......2005-10-23

This book is the most powerful and memorable book on the Holocaust I have ever read. Kids in school read Anne Frank, I suppose because it is so popular. It was the first memoir found, not the most telling or interesting. This book is also a great psychology book as it so graphically shows the heirarchy of needs as the situation becomes more desperate. I wish that teachers of senior or junior honors classes would consider this over Brave New World where the main character gives up. Dawid, is a much more positive book of the human spirit in that he continues to deal with the ever worstening cards he is given and works hard to survive. This book hits on so many topics: history, psychology, the power of the human spirit, man's cruelty and literature as Dawid was an exceptional mind for his age.

A truly moving account of one's life in desperate conditions.......1999-08-28

Simply put, Dawid is an amazing young man. Unfortunately for this world, he probably had to suffer to make a long lasting impact. True greatness rarily comes to those of us who contribute daily to the ENHANCEMENT of life and young Dawid is proof of this. His sometimes yielding but never breaking spirit of joy and hopeful speculation makes him a true hero. While his tragic, and "all too early" death are sad, the important things left behind in his words are timeless. He reminds us all that no matter how (supposedly) bad things get in our (truly) rich lives, a thing such as maniacal tyranny and slavery can never be tolerated. The light at the end of Dawid's tunnel never came to him, but by his words and actions hopefully we will all see that inspiration and determination will also glow.

The most poignant memoir I have read on the Holocaust.......1999-07-31

This book deserves a Five Star "Plus." It is an absolute "must" read for those interested in the destruction of European Jewry. I have read very many memoirs on the Holocaust, some quite good, yet none moved me to tears as much as Dawid's diary. What I found remarkable was that a 15-year old (his age when he started writing his diary) should have so much depth and so much wisdom. His description of his extreme hunger and finally his feelings when his mother was deported are extremely poignant. His love for his mother and the extreme agony he experienced when they took her away defies description.

As Adelson writes in the Foreward, Dawid is "increasingly piqued by the hierarchy of privilege that prevails among Jews in the ghetto." The "privileged" do not lack food or adequate shelter while the "ordinary" Jews (which was the overwhelming majority)literally starve. Dawid, a devout Marxist, writes eloquently about these "privileged" Jews. All this privilege of the few and suffering of the majority further reinforces his Marxist principles.

Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak reflects horror of Lodz Ghetto.......1997-04-07

"A HOLOCAUST VOICE Writings about the Holocaust take many forms--novels, stories, poems, plays, histories. But, as `The Diary of Anne Frank` showed, none has the effect of actual reports left behind by its victims. `The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto` is quite different from Anne Frank's memoirs because, unlike Anne, who was hidden away from the Nazis for years, Dawid lived openly in the sealed ghetto of this Polish city and was a witness to and victim of the deprivations, humiliations and cruelties inflicted on the Jewish populace. He was 15 years old when he began to keep his notes, and 19 when he died of illness and starvation in 1943. His diary, edited by Alan Adelson and translated by Kamil Turowski, is written with a sardonic humor and growing despair that can still horrify today. It is illustrated by shocking photos of life in the Lodz ghetto, most of them taken surreptitiously."

Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto

Average customer rating:

Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto
Ernest G. Heppner
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Holocaust | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Civil Rights & Liberties | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Emigration & Immigration | Administrative Law | Law | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0803272812

Book Description

Ernest G. Heppner was only a boy when the devastation of the November 1938 pogrom, euphemistically known as "Crystal Night," introduced a new level of Nazi horror that ended his family’s happy life. Heppner and his mother sailed to Shanghai, the only city in the world that did not require a visa.

The 18,000 Jews who fled to Shanghai were confined by Japanese forces to an area one mile square. Heppner describes the daily struggle to survive: overcrowding and disease, the underground world of criminals, hunger, heat, and humidity. Nevertheless, Heppner was self-reliant, energetic, and clever, and this first documented nonfiction account by a survivor is a tribute to human endurance.

Average customer rating:

Attempting to Live a Normal Life in the German-Established Warsaw Ghetto
Love for the Children
The indispensable first-hand account of Korczak's last days.

