History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

Memories Of My Life In A Polish Village, 1930-1949

Average customer rating:

A wonderful book to read on Easter
A personal "scrapbook" of memories told through art

Memories Of My Life In A Polish Village, 1930-1949
Toby Fluek
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Painting | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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

Customer Reviews:

A wonderful book to read on Easter.......2007-04-10

Toby Knobel Fluek book is beautifully illustrated. In a simple way, Toby brings the reader into Jewish culture and Sabbath day preparation, Password celebration, and the foods and clothing of these celebrations. Toby focuses on the excitement of kitchen and food preparation: baking bread for the week, preparing Challah, important cooking pots for the passover, subtle humor, eggs, chicken, the potato and its many dishes, and potato pancake. Toby sister was a dress maker for rich patrons. Toby's uncle Mordche bought local eggs and sold them in the city and trudged through the mud all day. Ironing was a laborous task which included filling the iron with ambers from the fire and occassionally rekindling the ambers by waving the iron around about her head. Sabbath candles and pots were given as marriage gifts. The community had men of various religious roles. One role was the reader of the Talmud. The Charoes remind the Jews of their captivity and the milling of cement for bricks. Sedar reminded them of the haste they left their capativity, lying on their side as they recite prayers and sing songs. The clothes and shoes had to be cleaned and polished for the Sabbath. Everyone was dressed clean and proper for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was celebrated with a wonderful feast of delicious food prepared the prior day. On passover, a place for Elijah set, facing East, and the door opened. The Elijah stories excited the imagination of the children. The did not go without candles and pototes were used to hold the candles for those that could not afford an Minohora. Women washed and carried water, plucked chicken feathers in exchange for delcious food. Aaron must wait to marry his love until her older sister marries.The family is imprisoned in a Polish Ghetto. Gentiles sell food to the Jews through the fence at exorbit prices. The polices beat people selling at the fence. Food rationing increases starvation. 10s of thousands of Jews die before concentration camp and survivors eventually deported to the camps. Toby and her mother escape, march behind retreating Russians. The scene reminds me of Ruth and Naomi of the old testament bravely walking as tracers whistle over their heads. Toby and her mother escapes concentration camp and are certain other family members did not survive. PK provides a place for clothes, a hot meal, and sense of civilization. A wonderful book to read at Easter. An amazing story of human courage, determination, and faith in their God. A history of incredible contrasts: joy and sorrow, marriage and death, and faith and despair.

A personal "scrapbook" of memories told through art.......2005-08-09

This little book is a real gem of Jewish history, told through one woman's art. The paintings and sketches are arranged in chronological order, with personal explanations of each work. The result is like a scrapbook. Whereas most people today would have an album of photographs, Toby Fluek lost everything in the Holocaust, and was forced to carry her memories in her mind. Years later, she committed them to paper and canvas and now shares them in this book.

Interestingly, her family lived on a farm. One does not usually think of Eastern European Jews as farmers, but, in fact, there were Jews who worked the land. (One of my gentile Polish neighbors here in Minnesota told me that the Jews in his village always had the best vegetables!) While it is true that there were restrictions against Jews owning land, it is also true that there were exceptions to the rules. Toby's father's family had been on this farm for generations. It was this aspect that led me to purchase the book, because I, too, live and work on the land.

"We led a primitive life," she writes, "but we were a close-knit family." The "primitive" side of life is illustrated in her excellent still lifes, which portray arrangements of the common objects used for the Sabbath, festivals, and everyday activities. A basket of eggs for Passover, candles for the Sabbath, a prayer shawl on the table. Meat was served only on the Sabbath or when her father had an animal slaughtered. (Even then, he sold the best cuts of meat.) On weekdays they ate lots of potatoes, beans, and vegetables -- all beautifully painted here. Pots and dishes were passed down from mother to daughter, and nothing was ever discarded. One still life shows a well-worn set of Passover pots stored in a niche in the wall. Another painting is of her mother working in the farmhouse kitchen. She in kneading a week's worth of bread dough in a large wooden tub.

As the story unfolds, we learn that Toby eventually lost everything to the Nazi occupation. This, too, is illustrated through her paintings and drawings. The style here is darker, more ominous. Not something I would hang on my wall (the burning hospital, with the people still in it, is utterly horrifying in its simplicity) but essential to the telling of her story. She shows us Yom Kippur in the forest, hiding outdoors in the rain, crouching in a cellar and hanging her bread on a string to keep the mice from eating it at night. Her father was shot by the Nazis, her brother captured and taken away, presumably to his death. Through it all, her will to live was strong and she survived.

The collection of paintings (94 in all) continues through the liberation of Poland, being a displaced person begging for food, finding a job in a Russian military bakery (where the soldiers looked the other way so she could steal bread to take home). In 1949 she was married and moved to New York, where she lives today. The world she once knew is gone, but the memory lives on in her artwork. The last painting, "Am Yisrael Chai" (The People of Israel Live! shows Jews parying at the Western Wall in freedom.

