The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

October 16, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. Vintage International, 1989. Originally published 1986. 203 pgs. Purchased. In Levi’s last book before his death, he sets out to examine the concepts of forgiveness, guilt, and memory in the context of his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz. He includes replies to his memoir from Germans, who struggle with how they should feel in light of what their parents did, and his reaction to children and adults from around […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Italian, Italy, Nonfiction, Poland, Translated • Tags: Primo Levi

Poland by James A. Michener

September 18, 2017 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Random House, 2014. Originally published 1983. 688 pgs. Library copy. Covering eight centuries of Polish history, Michener’s novel begins in the then-present day of 1981 with a sit down between the fictional Minister of Agriculture of communist Poland, Szymon Bukowski, and the leader of the farmers, Janko Buk, who are operating same vain as the Solidarity movement occurring in Gdansk. Bukowski and Buk come to realize their family history — and, in fact, the history of Poland […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: James A. Michener

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

January 13, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Touchstone, 1993. Originally published 1982. 400 pgs. Purchased. Winner of the 1982 Man Booker Prize and adapted into a film in 1993 produced by Steven Spielberg, Keneally’s novel recounts the efforts of Oskar Schindler, a Czechoslovakia-born German who saved over 1,100 Jewish workers from the Nazi concentration camps by employing them in his factory in Krakow, Poland. As a member of the Nazi Party and an ethnic German from Hitler’s prized Sudetenland, Schindler had the credentials necessary […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Booker Prize, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: Thomas Keneally

The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter

November 26, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — audiobook. Read by Jeremy Davidson. Macmillan Audio, 2009. 14 hours, 19 minutes. Library copy. Subtitled “Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History”, this book traces the effectors of five so-called Monuments Men and one women between D-Day (June 6, 1944) and Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) on May 8, 1945. One of the little known programs of the Nazi regime was to steal, plunder, and amass the great works of art across Europe […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Art, Audiobook, Chunkster, Europe, France, Germany, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Bret Witter, Jeremy Davidson, Robert M. Edsel

Once We Were Brothers by Ronald H. Balson

July 6, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013. Originally published 2009. 400 pgs. Library copy. In the middle of the opening night at the opera in Chicago, an eighty-three-year-old Polish immigrant named Ben Solomon walks up to Elliot Rosenzweig, the wealthy and beloved philanthropist, and shoves a gun in his face denouncing him as a former SS officer named Otto Piatek. Ben is promptly arrested for assault and while Rosenzweig denies being Otto Piatek, he does use his enormous influence to […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: Ronald H. Balson

Hitler’s Furies by Wendy Lower

June 2, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 270 pgs. Library copy. Subtitled “German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” and a finalist for the National Book Award,  Lower accounts for the role of German women during the Third Reich, particularly those who traveled to occupied areas in the East (i.e. Poland, Ukraine, Austria) and served as midwives, teachers/re-educators, secretaries and typists, and concentration camp guards. Portrayed during the war by the Nazis as wives and mothers — the producers and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, National Book Award, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Wendy Lower

Behind the Secret Window by Nelly S. Toll

August 1, 2012 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Scholastic, 2004. Originally published in 1993. 161 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “A Memoir Of A Hidden Childhood During WWII”, Toll’s memoir was one of my first introductions to the Holocaust. I purchased the book from the Scholastic school catalog and the rest, they say, is history. Toll’s life turns upside down at the age of six with the Nazi invasion of Poland. By the time she is eight, she has lost most of her family and has turned […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Art, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Juvenile, Nonfiction, Poland, Reread • Tags: Nelly S. Toll

Hungary and Poland Guidebooks

March 1, 2011 by Christina

My parents and I decided to visit Hungary next week on a whim. Flying home to Montana from university is both incredibly expensive and time consuming; I can fly from here to London in less time. My mother and I were discussing how much easier it is for me to get to Europe from where I currently live, how we could trade their timeshare for a place in Europe. Hungary was the only place we had not visit previously before, […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Hungary, Nonfiction, Poland, Travel • Tags: Cameron Hewitt, Craig Turp, Norm Longley, Rick Steves

Auschwitz by Debórah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt

December 28, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. 445 pgs. Library copy. I was lucky enough to have Debórah Dwork, a world-renowned Holocaust historian,  as one of my professors this past semester. She was quite possibly my best professor as she told stories that illustrated history instead of lecturing on the facts. Her two-day lecture on the development of Auschwitz, why Auschwitz was chosen as a place for a concentration camp, and how it became the location of mass […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Debórah Dwork, Robert Jan Van Pelt

All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein

November 13, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Hill and Wang, 1995. 272 pgs. Purchased. At 9:10 a.m. Gerda Weissmann’s life ended; the Nazis invaded Poland and red, black, and white flags with swastikas hung from her neighbor’s windows. Uncertainty turns into upheaval first with the deportation of her brother and then with the loss of her family’s home. Her ill father becomes listless; her mother withdrawals into herself. And almost as quickly as it begins Gerda finds herself in the Bielitz ghetto where she […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland, Textbook • Tags: Gerda Weissmann Klein

A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal

May 31, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Little, Brown, 2009. 230 pgs. Won in a giveaway. Thomas Buergenthal, now a judge at the International Court of Justice in The Hauge, was not quite six years old when he and his parents were forced into a Jewish ghetto in Poland. For the next four years they struggled there and in two labor camps, until they were placed in a train bound for Auschwitz. Separated first from his mother and then from his father, ten-year-old Thomas […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Thomas Buergenthal

The Bielski Brothers by Peter Duffy

May 27, 2009 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Harper Collins, 2003. 302 pgs. Library copy. In 1941, three young men — brothers — witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. What makes this particular story of interest is how the survivors responded. Instead of running or capitulating or giving in to despair, these brothers — Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski — did something […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction, Poland • Tags: Peter Duffy