Ghetto Diary
Janusz Korczak
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Holocaust | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Political | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Poland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

All Deals | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Biographies & Memoirs | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Literature & Fiction | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Religion & Spirituality | Blowout Books | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0300097425

Book Description

Janusz Korczak (1879-1942) is one of the legendary figures to emerge from the Holocaust. A successful pediatrician and well-known author in his native Warsaw, he gave up a brilliant medical career to devote himself to the care of orphans. Like so many other Jews, Korczak was sent into the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi occupation of Poland. He immediately set up an orphanage for more than two hundred children. Many of his admirers, Jewish and gentile, offered to rescue him from the ghetto, but Korczak refused to leave his small charges. When the Nazis ordered the children to board a train that was to carry them to the Treblinka death camp, Korczak went with them, despite the Nazis' offer of special treatment. His selfless behavior in caring for these children's lives and deaths has made him beloved throughout the world; he has been honored by UNESCO and commemorated on postage stamps in both Poland and Israel. Korczak's grimly inspiring ghetto diary is now available in paperback for the first time, accompanied by a new introduction by Betty Jean Lifton, the author of the biography of Korczak.

Customer Reviews:

Attempting to Live a Normal Life in the German-Established Warsaw Ghetto.......2007-09-05

Owing to the fact that Korczak cared for children, it is not surprising that much of his diary is devoted to this subject. He mentions such challenges as child-care tips, discipline, and attempting to heal sick children. He also noted the pains of ageing that he experienced.

Korczak makes many interesting comments on various subjects. He often discusses what kind of God he believes in. He also writes: "The world knows nothing of many great Poles." (p. 86). Also: "Nietzsche was also of Polish origin--Nitzki, you know." (p. 28). Korczak mentions Jewish virtues such as talent and hard work (p. 179), but also comments: "The Jews are conceited and that is why they are despised. I believe this will change, perhaps soon." (p. 182).

Unlike other diarists, Korczak devotes little direct attention to German Nazi actions in the Warsaw Ghetto. The consequences, however, are obvious: "The body of a dead boy lies in the sidewalk. Nearby, three boys are playing horses and drivers. At one point, they notice the body, move a few steps to the side, and go on playing." (p. 121). Korczak, an obvious intellectual, invites others to discussions in his flat about such topics as Napoleon, Leonardo da Vinci, freedom, destiny and free will, etc. (p. 155). These Jewish behaviors shed light on comparable Polish ones. Holocaust materials have commonly featured the Poles engaged in normal activities (riding a carousel, attending Easter Mass, etc.) while the ghetto was burning--all insinuating the cold indifference of Poles to Jewish suffering. They were no such thing. We see that both Poles and Jews simply attempted to live lives as close to normal as possible in the face of all the horrors surrounding them.

Korczak was offered to be saved by his Polish friends (p. 39), who had already made forged identification papers for him. He refused, and went to the gas chambers of Treblinka with the children in his care.

Love for the Children.......2006-11-22

I am a great admirer of Janusz Korczak not because of his wonderful books, but because he was firm to his beliefs until the end. He had principles and he was not ready to give up, and he paid with his life for it.

Korczak was the director of a big orphanage in Warsaw and he was very well know throughout the world for his writings in education. As the Holocaust started and life got very hard on the ghetto, Korczak worked even harder to keep on with cultural activities and day-to-day life. He was offered to escape to US, as most famous Jewish, but he believed that his children were his life and that he would rather die with them than live in a world that exterminates children cold-bloodedly. BUT, as William Blake puts it: "He who respects the Infant's faith triumph's over Hell & Death."

This book is very interesting; it provides many of the memories that Korczak wrote in the difficult days of the Second World War. It shows how desperating reality was, and how Korczak gave his soul into his fight to keep his children safe and healthy; a sad historical document with pictures of this noble man and the orphanage that made him so proud.

I have his whole collection; unfortunately for English speakers, I have found around 15 books in Hebrew while in English I found just 5. I warmly recommend this book, together with two other books that are found at Amazon: 'King Matt the First' and 'When I am little again' (see my reviews about them).