From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust

Average customer rating:

Gripping
A great pick!
Fanstastic , Touching Book!
Wow
Revenge through good deeds

From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the Holocaust
Lucille Eichengreen
Manufacturer: Mercury House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Holocaust | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Military Science | History | Subjects | Books

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

Biographies & Memoirs | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1562790528

Book Description

In this disturbing but inspirational account of her experiences of the Holocaust, Lucille Eichengreen relates her journey as a young Jewish girl through Nazi Germany and Poland - including internment in the camps at Auschwitz, Neuengamme, and Bergen-Belsen. It was a journey that began in 1933, when she was eight years old and witnessed the beginnings of Jewish persecution, a journey along which she suffered the horrible deaths of her father, mother and sister. Sustained by great courage and resourcefulness, Lucille Eichengreen emerged from her nightmare with the inner strength to build a new life for herself in the United States. Only in 1991 did she return to Germany and Poland to assess the Jewish situation there. Her story is a testament to the very thing the Holocaust sought to destroy: the regeneration of Jewish life. Blessed with a remarkable memory that made her one of the most effective witnesses in the postwar trial of her persecutors, Eichengreen has composed a memoir of exceptional accuracy. As important as its factual accuracy is its emotional clarity and truth. Simple and direct, Eichengreen's words compel with their moral authority.

Customer Reviews:

Gripping.......2007-03-10

I had a hard time putting this book down. Eichengreen does a good job of telling her story - it wasn't confusing and I didn't come away with a lot of unanswered questions. Obviously someone who didn't experience the Holocaust first hand will never fully appreciate or understand it, but I feel like I gained some insight into through this book.

A great pick!.......2006-11-10

This is a very well written personal story about this most awful period in our world's history.

Fanstastic , Touching Book!.......2002-12-12

I was extremely impressed with this book. The author decribes in detail her life before anti-semitism and how it started to change. Her story is emotional and touching.

She was born Celia Landau and changed her name to Lucille. She and her sister Karin were the products of a very close knit family completely torn apart by the Third Reich. Her father gets sent off to a labor camp and a year later they are delivered a box of what supposedly contains his ashes. Eventually Celia, Karin and mother are sent to the Lodz ghetto where surviving is difficult and their mother eventually dies of starvation. Celia's account of this is very sad and moving. She then tells a story of a tender love affair with Szaja in the ghetto, and befriends an elderly couple named Jules and Julius who ironically after liberation, she winds up marrying their son when she moves to New York.

She and her sister Karin are then sent to Auschwitz. Poor Karin is so devastated and having trouble surviving day to day after losing both her parents. Celia's heart is again broken when Karin is not chosen in the selection and is loaded up into a truck and never seen again.

Celia is only weeks away from death when Auschwitz gets liberated. She goes into detail her life after the camps including her testimony during war crimes trials that helped put many of the SS in prison.

She also tells her experiences of going back to Europe in 1991 for the first time since she left. The hostility and indifference against Jews was still alive.

This book is highly recommended. Well written.

Wow.......2002-08-21

How Cecelia (aka Lucille) survived is beyond imagination. What determination.

Revenge through good deeds.......2002-01-27

As a child in Hamburg, Germany, Celia Landau led a cultured and privileged life. Her father Benjamin had a study full of books and frequently entertained renowned visitors, including philosopher Martin Buber and Rabbi Paul Holzer. This began to unravel when the Nazis came to power. In the summer of 1934, the family traveled to a German spa in Bad Schwartau. As their visit ended, the spa's owner gleefully announced that Hitler would deal with the Jews. The next fall, nine-year-old Celia's grades began to falter as former school friends labeled her "Drechtjude." In 1937, the family were forced out of their condominium at Hohe Weide 25. In October, 1938, her father was carted to prison, then deported to Dachau. In February 1941, a Gestapo agent deliver his "ashes" in a cigar box.

Eight months later, Celia, now 16, was deported with her mother Sala and sister Karin to Lodz. Here they shared an unheated room on Zgierska Street with Julie and Julius Eichengreen and five others. As the vast majority of Jews were shipped like cattle from Lodz, the couple made Celia promise, if ever she went to New York, to find their son, who had left Europe years earlier. On July 13, 1942, Celia's starving and sick mother Sala died.

Before being herself deported to Auschwitz in August 1944, Celia starved and scraped to survive, and lost her sister Karin as well. Her one friend from that period, Elli Sabin, traveled with her in the final transport from Lodz to new horrors. Here she came face to face with the dreaded Dr. Mengele, slaved for some months in an outdoor construction site at the Neuengamme subcamp and in the Blom and Foss Shipyards. In October, she was transferred to Arbeitslager Sasel. Here, to gain access to important files, she promised to transfer her family's house in Altona-Luna Park outside Hamburg to an SS guard. The ploy worked, and she memorized the names and addressed of 42 Nazi guards.

In March 1945, Celia Landau was again transferred, this time to Bergen-Belsen, the disease-ridden camp where Anne Frank and her sister died of Typhus. Fortunately for Laudau, a month later, the camp was liberated, on April 15, 1945. Here she told a British major of her exploit, and was swiftly introduced to Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Tilling, of Britain's War Crimes Investigations unit. When friends Elli, Hela Dimand and Sabina Zarecki corroborated her story, the British swiftly transferred Celia Landau to Hanover Germany, where she helped bring 17 Nazis to justice.

Her assistance to the British War Crimes unit gave Celia new opportunities. What she did with them is but one of the things that makes this book fascinating. This is the story of an extraordinary woman who sought revenge only through her own good deeds.

