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
Book Description
At the height of the Nazi extermination campaign in the Warsaw Ghetto, a young Jewish woman, Irena, seeks the protection of her former lover, a young architect, Jan Malecki. By taking her in, he puts his own life and the safety of his family at risk. Over a four-day period, Tuesday through Friday of Holy Week 1943, as Irena becomes increasingly traumatized by her situation, Malecki questions his decision to shelter Irena in the apartment where Malecki, his pregnant wife, and his younger brother reside. Added to his dilemma is the broader context of Poles’ attitudes toward the “Jewish question” and the plight of the Jews locked in the ghetto during the final moments of its existence. Few fictional works dealing with the war have been written so close in time to the events that inspired them. No other Polish novel treats the range of Polish attitudes toward the Jews with such unflinching honesty. Jerzy Andrzejewski’s Holy Week (Wielki Tydzien, 1945), one of the significant literary works to be published immediately following the Second World War, now appears in English for the first time.
Customer Reviews:
a very moving book, amust read.......2007-06-15
i really liked the way the book was written, you could almost feel yourself in the house with these people and suffer what they must have been going thru.. a must read.
Book Description
In 1943, against utterly hopeless odds, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto rose up to defy the Nazi horror machine that had set out to exterminate them. One of the leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization, which led the uprisings, was Yitzhak Zuckerman, known by his underground pseudonym, Antek. Decades later, living in Israel, Antek dictated his memoirs. The Hebrew publication of Those Seven Years: 1939-1946 was a major event in the historiography of the Holocaust, and now Antek's memoirs are available in English.
Unlike Holocaust books that focus on the annihilation of European Jews, Antek's account is of the daily struggle to maintain human dignity under the most dreadful conditions. His passionate, involved testimony, which combines detail, authenticity, and gripping immediacy, has unique historical importance. The memoirs situate the ghetto and the resistance in the social and political context that preceded them, when prewar Zionist and Socialist youth movements were gradually forged into what became the first significant armed resistance against the Nazis in all of occupied Europe. Antek also describes the activities of the resistance after the destruction of the ghetto, when 20,000 Jews hid in "Aryan" Warsaw and then participated in illegal immigration to Palestine after the war.
The only extensive document by any Jewish resistance leader in Europe, Antek's book is central to understanding ghetto life and underground activities, Jewish resistance under the Nazis, and Polish-Jewish relations during and after the war. This extraordinary work is a fitting monument to the heroism of a people.
Customer Reviews:
Remarkably Informative, Detailed, and Not Anti-Polish.......2001-08-11
Yitzhak Zuckerman's (Cukierman's) fabulous book stands out in stark contrast to much of the superficial and distorted material that is so often used in Holocaust education. Then again, he was an eyewitness, so he should know. Unlike the anti-Polish slant of most Holocaust educational material, Zuckerman finds much good and bad in both nationalities, and repeatedly sternly warns those who would espouse hatred for Poles. He also has high praises for Zegota, the Polish underground organization that rescued thousands of Jews. Zuckerman is unusually frank and candid in telling the full story of what happened during this cruel time. For instance, Holocaust films invariably show the collaborationist Polish blue police, but not the Jewish ghetto police. Zuckerman, on the other hand, makes it obvious that it was the Jewish collaborationist police which inflicted more of the sufferings on the imprisoned Jews. Most Holocaust materials only show Poles who would betray Jews to the Nazis, while Zuckerman surprises the reader by pointing out that he was just as frequently accosted by Jewish blackmailers as Polish ones. Unlike the movie Schindler's List, which showed a Polish girl cheering as Jews were deported, Zuckerman recounts a diametrically-oppposite personal experience as an incognito Jew (with false documents expertly made by the Polish underground) on the Aryan side of Warsaw. As the Warsaw Ghetto was being burned by the Germans, very few Poles rejoiced, and these were primarily from the criminal element. Zuckerman found that many Poles cried as they saw the ghetto burn. Zuckerman also acknowledges that Jews were disproportionately involved in Communism, and this was a major factor which provoked Polish anti-Semitism, including the murder of surviving Jews who returned to reclaim their property after the war. Finally, Zuckerman spends considerable space detailing the many German crimes against Polish gentiles, something which Holocaust materials rarely do in depth, if at all. A superb book!