The indispensable first-hand account of Korczak's last days........1998-08-05

Janusz Korczak was a radical educator and early advocate of the rights of children. He was a Polish Jew (Korczak was a gentile pseudonym for Henryk Goldschmidt) and pediatrician whose work was well-known in Europe before WWII. Though little translated in English, his exceptionally original and poetic style and ideas puts him in the same league as Pestalozzi, Dewey and Montessori. In prewar Warsaw he organized two outstanding institutions: orphanages which were run as self-governing children's republics. But Korczak is legendary not for his life of intense work and ideas, but for his death. When The Warsaw Ghetto was liquidated, he prepared his 200 children to defy death in a unique way. Eye-witness accounts testify to the shattering spectacle of 200 cheerful, orderly children marching in foursomes through the hell of the Ghetto singing. They entered the trains singing, and they died at Treblinka. Every teacher and Korczak himself died with them. Korczak was twice of! fered by the Nazis to survive, once at the trains, once in Treblinka itself -- to be sent to Germany and educate German youth. But he refused. The Ghetto Diary is the only English translation of Korczak's own account of the last year in the Ghetto. It is invaluable. Those of us interested in children, in education and in Remembrance, should put this book into Samizdat, copying it and sharing it. It is the duty of the publisher to keep such a document available. This edition has a superb introduction by a former student of Korczak's. It is written as a novella, but perhaps comes as close to capturing the state of Korczak's mind in those days as anything could. It is quite surrealistic -- as is Korczak's own work. It combines in tribute to Korczak, Korczak's own unique synthesis of imagination, dream and the harshest, most unsparingly observed reality.

Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (Historical Studies of Urban America)

Average customer rating:

Racism + Capitalism = Public Housing in Chicago
the deception of public housing
Well-written historical account

Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 (Historical Studies of Urban America)
Arnold R. Hirsch
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Discrimination & Racism | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Urban Planning & Development | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Housing & Urban Development | Administrative Law | Law | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0226342441

Book Description

In Making the Second Ghetto, Arnold Hirsch argues that in the post-depression years Chicago was a "pioneer in developing concepts and devices" for housing segregation. Hirsch shows that the legal framework for the national urban renewal effort was forged in the heat generated by the racial struggles waged on Chicago's South Side. His chronicle of the strategies used by ethnic, political, and business interests in reaction to the great migration of southern blacks in the 1940s describes how the violent reaction of an emergent "white" population combined with public policy to segregate the city.

"In this excellent, intricate, and meticulously researched study, Hirsch exposes the social engineering of the post-war ghetto."—Roma Barnes, Journal of American Studies

"According to Arnold Hirsch, Chicago's postwar housing projects were a colossal exercise in moral deception. . . . [An] excellent study of public policy gone astray."—Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune

"An informative and provocative account of critical aspects of the process in [Chicago]. . . . A good and useful book."—Zane Miller, Reviews in American History

"A valuable and important book."—Allan Spear, Journal of American History

Customer Reviews:

Racism + Capitalism = Public Housing in Chicago.......2002-12-29

Excellent review of how the Chicago Housing Authority, despite good intentions, ended up not only itself segregated, but reinforced existing housing segregation in the private market.

Hirsch actually takes a much broader view of his subject than public housing. Rather, he exp;ores the various ways public policy was manipulated (generally by commercial interests) to serve their own ends, and how those profit driven manipulations resulted in Chicago being one of America's most segregated cities. Ironically, the dramatic expansion of the Black Ghetto chronicalled by Hirsch occurred at the same time that the country was under seige by the forces of McCarthism...yet in Chicago, the commercial interests (lead by Marshall Field) had no compunction about seizing private property to serve their own ends.

Anyone who believes that neighborhoods are segregated because of private choices must read this book and learn the truth.

the deception of public housing.......2000-09-28

After reading The Hidden War,(which made extensive reference to Hirsch's book)I wanted a more detailed history about the creation of public housing as we know it to be in Chicago. This book gives detail of how the political,educational, civic organizations wanted to contain the burgeoning African American community which was growing during post world war II and the great migration years. The powerful in Chicago used government policies to maintain housing segregation...the powerless resorted to violence to keep African Americans out of neighborhoods...the results were the massive and bleak housing structures which are called public housing. This book not only talks about the historical wheelings and dealings of the white power structure, but it also gives insight into how the same tactics are being used today, to maintain certain class and racial segregation. This is a good companion must read along with The Hidden WARS.