Book Description

When Mel Leventhal married Alice Walker during the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, his mother declared him dead and did not reconcile until after the birth of her first grandchild. After Mel and Alice divorced, their daughter, Rebecca, alternated homes every two years, spending time in Mississippi, Brooklyn, San Francisco's Haight Ashbury, Washington, D.C., the Bronx, and suburban Westchester. With each new place came a new identity and desperate attempts to fit in: as white or black, as Puerto Rican or Jewish, as a party girl, a fighter, or a lover. Confused, and mostly alone, she turned to sex, drugs, books, and a cast of dangerous and thrilling characters.

Black, White, and Jewish is the story of a child's unique struggle for identity and home when nothing in her world told her who she was or where she belonged. Poetic reflections on memory, time, and identity punctuate this gritty exploration of race and sexuality. Rebecca Walker has taken up the lineage of her mother, Alice, whose last name she chose to carry, and has written a lucid and inventive memoir that marks the launch of a major new literary talent.

Customer Reviews:

An Excellent Memoir.......2007-05-30

I discovered how much I like Rebecca Walker's writing, voice and style after reading a forward she wrote for an anthology of mixed race writings. Then I heard her speak and I read "Black, White and Jewish" the next day. I didn't want to put the book down and I was sorry when her memoir ended because I wanted to keep on reading.
And no, at that point it had not yet occurred to me that she was Alice Walker's daughter. Besides, that would not have made any difference to me anyway. Both Alice and Rebecca are excellent authors, but the fact that they are related is not important to me. What matters is that Rebecca has written an excellent memoir.

Thank you Rebecca.

A story to share...........2007-05-07

What caught my eye at first was her last name...Walker. So I said to myself she must have inherited her Mom's way of putting into words her thoughts. Once I started to read the story, I could not put it down. The pain was felt through each chapter, each change of home every two years. What a way to grow up. But grow up she did into a very complex woman who can share her childhood with others who may also have the identity crisis of having not only parents from different racial backgrounds, but also of having the constant shift of "home". The book helped me understand what my daughters have gone through with their Mom being white, their Dad being African American and a military family with the moving every couple of years. Once I was done, I gave the book to my now 24 year old daughter, a mother now of half Honduran and the rest of her children. Thanks for opening her up to others being out there who may share her pain and to open our conversation up more than it already was.

Quick read, Had some insights........2007-02-26

ALthough I enjoyed the writing style and some of the portrayals of her family and multi-racial experiences, I expected this book to be more about the later and her coming of age rather than the attention given to her sexual experiences. This did not seem as important to the book as the themes on racism, black/Jewish relations, etc. I would have liked more of that. It seemed like she had a lot of rebellion against her dad and his wife, but they seemed more there for her than her mom. I found this book very interesting and I would like to read more by this author and on this topic.

Rebecca Walker is a Schlemiel and a Putz........2007-01-26

What do Lenny Kravitz, Craig David, Derek Jeter, Hale Berry, Barak Obama, Rain Pryor, Keanu Reeves, and The Rock all have in common? They're successfull bi-racial Americans of politics, arts, and athletics. Unfortunately, Rebecca Walker Leventhal doesn't measure up. She feels sorry for herself because she's half-white, and she's angry at her father for making her half-Jewish. Poor thing.

Leventhal's life is nowhere near as bad as she wants us to believe. Her father cared about her very much, and her stepmom sounds okay to me, but she writes about her father like he was neglectful. She's angry at him for moving the family to a suburb, but was that such a bad thing? What's wrong with wanting to live in a good area with great schools? She felt alienated from her white Jewish friends, but that was self-imposed. All these Jewish people WANTED to be her friend, but the suburbs just weren't good enough for her.

Her next complaint is her teen years. She acts like it was all pain and guilt, but from what I read, she had a great time. She had lots of interesting boyfriends, and spent a summer on the set of "The Color Purple." She graduated from high school, went to an Ivy League college, and that doesn't sound bad.

Walker's problem is her MOTHER. Alice Walker was a terrible parent. What kind of mother refuses to take her daugher to meet her principal? What kind of mother refuses to be involved in her daughter's life. I think the reason she complains so much is that she's realy angry at her mother, but seems guilty accusing her. After all, Alice Walker is black, and she can't accuse her black mother of anything. Her Jewish father is an easier target.

Leventhal (or Walker, whatever she calls herself) should stop thinking of herself as a victim and a mutant, and start thinking of herself as the product of two wonderful things. Lenny Kravitz was another Black Jewish American, and he had his lumps, including his parents' divorce. But being Black and Jewish didn't hold him back, it kept him going. Rain Pryor was a Black jew, and her dad was a cokehead, but she writes about her life with strength and humor.

At first I didn't think Rebecca had the wisdom commonly associated with American Jews. But then I realized she's one of us. How do I know? Her whining! Read "Born to Kvetch" and you'll learn why Jews are stereotyped as whiners. We're very vocal about things, including our problems. It's one of the ways that we avoid stress and anger, which in other cultures leads to drunkness, temper flashes and wife-beating. But we do other things besides complain, and that's all she does. Complain.