A Surplus of Memory.......2001-02-14
" I don't think there's any need to analyze the Uprising in military terms. This was a war of less than a thousand people against a mighty army, and no one doubted how it was likely to turn out. This isn't a subject for study in a military school. Not the weapons, not the operations, not the tactics. If there's a school to study the human spirit, there it should be a major subject. The really important things were inherent in the force shown by Jewish youths, after years of degradation, to rise up against their destroyers and determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising. I don't know if there's a standard to measure that." -Yitzhak Zuckerman From A Surplus of Memory A Surplus of Memory is Yitzhak Zuckerman's memoir of the events of 1939-1946, the period before, during and after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Zuckerman, or "Antek," his pseudonym in the Jewish underground, was a commander of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which became the primary fighting force in the Jewish ghetto. After the Uprising, Antek led clandestine operations in Aryan Warsaw, then commanded a unit of Jewish fighters during the Polish Uprising. After the war, he helped Jews returning from exile in the Soviet Union from death camps, and those emerging from hiding after the Nazi occupation. Antek became a major figure in Brikha, the movement that smuggled Jews into Palestine after the war. He finally immigrated to Palestine in 1947 and co-founded Lohamei Ha-Getaot, the Ghetto Fighters' Kibbutz where he established a Holocaust museum. He was also a witness at the trial of Adolph Eichmann. Antek was a member of Zionist youth organizations in Poland before the war. At the age of twenty-four after the blitzkrieg stormed through Poland, he risked his life to travel into the Nazi occupied zone with his destination Warsaw, where he had been summoned to teach by Ha Shomer, a Zionist group. His mission was to help sustain the Jewish educational movement. After all was lost, Antek worked around the clock supporting the exodus of resistance survivors from the inferno of the ghetto to the relative safety of Aryan Warsaw where approximately 20,000 Jews were already in hiding. He arranged for transportation and shelter in temporary apartments for the survivors and devised subterranean escape routes though the sewers where he shepherded the survivors of the carnage. Many escaped via this route with Antek, but other tortured souls lost their way and died horrible deaths in the maze, eaten by rats or swept away by torrents. Others escaped through a tunnel to the other side. Antek continued his activities in the underground, in particular organizing a Jewish unit that fought in the Warsaw Uprising. After the war he stayed in Europe and continued to be an advocate for Jewish survivors. A tragic postwar chapter was his rescue mission to the town of Kielce where sixty Jews had been killed, victims of a pogrom. After the war, surviving Jews were met with hostility and violence when they attempted to return to their homes. Antek led a support contingent of Soviet soldiers and Polish government officials to Kielce and transported Jewish survivors to safety in Lodz. Antek also became a leader in the Brikha movement, smuggling Holocaust survivors into Palestine. During the remainder of his life in Israel, Antek told his stories of the Uprising to those on his kibbutz. He admitted that he suffered from a "surplus of memory," thus the book's title, the result of thirty-eight tapes and sixty hours of conversation. The burden of the events and comrades that lived and died with him in the Warsaw ghetto became more vivid with each passing year. He told friends," I feel in my soul that I'm a thousand years old, since every hour there counts for a year in me." . Antek's survival through the Holocaust and telling his Surplus of Memory were perhaps his greatest act of resistance.This is an essential piece of not only Holocaust history, but in the history of humanity's resistance to oppression. It's a tragic, yet inspiring book.
Book Description
One of the few survivors of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, Holocaust scholar Gutman draws on diaries, personal letters, and underground press reports in this compelling, authoritative account of a landmark event in Jewish history. Here, too, is a portrait of the vibrant culture that shaped the young fighters, whose inspired defiance would have far-reaching implications for the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Customer Reviews:
Very interesting.......2006-02-08
I find this to be one of the most interesting books that I have read about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. I really liked the way Professor Gutman told us about the events, and at the same time explained why and gave us additional information. I made a lot of notes while reading this book.
And I have to disagree with another reviewer, because I don't find it boring at all.
Not a Great Choice.......2004-04-20
My daughter recieved this book from her father and I after a project on the warsaw resistance was assigned. She struggled reading the book it was so boring. I had told her that she must not understand it. I offered part of my BUSY schedule to read the book to her, and help her understand it more. I found that she was telling the truth. It was one of the worst books i have read. Do your self a favor, and don't waste your money!
Concise and important work on a major historical theme!.......2000-03-27
A to-the-point explanation of what happened and why. And more importantly, 'how' did a group of relatively unarmed, untrained captives lead a military revolt against the Nazi war machine?
Customer Reviews:
Uncompromising.......2002-01-01
This is a beautiful book that must be read over and over during different times in one's life. It is uncompromising and honest. It is about people, not characters. It will deliver as much as the reader is willing to receive.
Average customer rating:
- Inside the Uprising
- Incredibly powerful
- Inspiring
- David vs Goliath-type Story
- Mila 18
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Mila 18
Leon Uris
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Trinity
ASIN: 0385020767
Release Date: 1961-05-02 |
Book Description
It was a time of crisis, a time of tragedy--and a time of transcendent courage and determination. Leon Uris's blazing novel is set in the midst of the ghetto uprising that defied Nazi tyranny, as the Jews of Warsaw boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists. Here, painted on a canvas as broad as its subject matter, is the compelling of one of the most heroic struggles of modern times.
From the Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Inside the Uprising.......2007-10-14
Leon Uris takes us to the gritty inside of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Setting the stage with marvelous charaters that capture out hearts and minds, he leads us through the gruesome oppression of occupied Poland,then never lets up through the last gasps of the fight for freedom. Mila 18 will forever be remembered and its story should never be forgotten.
Incredibly powerful.......2007-06-23
I received this book as a gift. At time of reading, I had no knowledge of Uris as an author. I am a British national now residing in the US. I have no religious belief.