Well-written historical account.......1998-07-08

I had to read this book for a college history class I took 2 years ago and I felt that it was extremely detailed and informative. I was quite surprised by my reaction because I felt it was a great read whether or not you enjoy historical books.

Lodz Ghetto: A Community History Told in Diaries, Journals, and Documents

Average customer rating:

Important document
A good but deeply disjointed book

Lodz Ghetto: A Community History Told in Diaries, Journals, and Documents

Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Poland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0670829838

Book Description

Here, in a magnificently illustrated volume, are the diaries and documents left from the longest surviving concentration of Jews trapped in Nazi Europe. There are over 200 photographs showing ghetto life, carefully matched with texts from the diaries, to present an illustrated narrative of the course of the Holocaust through this single community. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has highlighted the Lodz Ghetto books and film as essential resources for anyone who wishes to understand the Jewish response to the Nazi Holocaust.

Customer Reviews:

Important document.......2005-06-26

This book is probably one of the most moving and important books that you can read. It was so sensitive that in the city of Lodz in the mid-nineties, every time a copy of it, or the documentary of the same name, was shown, it disappeared. I bought both this book and the video from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, when I was back in the United States. I had to keep them under my bed for safekeeping, when I was in Lodz in 1994-6, as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Many young people in Lodz never knew what had happened in their own city and were shocked. Some had only heard distorted stories from the wartime generation.
In 2004 my own book using the facts of the Lodz Ghetto, many from this book, and life in Lodz in the nineties was released as A Stairwell in Lodz.

A good but deeply disjointed book.......2001-06-19

This book is an anthology of 128 orders, proclamations, speeches, poems, and other ephemera that have survived from the wartime Lodz ghetto.

I first came across the tragic history of the Ghetto in a sidebar in 'The Rough Guide' to Poland (the best Polish guide book). It is an extraordinary story: within 2 days of the 1939 occupation of Lodz (pronounced 'Wootch'), a large industrial city some 50 miles South-West of Warsaw, the Germans started a general and increasing anti-Semitic terror, and shortly afterwards herded the 230,000-odd Lodz Jews into a slum area. Chaim Rumkowski, a failed businessman (velvet manufacturer) with an interest in child welfare and Zionism, was appointed 'Elder of the Jews' by the Germans, and established himself as a dictator, supported by informers, sycophants, and the 'Kripo' police. Those opposing him were selected for the transports to Chelmno, which, unbeknownst but increasingly suspected, was a death camp. Rumkowski's strategy for survival was work: 'a gold currency of the highest calibre - the labour of Jewish hands'; `only work can save us from the worst calamity'; `work protects us from annihilation', and, in forcing the population to work for food, he fuelled the Nazi war effort. In 1944, with the advance of the Red Army from the East, the Ghetto was liquidated with the survivors being sent to Oswiecim - or, to give it its German name, Auschwitz. This book is a collection of some of the literary fragments that remain.

The book follows the chronological progress of the Ghetto, from its establishment (1940); the deportation into the Ghetto of some 20,000 Jews from Hamburg, 3,000 Polish Jews, 5,000 Gypsies (Rumkowski: `I've explained that we cannot live together with them. Gypsies are the sort of people who can do anything. First they rob and then they set fire... .'), and Jews from Prague, Luxembourg, Berlin, Cologne, Vienna, Frankfurt... (1941); the `Nightmarish Days' when, in 1942, the Germans liquidated the hospitals and demanded the surrender to them of children (with the sickening speech by Rumkowski: `In my old age I must stretch out my hands and beg: Brothers and sisters, hand them over to me! Fathers and mothers, give me your children!'), until the final rounds of deportations and the liberation of the Ghetto in 1944: 10,000 survived; 60,000 died in the Ghetto (mostly, apparently, from hunger); 130,000 died at Chelmno or Oswiecim.

There are German documents (`To: The Eldest of the Jews. July 16h., 1942. Re: Machines in the Ghetto. I request that you immediately investigate whether there is a Bone Grinder in the ghetto, either with a motor or hand-driven. The special command in Chelmno is interested in such a grinder. On behalf of F.W. Ribbe, Assistant Director, Ghetto Administration'), Yiddish poems, diaries, fragments of notes, transcripts of Rumkowski's speeches and proclamations. The shattered fragments of a surprisingly rich cultural life.