Thank You Rebecca !.......2006-11-30

While I believe you were more privileged than I was, thank you for telling the Jewish community what it needed to hear as opposed to what it wanted to hear.

As a fellow multiracial Jew, your assertions about the Jewish community were unfortunately more accurate than many would like to admit. Rebecca distanced herself from a community that didn't accept her. While I still express my Judaism at home and attend synagogue on the HHD, I don't attend schul due to racism myself. I got tired of being mistaken for the janitor, maid, or nanny. I deserve more respect than that, I'm a human being. She's getting a lot of criticism from people who want to believe in the "Jews never have race problems" crowd. Sorry guys, but its an issue.

The intercallary style of the book may annoy certain readers, but I felt they were a welcome literary device to evoke her deepest emotions. I believe she may be a bit self-indulgent at times, but I think she does display how many mixed people (and mixed Jews for that matter) feel about their communities. However, Rebecca's downward spiral into self destructive behaviors is more of a symptom of bad parenting than a community that rejects her.

I honestly don't think Rebecca is ashamed of her Jewish heritage. What Rebecca IS ashamed of how she was treated by her family and others. How would you feel about a community that doesn't consider you Jewish enough? Even worse, the same people tell you that you're not taking enough pride in your heritage, although it rejects you.

Guess what guys, the problem is mostly you, not Rebecca.

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)

Average customer rating:

Check and see
Suprise! Suprise!
Prescient St Augustine?
Something of a disappointment
Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy..

History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2 (Chronology)
Anatoly T Fomenko
Manufacturer: Delamere Resources LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Assyria, Babylonia & Sumer | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Historiography | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Medieval | World | History | Subjects | Books

German | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Russian | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Spanish | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Chinese | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mythology & Folklore | Encyclopedias | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Controversial Knowledge | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

History | Religious Studies | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Celtic | Earth-Based Religions | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Magic & Wizards | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

History | Fashion | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 2913621066

Product Description

`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.

Customer Reviews:

Check and see.......2007-06-21

I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.

Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22

Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.

Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05

We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:

a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;

b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;

c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.

Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:

It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.

- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.

- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.

Fomenko goes by the following axioms:

- Chronology is the basis of history;

- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;

- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;

- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;

- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;

- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?

The Russians:

Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.

The Westerners:

Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

The Chinese:

Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.

The Arabs:

Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.

The Divinity:

Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.

St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."

Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09

After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.

However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:

- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.

I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.

The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.

It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?

Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.

Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).

Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30

If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?

Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.

Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..

Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.

Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood

Average customer rating:

Talk about "false memories"...
If Lippy likes it, you know it's garbage
Zero stars
Memories of a Wartime Childhood
pass over the scramble to "fix" this into nonexistence

Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Manufacturer: Schocken
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Holocaust | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0805241396
Release Date: 1996-10-01

Amazon.com

Binjamin Wilkomirski (the name the author believes to be his, though he will never know for sure) was held in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland as a young child. Fragments contains the powerful remnants of his memory, the piercing shards of a child's recollections of unadulterated terror and the confusing horror of the camps. The sheer power of the author's story would be sufficient to explain the force of his words; his steady confidence in his childlike voice and memory adds even greater authority to this memoir. Capable of standing up against Elie Wiesel's harrowing masterpiece Night, Fragments evokes an awesome power through the memory of a child and the words of a courageously honest man who has refused to substitute "understanding" for the inexplicable events he experienced.

Book Description

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award

An extraordinary memoir of a small boy who spent his childhood in the Nazi death camps. Binjamin Wilkomirski was a child when the round-ups of Jews in Latvia began. His father was killed in front of him, he was separated from his family, and, perhaps three or four years old, he found himself in Majdanek death camp, surrounded by strangers. In piercingly simple scenes Wilkomirski gives us the "fragments" of his recollections, so that we too become small again and see this bewildering, horrifying world at child's eye-height. No adult interpretations intervene. From inside the mind of a little boy we too experience love and loss, terror and friendship, and the final arduous return to the "real" world. Beautifully written, with an indelible impact that makes this a book that is not read but experienced, Fragments is "a masterpiece" (Kirkus Reviews). Translated form the German by Carol Brown Janeway.

"This sunning and austerely written work is so profoundly moving, so morally important, and so free from literary artifice of any kind at all that I wonder if I even have the right to try to offer praise."--Jonathan Kozol, The Nation

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

Talk about "false memories"..........2006-04-04

After some investigative reporting by the media, it was discovered that this alleged "true story" of a Holocaust survivor was anything but. The facts? Binjamin Wilkomirski is actually Swiss-born Bruno Grosjean Doessekker, and his experience was about as real as that of the supposed "fellow survivor" who corroborated his story, Laura Grabowski.

How did Grabowski play an indirect role in unmasking the author? She claimed to be an orphan who suffered torture at the hands of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and was later adopted by an American couple, only to have these stories be exposed as equally untrue (her childhood photos show a happy, healthy American girl w/not even hints of the emaciated sate commonly associated w/those who spent time in concentration camps). Additionally, she was revealed to actually be Lauren Stratford, author of the equally fictitious-but-presented-as-a-true-story "Satan's Underground", which detailed her alleged involvement in Satanism and the sexual abuse she endured from the time she was a young girl (something she'd also had a history of lying about since her late teens); as it turns out, "Grabowski" was actually the surname of her maternal grandparents.

