Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall

November 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2006. 176 pgs. Purchased. The title of this novella comes from the actions of the story’s main character, Izolda Regenberg, who is singularity driven to chase down her “King of Hearts”, her husband, Shayek. As the situation in the Warsaw ghetto grew more desperate, Izolda hatched a plan for herself, Shayek, and his parents and sister to hide in Polish homes outside the ghetto. Only […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Peirene Press, Poland, Polish, Translated • Tags: Hanna Krall, Philip Boehm

This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held

July 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Haus Publishing, 2015. Originally published 2013. 272 pgs. Purchased.  In 1964, a Viennese man named Heiner is called to Frankfurt to testify at the war crimes trial of former SS officials and guards from Auschwitz. Heiner was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 for his membership in the Austrian Communist Party, and his testimony about typing death records in the prisoner’s infirmary is crucial to the prosecutor’s case. As […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Poland, Translated • Tags: Monika Held

Mischling by Affinity Konar

April 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Lee Boudreaux Books, 2016. 344 pgs. Purchased. In 1944, twelve-year-old twin sisters named Pearl and Stasha Zagorski are deported to Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. Desperate to save them, their mother seizes on the sight of triplets being led away from the cattle cars by a doctor in a white lab coat, dragging the girls out from under their grandfather’s coat and presenting them to the first guard she sees. Their mother doesn’t know – she […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: Affinity Konar

Fascism by Madeleine K. Albright

March 15, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – Kindle edition. Harper Perennial, 2019. Originally published 2018. 320 pgs. Library copy. In the conclusion of her book, Albright says that some may find the title of her book to be alarmist, but it is her belief that we are living in an alarming time. Her assertion holds gravitas because of her credentials – she served as the United States Secretary of State and the Ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 2001 – and her personal […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Asia, Balkans, Europe, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Nonfiction, North America, Poland, Russia, South America, United States • Tags: Madeleine K. Albright

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, 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