The works selected for publication have been beautifully translated from the original Polish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. The translation is of the highest order. The book is also illustrated with photographs, including some in colour, which are also of high quality. The notations to the texts are also good.

However, the book falls down badly in other areas. It should have a map, showing readers where Lodz, Chelmno, and Oswiecim are (there is a map of the Ghetto itself). It has a grossly inadequate contents page, and no index. However, the most serious failing is the woefully inadequate Foreword, which fails to put the Ghetto into an historical, Polish, or wider framework, or the texts into a literary context. The reader is, more or less, simply presented with the texts and left to get on with it.

I suspect that much of this parsimony is the responsibility of the publishers, but the editors must be held responsible for the failure to help the reader place the texts in context, and I suspect that their reticence has much to do with the contentious problem of Polish-Jewish relations, and wider questions about Zionism, the lack of resistance to the Germans (indeed, the collaboration with the Germans), the dictatorship of Rumkowski, and so on.

We learn, for example, from captions to photographs: 'A gypsy camp adjacent to the ghetto did not have any sanitation system and was quickly wiped out by typhus'; 'SS Reichsfuher Heinrich Himmler is greeted on his arrival in the ghetto by Rumkowski, June 7, 1941.' There is nothing else in the book about the Gypsy camp or Himmler's visit. Similarly, there are only minor references to the non-Jewish Polish population of Lodz (who also suffered hugely under Nazi occupation). There is one, minor, document about the dispute between Speer (Minister of Armaments), who wanted to preserve the Ghetto as a valuable contributor to the war effort, and Himmler, who eventually succeeded in enforcing the `Final Solution'. Poems are included within the anthology, translated from Yiddish, but there is no attempt to explain the literary merit behind them.

The concentration on the Ghetto is both a strength and a weakness of the book; ultimately, however, it undermines the book. In particular, I should have liked to have heard more about the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising (1943) and the Warsaw uprising (1944), and how they impacted on the Lodz Ghetto. I think that it is wrong not to acknowledge, at least, the parallel suffering of the non-Jewish population; for the record, the Germans immediately rounded up the entire hierarchy of the Church, all Trade Unionists, Communists, and intellectuals (which appears to have been defined as anyone with a degree), and sent them to Oswiecim, and those remaining were considered `untermensch' (sub-human), suitable only for slave labour. Some 25% of Poland's population - which included, of course, a large and well-integrated Jewish population - were killed during the war: a higher proportion than any other country.

Book Description

This riveting memoir, a primary source for the NBC miniseries Uprising, tells the story of the Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto who defy the Nazis against impossible odds. Kazik (played by Stephen Moyer in the film) and his fellow Jews smuggle in arms and explosives, perform acts of resistance, hold off the Nazi army for almost a month, and rescue the few surviving Jews after the Ghetto is destroyed. Kazik spends the rest of the war helping Jews who still remain in Warsaw, joining the Poles during their ill-fated uprising against the Nazis, and assisting the Polish underground. This shattering tale of courage will change forever the image of how Jews fought and survived during the Holocaust.

Customer Reviews:

Disjointed history of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising........2007-02-26

I am disappointed in this book. The premise is good, and the author lived through it. However, this is a very uneven book. Even the author admitted he skipped around alot. There are so many Polish and Jewish names thrown in, I was wondering who the heck was who. The film made much better sense. I could have even rated this book a two star, but since this is the story of a brave man, I gave it an average rating.

Kazik is a Polish Jew from Warsaw who saw his family imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. As a way of getting even with the Germans, he joined both the Jewish and Polish resistance. He was essentially a courier, who went from place to place organizing things. His story is the overview of NBC's Uprising. I liked the movie. His book was not as good, even though the movie is based on his book. Essentially he throws a lot of memories together, and states this was the story of the resistance. I think this author is a brave man, but his writings leave a little bit to be desired.