Don't the Wilkomirskis and Grabowskis of this world realize that their exploitation of one of the most despicable events in history is not only self-indulgent and unbelievably selfish, but giving credibility to those misguided Holocaust-denying racist groups? Such lies will allow these scumbags to convince the lesser-informed folk out there that the attempted extermination of an entire race was also nothing but lies, which I'm sure never occured to these self-indulgent storytellers as they proceeded to betray countless REAL survivors, who have already suffered enough as it is.

If Lippy likes it, you know it's garbage.......2006-01-24

Just follow the money trail, the political bantering and incessant self-victimization (which always seems to lead into getting paid one way or another) and you'll see why the most powerful of the jewish lobby (yeah, I'm not afraid to say it) will still ENDORSE IT after it has been proven to be a complete fabrication.

And they wonder why the "extremists" have so much credibility even before people look at all the facts. I've read this book and got a great laugh out of the rediculous claims, and the writings of a man obviously an older version of someone whom would be on the Jerry Springer show today if faced with a different self-victimization issue.

I was already well informed this book was a fabrication in advance, so I can't say "I'm smarter than you all whom were fooled"...heck, even Elie "Weasel" fooled me the first two times around. Looks like his credibility is crap as well. I'mglad I have relatives that were on both sides of WW2; as camp munitions auditor, fitness/activity trainer (A Sergeant's job! He was denied citizenship in US but later came from Canada in about '80), a Luftwaffe infantryman whom both stayed at the conc camps, and himself taken POW when wounded in Belgium (yes many Luft Inf exist so stop emailing me, you don't know history) and a US liberator of Buchenwald...I'm glad REALITY doesnt match the whining stories of crybaby rich jews exiled after the war...so many millions of survivors all rubber-stamping eachothers stories about human soap and lampshades, all proven false by MAINSTREAM science. Like I said, follow the money trail...

Zero stars.......2005-01-15

When I read this book several years ago, I did not understand how anyone could have believed it. Having known several true Holocaust survivors, and heard their stories, I certainly didn't.

Now, there have now been several clear and thorough exposes of the fraud perpetrated by Bruno Grosjean Dossekker, who falsely claimed here to be one Binjamin Wilkomirski, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Stefan Maechler, The New Yorker, 60 Minutes and several other publications prove beyond any doubt that Wilkomirski is no such person and that Fragments is a fiction.

Every possible lead has now been followed; each detail in Dossekker's narration of "events" has been compared with historical records from such leading Holocaust scholars as Raul Hilberg and Lawrence Langer, accounts of other child survivors, interviews with members of the Dossekker and Grosjean families and more.

The strongest evidence, unearthed by Stephan Maechler, is the fact that in 1981, Dossekker/Wilkomirski contested the will of Yvonne Grosjean, whom, in a letter to officials in Bern Switzerland, he called "my birth mother." Dossekker/Wilkomirski received a third of her estate.

Other evidence includes Dossekker/Wilkomirski's use of Laura Grabowski to "corroborate" his story. Grabowski claims to have known him in a children's home in Krakow. In fact, Grabowski is an American citizen of Christian faith who has since her youth fabricated stories about her victimhood, the most well-publicized being a book called Satan's Underground.

The Social Security number of said Lauren Stratford is the same as that of Grabowski, who subsequently used it to make a false survivor's claim. Furthermore, Satan's Underground and this volume contain startling similarities.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Memories of a Wartime Childhood.......2003-04-24

It is in Fragments now, a total hoax.

A Holocaust survivor memoir that has received prestigious literary awards and lavish praise has been exposed as a hoax.

In Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Binjamin Wilkomirski describes his ordeal as an infant in the Jewish ghetto of Riga (Latvia), where his earliest memory is of seeing his father being killed. Wilkomirski also tells how he survived the terrible rigors of wartime internment, at the age of three or four, in the German-run concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.

First published in German in 1995, Fragments has been translated into twelve languages. In Switzerland, the country where Wilkomirski lives, the book has been a major best-seller. Two documentary films and numerous personal appearances by the author in schools throughout the country have helped promote the memoir.

The American edition was published by Schocken, an imprint of Random House, which heavily promoted the book with teachers' study guides and other supplementary materials.

Jewish groups and major American newspapers have warmly praised Fragments. The New York Times called it "stunning," and the Los Angeles Times lauded it as a "classic first-hand account of the Holocaust." It received the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Autobiography and Memoir, while in Britain it was awarded the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize, and in France the Prix Memoire de la Shoah.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC -- a federal government agency -- was so impressed that it sent Wilkomirski on a six-city United States fund-raising tour last fall.

This past summer, though, compelling evidence came to light exposing Wilkomirski's memoir as an literary hoax.

Although he claims to have been born in Latvia in 1939, and to have arrived in Switzerland in 1947 or 1948, Swiss legal records show that he was actually born in Switzerland in February 1941, the son of an unwed woman, Yvette Grosjean. The infant was then adopted and raised by the Doessekkers, a middle-class Zurich couple. Jewish author Daniel Ganzfried, writing in the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, also reports that he has found a 1946 photo of the young Bruno Doessekker (Wilkomirski) in the garden of his adoptive parents.

