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

Edith’s Story by Edith Velmans

August 12, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Bantum, 2001. Originally published 1998. 256 pgs. Gift from my mom. Subtitled “The True Story of a Young Girl’s Courage and Survival During World War II”, Velmans’ story begins in the 1950s with the birth of her twin daughters at a hospital in the Netherlands. She shares her hospital room with Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis and returned Anne’s diary to her father at the end of the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Edith Velmans

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

Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano

April 8, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale University Press, 2014. 213 pgs. Library copy. Like many who read solely in English, the announcement that Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature left me a bit confounded. I have never heard of the author and never, to my recollection, seen a review for his work on one of the many book blogs I religiously read. Journalists and bloggers alike blamed the lack of awareness for his […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Genocide, Holocaust, Nobel Prize, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Patrick Modiano

MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman

November 17, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Pantheon, 2011. 300 pgs. Library copy. This companion to Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus contains one long interview with the author addressing the questions he commonly receives about his work – Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics? – and explores the impact the novel has had on those around Spiegelman in a series of smaller, shorter interviews. It also includes an archive of the audio interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father, historical documents he used to supplement the […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Art, Comics, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Art Spiegelman

Anne Frank and Me by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld

October 30, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Puffin, 2001. 291 pgs. Purchased. The “me” in the title is American teenager Nicole Burns, who blogs about her frustrations with school, her inability to measure up to the ideal body or as the ideal student and daughter that her sister Elizabeth (known as Little Bit or LB on the blog) seems to be, and her infatuation with her classmate Jack (known as J on the blog) under the penname “Girl X”. “Frightening Thought du Jour: We […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Juvenile • Tags: Cherie Bennett, Jeff Gottesfeld

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

October 20, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Harcourt, 2005. 479 pgs. Library copy. Told in a duel narrative structure, Blum’s novel largely focuses on the life of Trudy Schlemmer’s mother, Anna, during World War II in Germany with occasionally glimpses into the lives of Trudy and Anna in the United States during the 1990s. A professor of German history at the University of Minnesota, Trudy has launched an audio-visual interview project where she asks non-Jewish Germans about their experiences in Nazi Germany; a project […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Book Club, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, North America, United States • Tags: Jenna Blum

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

September 29, 2014 by Christina

Martel’s novel is about the Holocaust. I state such a fact so starkly because I am still trying to wrap my head around his use of this topic. I admit, I picked this book up solely because of my deep and abiding affection for Life of Pi – both the novel and the film – and then avoided it for four years after hearing whispers of heavy criticism following its publication. I finally picked it up in part because of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust • Tags: Mark Bramhall, Yann Martel

Saving Amelie by Cathy Gohlke

September 1, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Tyndale House Publishers, 2014. 453 pgs. Library copy. A eugenics researcher from America and his daughter, Rachel Kramer, are well-received in Germany during the summer of 1939, but Rachel’s attention is on subverting the advances of SS Office Gerhardt Schlick, whom she rejected a marriage proposal from five years ago and who is now married to her former best friend, Kristine. But Gerhardt sees his daughter, deaf since birth, as a blight on his Aryan bloodline and […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust • Tags: Cathy Gohlke

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