An account from one of the survivors.......2006-07-11

A good book written by one of the few survivors of the uprising. The author tells a harrowing story about what seemed to be a hopeless situation for the Jewish fighters as the Nazis decimated the ghetto around them with bombing and fire. The Jewish resistance fighters held off the Germans longer than the Polish army did. The author freely admits that he is not a writer and the story gets a little rough in spots but overall a good book from an insider who was there and lived to tell his heroic story.

Good Account. Not a great book........2005-12-06

The author is sincere and spontaneous in telling his personal experience. The description of events, places and facts is also very well. But from the very beggining it is clear that the author is not a writer (or, at least, not a good one.)
I am convinced that it is not only a plain true story what captivates the reader but, more than anything else, the way it is told. This book is a good example of that difference.
Nevertheless, an applause for Simha Rotem, an extraordinary human being that not only fought hard to survive himself, but also to save the life of others.

The young man that survived.......2005-07-19

Kazik was a 19-year-old Jewish lad who survived the Nazi terror and systematic mass killings of Jews, the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 and the Warsaw uprising of 1944.
He was also led many fighters out of the ghetto through the sewer, and he was responsible for the care of many Jews who were hiding in Polish homes. Kazik also managed to find shelters for his parents and his two sisters, and after the war he was one of the very few Jews whose parents were still alive. After the war, Kazik, his sister Raya and parents all immigrated to Israel. Kazik's other sister, Dina, was killed during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Kazik didn't at that time know that his sister was in the ghetto.

I found the book interesting and heart gripping at the same time. It is amazing to read how Kazik manages to stay alive, and always seems to stay one step ahead of the Nazis and their helpers.

Kazik writes how he found one thing difficult when he arrived in Israel: When he told people that he was one of the very few survivors, it seemed like some almost blamed him for having survived. Kazik tells how people kept on asking him about people who had died, but never about those who had survived. This made him reluctant to talk about his past.
He writes about how one man told him that he (= Kazik) screamed every night in his sleep.
If Kazik had made a volume II about his life after the war, I surely would have read the book. His history is fascinating, and I hope his life was mainly a happy one after he immigrated to Israel.
I liked this book, and I found Kazik's story very interesting. Kazik tells us that he is not much of a talker, and that it was therefore difficult to dictate this book to the writer. Kazik may not be a talker or a skilled writer, but his story is one it is hard to forget.

Great First Person Account!.......2005-04-19

Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter, written by one of the surviving members of the ZOB was a well-written account of not only life as a resistance fighter but also what life was like for the few that fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This is an easy read and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about this period and what the Jews and all victims of the Nazis had to endure.

Average customer rating:

The World Is a Ghetto
Howard Winant
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0465043410

Book Description

A masterful account of world racial politics and the future of global race relations by a leading American sociologist.

The World Is a Ghetto compares post-World War II racial dynamics in four countries or regions: the United States, South Africa, Brazil, and the European Union. Howard Winant argues that race remains crucial both for contemporary politics and for concepts of identity and culture. By investigating how economic development, labor processes, the ideals of democracy and popular sovereignty, patterns of social stratification, and even concepts of social and individual identity have been affected by the role race has played in the modern global democracy, Winant provides a new critique of racial exclusion and inequality.

Book Description

In October 1940 Nazis forced all the Jews in the Polish city of Warsaw to live in the cramped squalor of a small ghetto. Despite the starvation and disease that claimed 50,000 lives per year, the Jews were not dying swiftly enough to suit Heinrich Himmler, who ordered in 1942 that the Warsaw Ghetto be dismantled and the 450,000 inhabitants be deported to the gas chambers at Treblinka. On April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, two thousand German troops, singing confidently, marched into the ghetto to round up the remnant of remaining Jews. Suddenly, a fifteen-year-old girl tossed a grenade in their midst. Within minutes the German army had been routed. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had begin. This is the first full-scale, step-by-step account of the climatic twenty-eight-day struggle of the poorly armed Jews against their Nazi exterminators. The Bravest Battle took more than two years to write and involved interviewing more than 500 people, including most of the surviving fighters. This moving history cannot be matched for its authenticity and drama. The Bravest Battle is a testament to the Warsaw Jews, who fought for survival with dignity and courage.