Comparisons have been drawn between Wilkomirski's Fragments and The Painted Bird, the supposedly autobiographical "Holocaust memoir" by prominent literary figure Jerzy Kosinksi that turned out to be fraudulent.

Reaction by Jewish Holocaust scholars to the new revelations has been instructive, because they seem more concerned about propagandistic impact than about historical truth. Their primary regret seems merely to be that the fraud has been detected, not that it was perpetrated.

In an essay published in a major Canadian newspaper (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 18, 1998), Jewish writer Judith Shulevitz arrogantly argued that it doesn't really matter much if Fragments is authentic. Her main misgiving, apparently, is that the deceit was not more adroit: "I can't help wishing Wilkomirksi-Doesseker [sic] had been more subtle in his efforts at deception, and produced the magnificent fraud world literature deserves."

Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University (Worcester, Mass.), and co-author of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (Yale Univ. Press, 1996), agrees that Fragments now appears to be fraudulent. At the same time, though, she expressed sympathy for Wilkomirski, saying that when she met him he appeared "to be a deeply scarred man." Amazingly, Dwork does not blame him for the imposture, "because she believes in his identity." Instead, she takes the publishers to task for having "exploited" Wilkomirski. (New York Times, Nov. 3, 1998).

Deborah Lipstadt, author of the anti-revisionist polemic Denying the Holocaust, has assigned Fragments in her Emory University class on Holocaust memoirs. When confronted with evidence that it is a fraud, she commented that the new revelations "might complicate matters somewhat, but [the work] is still powerful."

Daniel Ganzfried reports that Jews have complained to him that even if Fragments is a fraud, his exposé is dangerously aiding "those who deny the Holocaust."

American Jewish writer Howard Weiss makes a similar point in an essay published in the Chicago Jewish Star (Oct. 9-29, 1998):

Presenting a fictional account of the Holocaust as factual only provides ammunition to those who already deny that the horrors of Nazism and the death camps ever even happened. If one account is untrue, the deniers' reasoning goes, how can we be sure any survivors accounts are true ... Perhaps no one was ready to question the authenticity of the [Wilkomirski] account because just about anything concerning the Holocaust becomes sacrosanct.

Wilkomirski himself has responded to the new revelations by going into hiding, although he did issue a defiant statement describing the climate of discussion about his memoir as a "poisonous" atmosphere of "totalitarian judgment and criticism."

pass over the scramble to "fix" this into nonexistence.......2002-11-03

read this book before reading the spew about its "authenticity". don't concern yourself with where the pieces go in what you know, they don't belong to your understanding. to frame the story in history, geography, society, is to try and correct the narrative -- for whose benefit? "fragments" captures the essence of "screen memory" like no textbook on the subject possibly could; attempts to convey it by those who've come to terms with it for what it is rarely get past the attempt.
regardless of why the book was written, or how the authour came to possess these images; real, imagined, conjured, who knows, maybe not even the writer, the story of this binjamin doesn't unfold, it simply carries the ground of its own consciousness, in recollections of a childhood unmitigated by whatever closure of comprehension comes in adulthood. memories stored and recalled in items of the senses, intense and unfiltered perceptions with minimal coherent external context in which early cognative development makes distinctions, signifies, aligns, scales -- makes sense and story of memory.
the allegory is there in the book itself, plain as day, at least twice; in the beginning with the "big picture" abstraction in binjamin's persistent nightmare, and near the end, where the abstracted "big picture" manifests in a shared experience of total "incomprehension" of situation. what you know or can surmise is irrelevant, there are only these fragments.

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory

Average customer rating:

Gets you reading further
Chilling
A detailed, but biased read
So, Where Is the Conspiracy Actually?
Holocaust Liar's Handbook

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0452272742

Customer Reviews:

Gets you reading further.......2007-08-19

I give this book 5 stars and if I could give it more, I would. I came across it by accident and was so shocked by the superficiality with which it was written and the endless string of ad hominem attacks on those the author disagrees with that I began reading revisionist literature as result - something I would probably never have done if it hadn't been for Lipstadt's hysteria!

Thanks for the presentation! There sure is gold to be found in further reading.

Chilling.......2007-04-06

The Nazis murdered approximately 6 million Jews. There is an enormous amount of documentary and testimonial evidence for this genocide, the Holocaust. The denial of the Holocaust is as silly as the denial of the Rwandan Genocide, the Vietnam War or the existence of Australia; there is as little serious debate to be had with a Holocaust denier as there is to be had with a denier of the Rwandan Genocide, the Vietnam War or the existence of Australia.
In "Denying the Holocaust", Deborah Lipstadt argues that Holocaust denial is not only silly, but dangerous. It is dangerous for Jews in particular because it spreads hatred of Jews, who are accused of perpetrating a hoax. But it is also dangerous for society more generally because it attempts to exonerate Nazism and revive fascism. Holocaust denial becomes increasingly dangerous as it is dressed up in a more sophisticated and scholarly veneer, because it becomes less easy to identify it for what it is.
Lipstadt's study of Holocaust denial traces its origins and development. She covers its major figures and their central contentions. She carefully explains the fabrications, distortions and exaggerations of the deniers, how they construct complicated and inconsistent conspiracy theories in order to avoid evidence. She explains their tactics for achieving respectability, while exposing their racism. However, the book does not cover the development of Holocaust denial in the Middle East, and it was written before the recent theatricals in Iran.
The book is organized and written clearly. The coverage is extensive, but detail is not sacrificed. It combines meticulous scholarship with profound psychological insight. I strongly recommend it.