The book gripped me to the extent that I read it through the night, getting no sleep. I was gripped by a need to know what would happen next to the characters, whose names I still clearly remember 15 years after reading the book. The enormity of the terror within the ghetto was built very subtly. The reality of the characters' situation only hit me when I closed the book after turning the final page -- then I cried. No other book I have read, before or since, has come close to creating the emotional impact of this masterpiece.
Irrespective of your beliefs or sentiments or prejudices, this work is a must-read.
Inspiring.......2007-03-26
I read this book first when I was in 6th grade (It's dense, I wouldn't necessarily say you can convince a 6th grader to read it)
I never left my living room for a week - I poured through it and read it twice. Though the details are lost with me now, the images and dreams about fighting for a cause have been inspiring for me. Today when I feel inundated by the world, I look back and think of the protagonists that went against the flow, offered resistance when their peers spoke of complacence. This novel for me is about courage and honor, understanding what is right and fighting for it. I look forward to ordering it here and reading it again, ten years later.
David vs Goliath-type Story.......2007-03-09
Great story about the Jewish resistance movement in World War II. Although, the characters are fictional, Uris, is such a gifted artist, that he makes you care about them, as they simply struggle to survive on a handful of bread or a handful of bullets. The soap-opera-style of bouncing back and forth between the main characters works because it only strenghtens the drama and builds the tension. Also, the characters are not cookie-cutter good or bad stereotypes; there are many shades of ethics and motivations among the Jewish resistance, the Nazis, the Poles, and the general population.
Although it is a fictional account, the events depicted were real. And it does make one think - had I been thrust into a similar situation, how would I react?
Mila 18.......2006-09-28
Mila 18 is the most fabulous story of courage and daring I have ever read. I have read it over and over again during the years, and with each reading I can't put it down. I have long studied the Holocaust, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in particular, and Leon Uris's Mila 18 could be used as a textbook on the subject, so accurately is the history portrayed. If I could recommend one book, only one, to teach people about courage, honor, dignity, compassion, love -- this would be it. The brief raising of the Hebrew flag over that small territory made me cry as no sappy love story ever could. In this age of Hollywood filming epic historical movies such as The Patriot, Titanic, etc., etc., this book should be done on a grand scale. However, I would say in departing, that the movie Uprising, which I believe was a made for tv movie, is grander and more epic, more historically true, as well as every bit as thrilling, as any movie I've ever seen.
Book Description
The twenty-eight day siege of the Warsaw Ghetto was one of the most protracted large-scale urban battles in World War II. Only the fighting at Leningrad from 1941-1943, Stalingrad in 1942-1943, the Warsaw Rebellion of 1944, and Budapest in 1944-1945 lasted longer. The Jews had resisted en masse and had created a legend that would transcend the war and continue even to this day. Much has been written on this heroic struggle from the standpoint of the young men and women of the Jewish War Organization. Nevertheless, a book from the German perspective has yet to be written that captures all aspects of the fight from the standpoint of the attackers Ð until now. The Ghetto Men presents every fact possible concerning the who, when, with what and how the SS troops razed the Warsaw Ghetto. The men and officers of the dreaded Security Service and Gestapo are here as well as the units, weapons and tactics, and a day-by-day analysis of the fighting., over 110 b/w photos, 8 1/2" x 11"
Average customer rating:
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English Archive of Design and Decoration
Stafford Cliff
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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| Interior Design
| Architecture
| Professional & Technical
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Decorative Arts
| Design & Decorative Arts
| Arts & Photography
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General
| Design & Decorative Arts
| Arts & Photography
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General
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Decoration & Ornament
| Interior Design
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| Interior Design
| Home & Garden
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The French Archive of Design and Decoration
ASIN: 0810932644 |
Book Description
Over 150 engravings of original ceramic paving tiles from medieval cathedrals and monasteries — geometrics, mosaics, Gothic and Romanesque themes, rich medieval imagery. Sharp, copyright-free designs lend themselves to ceramics, serigraphy, photosilkscreen and batik, leather tooling, wood burning, enameling, marquetry, and more. 161 black-and-white illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Old English Tile Designs.......2005-09-09
As the Master of the Saint Caitlin's Guild of Hairy Potters, I have been teaching classes in the crafts of the Middle Ages, including the making of the tiles in the retro Quire at Winchester. This handy little volume allows the copying of designs for everyone in the class, with a range of easy to difficult, and scaled to produce four inch tiles allowing for clay shrinkage.
All my work is done for me. All I have to do now . . .is teach.
Nice design illustrations.......1999-12-21
There are 150 floor tile designs from medieval cathedrals and monasteries rendered in black&white. Lots of animals, dragons, griffins, and fleur-de-lis. There are also face images of kings, jesters, etc.
All designs are shown in decent (maybe actual?) tile size (around 4-5 inches square), as well as in groups of four (or more if required), to show how repeats would work. All designs are very bold and simple, but amazing when placed in repeat.
Nice designs for beginning tile makers to use, since the designs can be easily worked in clay. Well worth the cost of the book.
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