Customer Reviews:

When the going gets tough...............2006-10-07

Dan Kurzman is one of the best authors I have read on many subjects. The Bravest Battle is the only work that clearly outlines the historical struggle of the Warsaw Ghetto. The book clearly shows this struggle was NOT a revolution, and NOT a fight for freedom. The fight was to send a message to the world that Jews will fight for their dignity. Kurzman spent much time with the few survivors of the battle. He obtained first-hand accounts from the participants. If you enjoy this you will also enjoy his book Gensis 1948. This book will cure the amnesia that plagues the world in recent times about why Israel exists.

Exciting and unforgettable.......2006-03-19

I found this to be a great book about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was well written, so I found it easy to get through the book.
I have read many books about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and one of the things I really liked about this one, was that the author writes about both the two Jewish fighting organizations. Since all the leaders of ZZW died before the war was over, there were few people left to tell their story and there a therefore very little about its members in most books. (Marian Mpfelbaum has written a book about ZZW, where he tries to put the record straight. His book is called 'Retour sur le Ghetto de Varsovie')
Dan Kurzman has interviewed two ZZW fighters and some others that knew them. All in all, Dan Kurzman has spoken to many witnesses and he has read many documents and books about the topic. He has also made use of German sources.
Yes, it is very obvious who he prefers, but when you are dealing with a story like this, who else than the Jewish fighters would you side with?

A journey not soon forgotten..........2004-09-28

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has long fascinated me. It has long stood as a symbol of what hope can do "when all hope is lost." In all my years of reading holocaust literature, no other single event has embraced the totality of the Jewish struggle from denial to capitulation to indignation, from the depths of which rose the courage to actually fight back! In many ways, it echoes the struggle that continues today.

Dan Kurzman regails this saga in unbelievable depth, citing the most impecable sources, the survivors! His narrative breaks down each individual day and succeeds in putting the reader into each and every "sub-set" of the saga throughout the ghetto and within the nazi regime out to destroy them.

I have read many different accounts of this parcel of history, and, to date, I have not yet found a more extensive account of the events of those 28 days! From top to bottom, front to back, this is one of the greatest books I have ever read! I actually happened upon writing this review as I was purchasing it for the second time, as my first copy was not returned to me.

This emotional roller coaster will leave you breathless...I left it with bittersweet feelings of joy and pain, triumph and tragedy, resolve and fear. For I, too, live in a fascist nation, and fear the violation of my rights may become extreme. However, reflection on these 28 days of heroes among ordinary men gives me the strength to believe I could be a hero too!

The power lies within each of us! Read and learn...see ya in November!

Riveting.......2004-03-29

I was inspired to pick up this book after seeing Polanski's "The Pianist." This book is an overview of the Warsaw Uprising (the first one occurring in the Jewish Ghetto in 1943).

Through what must have been exhaustive interviews with the survivors, many of whom may no longer be alive, Kurzman meticulously provides the details of the inspiring 28-day uprising, but in such a way as to absolutely captivate the reader. There may be biases or omissions of which I am not aware, but there was enough to give me a broad background on the uprising and its context -- and to keep me riveted on the struggle.

One disappointment was the production values of the 1993 Da Capo Press edition, which is a republication of Putnam's 1976 edition. From the look of the type and photos, it appears they may have actually shot the plates for the present edition from a printed copy of the original edition! -- the photos especially are of unforgivably poor quality.

But this doesn't detract from the tale of the uprising, which is told with compassion, and absorbed me totally for the better part of the 2 days it took to finish.

The Goyim Review.......2002-03-08

Despite my many years of companionship with Jewish friends, and a few stints working at JCC youth camps, my friend's comment was one that I might have made before reading this excellently written and incisive book. Kurzman tells the story of the Jewish resisters in Warsaw during the "Grossaktion"- the final rounding up and extermination of so many Polish Jews. The stories of individual courage, sacrifice, and heroism moved me in a way I could never have foreseen. Yes this book is one-sided (as another reviewer critiqued), but how could it be otherwise? The mercilessness with which the Germans pursued their quarry will never be matched, and an empathy for their motives would almost by necessity ring false. To view the real heroes (who make difficult and sometimes flawed choices along the way that expose them as the humans they are) of this book is to be enlightened about the Jewish history and character that we so rarely have an opportunity to experience through the mainstream media. If you seek an account of the almost impossible ways that people react to extreme oppression and terror, and the incredible resourcefulness that a people are capable of, then you will do well to read this book