A detailed, but biased read.......2007-02-24

Lipstadt definitely covers the Holocaust Revisionist movement thoroughly, but one can't help but notice that she, herself, is just as political in her motives as are the Revisionists that she so despises. Lipstadt's Jewish ethnicity, as well as her active role in Jewish affairs and studies, makes it impossible for readers to accept that her views and assertions are objective or unbiased. She writes:

"The challenge presented by the deniers is whether disinformation should be granted the same status and intellectual privileges as real history" (p 26).

But who is Lipstadt to decide what "real history" is? Who is she to determine that revisionists don't have a right to participate in the historical debate over Holocaust events and statistics? She's not even a historian! I don't personally agree with revisionist claims, but I do think that readers deserve a less biased source of information. If you're looking to expand your knowledge of the Holocaust Revisionist movement and their beliefs (as well as the evidence that disputes them), I would read Richard Evan's book "Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial." Evans was one of the researchers for the defense during the David Irving v Penguin & Lipstadt trial in the UK. His impartiality is evident in the fact that, when asked by Lipstadt whether he would search Irving's publications, speeches, and research to prove that he knowingly manipulated information to prove his case, Evans replied that he would search to see IF Irving had done so. While he did come to the same conclusion that Lipstadt had, he has far less bias in his assertions because he went into the research with an open mind and came to his conclusions as objectively as one possibly could. In his book, Evans outlines all of the revisionist claims that Irving asserted and disproves them one-by-one, showing how Irving manipulated and misrepresented data to serve his own purposes. His book is far less of a rant that Lipstadt's and provides a lot of historical information as well.

I gave Lipstadt's book 3 stars because she did do her research, however political her motivations were. The book offers a lot of information and can be quite valuable if you are able to distinguish between the facts and the rants.

So, Where Is the Conspiracy Actually?.......2007-02-21

Those who deny or attempt to "revise" the history of the holocaust like us to believe that there is a vast conspiracy. As Lipstadt shows in this book, they commonly discount evidence discordant with their views as the product of a vast conspiracy of Jews and their minions. Eye witnesses lied. Documents were forged. It was a conspiracy of Jews (unless the evidence confirms their viewpoint, and then they don't question its legitimacy!) So Lipstadt's book is an exercise in irony. It takes those who cry, "conspiracy," and shows that it is actually they, rather than those they accuse, of perpetrating a conspiracy.

Thus, let me stress at the outset that this book is not an attempt to historically rebut the 'revisionists.' (That has been done so many times it is sad!) This book is literally an attempt to expose those revisionists who claim neutrality ("I'm just interested in historical scholarship.") and shows their true motives.

Just like "intelligent design theorists" who are trying to inject a bit of old-time religion into biology by claiming the scientific impartiality of their God hypothesis, Holocuast revisionists have been bombarding the general public with a revamped, quasi-intellectual image designed to make them look credible. But, as Lipstadt shows through some serious detective work, hardly any (if any at all) of these 'thinkers' are neutral at all.

Some are smart but have ill motives (like Ernst Zundel, who has a very blatant history of being a neo-nazi). Others might not have ulterior motives, but practice shoddy scholarship (like Fred Leuchter, who's "scholarship" and credibility brought to nill here.) Otheres are both, like Arhtur Butz, who expresses much anti-Jewish sentiment, writes as a historian, but teaches only electrical engineering! Hmm.)

To be sure, this book is quite literally a two hundred page ad hominem attack. As mentioned, Lipstadt doesn't delve into very much historical debunking of these revisionists. This book attacks their character and (lack of) methodology. It is an attempt to show that, contrary to their protestations, these scholars are very little interested in objective historical truth. They are phonies at worst and neo-nazis operating under a lame subterfuge at best.

And this is why I deduct a star. As interesting as this book is, it is easy to see that Lipstadt has every bit as much of an agenda as do her subjects. She is just as passionate as they. And it is hard to see this book as always fighting fair: it is, after all, a continued attack not on deniers' history, but on their character. (And as others have pointed out, Lipstadt hypocritically chastizes these 'historians' for not having training in history, even though she holds no PhD in the subject either.)

Be that as it may, I can only deduct one star becasue as whiny as Lipstadt can occasionally be, her subjects deserve what they are getting here, as they play the character assault game as much, if not more, than she does. (Remember how historians and eye-witnesses are frequently dismissed in their work as biased towards the Jewish conspiracy!)

To close, I should note that a great companion work to this one - that does tackle the 'revisionist' history - is Richard Evans' "Hitler on Trial." For those who don't know, Evans served as a historian in defense of Lipstadt when she was sued by 'revisionist,' David Irving. He was charged with going through Irving's works and debunking them point by point, which he did easily and well. As shown is Lipstadt's subsequent book detailing the trial, Evans was unbiased going into the trial, and thus, cannot be accused of having motives other than accurate history. (He told Lipstadt that he would review Irving's work, but could not garauntee that his history was bad, until or unless he found evidence that it was.) Where Lipstadt's book takes on the motives, Evans' book is a fascinating look at their (mis)use of history.