The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944

Average customer rating:

The Longest-Surviving Ghetto in German-Occupied Poland
Missing pages

The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941-1944
Lucjan Dobroszycki
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Poland | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0300039247

Customer Reviews:

The Longest-Surviving Ghetto in German-Occupied Poland.......2006-10-18

After the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in September-October 1939, the area around Lodz was directly annexed into the Third Reich and named Wartheland (the land of the Warthe (Warta) River). The city itself was renamed Litzmannstadt (after a WWI German officer then active in the area). Owing to the intensity of German rule imposed upon the population, Poles and Jews were less able to interact with each other compared with, for example, Warsaw. Within weeks of the start of the German occupation of Lodz, both Jews and Poles were subject to cultural genocide. In his introduction, Dobroszycki describes the burning of all synagogues by the Germans and, that very same day, their annihilation of the statue of Kosciuszko (p. xxxiv). The destruction of Christian institutions by the Germans included the conversion of one of the main churches of Lodz into a storage facility, as shown in one of the not-numbered photos situated between pages 424 and 427.

The Lodz ghetto was created by the Germans but not fully liquidated by them until the late summer of 1944. At that time, nearly all of its remaining inhabitants were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Earlier, the Jews of Lodz had been steadily gassed and cremated at nearby Kulmhof (Chelmno). Dobroszycki credits the Poles with playing a major role in bringing these crimes to light: "Since January 1942, both the Polish and the Jewish resistance movements had gradually learned about the existence of the camp in Chelmno and the fates of the Jews deported there. The first information was obtained from Polish railroad workers, local residents, foresters; later, more detailed accounts were to come from eyewitnesses..." (p. xxii). Dobroszycki (p. 40) also points out that Polish Mischlinge (Jewish-gentile "half-breeds") were simply reckoned Jews and exterminated. In contrast, German Mischlinge was spared.

In the chronicle itself, mundane matters predominate. Interestingly, positive references to Poles far exceed negative ones. For instance (May 20, 1942): "The civilian population, the Aryans, and particularly the Poles, were very favourably inclined toward the Jews and, in large measure, the Jews from Brzeziny owe them their lives. They tell of one baker who baked a special quota of bread for the Jews, which he would have little children bring into the ghetto. The little children would bring one batch of bread into the ghetto, and then, before anyone knew it, they'd be back with another. Aryan friends would pass the Jews bacon, meat, and other products through the ghetto fence, more often than not without being paid for it. The Jews from Brzeziny see no analogies with the pre-war situation; anti-Semitism seemed to have vanished completely there." (p. 183). There are reports of Polish smugglers caught and arrested for bringing goods into the ghetto (December 10, 1942; p. 299. February 15, 1943; p. 320).

The foregoing accounts parallel, in many ways, those of Emmanuel Ringelblum relative to the Warsaw ghetto. They suggest that Poles and Jews did in fact tend to draw closer together during the German occupation of Poland. This is contrary to the position held by Yisrael Gutman.

Unlike some authors, those of this chronicle do not cast Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski (Rumkovsky), the Eldest of the Jews, in a negative light. However, in common with chroniclers of other ghettos, they do present the Jewish ghetto police in a collaborationist light, at least during the time of the deportations to the death camps (September 14, 1942): "In the meantime, the Jewish police were searching the apartments and bringing out anyone who had been hiding or people who were ill." (p. 251). A similar situation is described as follows (Thursday, July 13, 1944): "A shameful, shocking street scene. Jews hunting other Jews like game. A real Jew-hunt, organized by Jews. But what is to be done; there is no choice. Anyone who is called up must report." (p. 525).

Oddly enough, the chronicle does not mention significant events occurring outside the Lodz ghetto itself. For instance, there is no mention of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April-May 1943) or of the general Warsaw Uprising (August-October 1944).

Missing pages.......2002-02-06

When I read the advertisement i have learned that list of names from Lodz ghetto should be in the book. I saw a few pages with the names , addresses etc. I was caught by surprise when I have opened this book - ther is no such list included. Could you, please, explain me how it's happened and more important how could I get those pages. Thank you very much.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books