Buy both. And if you want, buy some books by revisionists, but I think you will be wasting as much time as buying a book on biology by a theologian.

Holocaust Liar's Handbook.......2007-01-12

For those of you who have sincerely been seeking the truth about the Holocaust, who have done your homework and read a variety of sources and opinions, this book may well push you completely over into the revisionist ("deniers") camp, as it did me.

Deborah Lipstadt is an Emory University professor of Jewish Religion, NOT history. She was evidently supported by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in writing this book; they hold the copyright, not her. Denying the Holocaust is an attempt to respond to Arthur Butz and others who have raised major factual objections to the usual "6 million Jews killed in gas chambers" version of WW II.

Arthur Butz gathered a wealth of research material in his book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Ms Lipstadt responds to his scholarship with things such as name calling, twisted logic, half truths, appeals to emotions, failure to produce evidence, failure to define terms, omitting things, assigning bad motives, answering a question with another question, using big words, etc. That is why I call her book, Denying the Holocaust, a Holocaust Liar's Handbook. I value my copy as a wonderful exercise book for seeing through sophistocated lies.

Absence/Presence: Critical Essays On The Artistic Memory Of The Holocaust (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust)

Average customer rating:

Absence/Presence: Critical Essays On The Artistic Memory Of The Holocaust (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust)

Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Criticism | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Themes | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Book Description

Since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and recognition of the Holocaust as a watershed event of the twentieth century, if not in Western Civilization itself, the capacity of art to represent this event adequately has been questioned. Contributors provide case studies that include a broad spectrum of artists from North America, Europe and Israel, and examine some of the dominant themes of their work.

Contents include:

Customer Reviews:

A profound exploration of Jewish History and Jewish Memory .......2006-02-12

This work has four major chapters each of which deals with a certain period of Jewish history, and its approach to Jewish Memory. In the first chapter Yerushalmi explores the Biblical and Rabbinic Foundations for writing history, and remembering it. This is the stage when the process of remembering is connected with the recording of, and participation in history.
In the second phase, the Middle Ages Yerushalmi outlines the major division which dominates the work, between processes of collective memorization through ritual and religious practice which are not connected with everyday historical happening- and between the writing of history which is connected with historical happening. Yerushalmi says that from the time of the fall of the Second Temple and most especially in this period of the Middle Ages, the Jews remember without remembering historical events. The 'collective Zakhor' or command to collective remembrance ( which he says distinguishes the Jewish Religion) is done without writing the history of the people. The history of the people is avoided. The writing of history is considered by Rambam a low form of intellectual endeavor. The process of collective remembering is done through the living of the Jewish holidays each of which connects up with some historical memory. It is done through Memorbuchs of communities which have suffered in the Crusades.
In the third period which comes immediately after the expulsion from Spain i.e. in the beginning of the sixteenth century there is somehow a return to looking at the actual events of contemporary history but this by framing them in world- historical narratives.
The last period Yerushalmi writes about is the modern one in which there is a return to attending to the events of Jewish history. Here the writing of history, what he calls 'historiography' becomes once again a subject of Jewish interest. And this as certain other processes of collective memorization are breaking down i.e. as the Jews are moving away from being a 'faith- community' in the fullest sense of the word.
Yerushalmi here does not go into the question of conflicting narratives of Jewish history. And the very interesting question of the way different kinds of Jews today construct different kinds of narratives of Jewish history as a whole.
This work has a brilliant introduction by Harold Bloom.
The work itself is recognized as a classic of modern Jewish scholarship.
I conclude with one small piece of Yerushalmi 's writing.

"When I spoke earlier of the coincidence of the rise of modern Jewish histiography and the decay of Jewish memory, I had in mind the specific kind of memory of the past, that of Jewish tradition. But hardly any Jew today is without some Jewish past. Total amnesia: is still relatively rare. The choices for Jews , as for non- Jewsis not whether or not to have a past, but rather-what kind of past shall one have."

A classic.......2000-04-01

This book enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a classic in the field of Jewish studies. The author maintains that "Only in Israel and nowhere else is the injunction to remember felt as a religious imperative to an entire people." What follows is a brilliant discussion of the meaning and selectivity of memory in Jewish religious tradition. Yerushalmi then shows how secularization radically transformed the meaning of memory and history for Jews. Writing of the rise of Jewish historiography in early 19th century Germany, he notes: "For the first time it is not history that must prove its utility to Judaism, but Judaism that must prove its validity to history, by revealing and justifying itself historically."

At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture

Average customer rating:

At Memory's Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture
James E. Young
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Criticism | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0300094132

Amazon.com

At Memory's Edge is an ambitious and provocative collection of essays with topics ranging from Art Spiegelman's Maus books to, most notably, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. Author James E. Young, an American professor of English and Judaic Studies, was the only foreigner and the only Jew on the committee that selected the design for the German memorial. His behind-the-scenes account of this project's development offers sophisticated answers to some very difficult questions. Young doggedly asks how Berlin can remember a group of people who are no longer at home there, and how Germany can--or should--remember the extermination of Jews once committe