The New Yorker correspondent has hosts of admirers who will welcome this urbane, sharply observed, neatly recorded commentary — France, England, France again this time in Africa. His pieces touch on a miscellany of men and places and reflect the national temper through small incidents, casual conversations. Belonging to the one-war category of war correspondents, Liebling inveigled an overseas assignment in 1939, promised to stay away from low life, and went to Paris. His stories deal with a motley cross-section, — Generals, Christmas on the Maginet line, German prisoners, the fall of Paris, new capital — briefly — at Tours, etc. Post-Blitz Britain and a return to the States on a Norwegian tanker; then Africa where-with Ernie Pyle, Sheean and others, he stayed in the background — Oran — and then went with the infantry into Gafsa. Precise, informed writing of greater literary merit but less action value than the average correspondent's story today.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 0679602488
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
A travelogue, spanning two weeks, of the essential sites of the Holocaust, by the venerable historian and author of many books, including The Boys (p. 116), an oral history of concentration camp survivors. Gilbert, professor of Holocaust studies at University College (London), guides one of his classes on an extraordinary field trip: to Berlin, Prague, Zilina, Cracow, Auschwitz, Zamosc, Lublin, Warsaw, Piotrkow, Konin, and the rail stations and villages in-between. He lectures at the most significant sites—of desecrated synagogues, book burnings, and gas chambers—bringing in local historians with their archival letters and diaries. To these moving testaments Gilbert here adds the voices of his fellow travelers, both Jews and non-Jews, who draw closer as the trip progresses and they relive the terrible history. Gilbert does not simply chronicle atrocities, however, but brings into his narrative the history of Jewish settlements prior to their decimation; of labor and political movements; and of WW I's effect on Germany and the rise of the Nazis. In Berlin, for instance, he lectures his students on the murder of the Communist Labor leader Rosa Luxemburg. At the same time, he weaves in telling details, such as the story of an old, dignified man, newly arrived at Auschwitz, who somehow held onto a pouch full of diamonds. Daily, he negotiated with his brutal foreman, trading diamonds for potatoes. The passages concerning Birkenau are moving in an immediate way: Gilbert quotes the Nuremberg testimony of a doctor who watched as starved women undressed and filed into the gas chambers, even as his students walk in their steps. Yet there is irony: Auschwitz is an international tourist destination now, with professionals and amateurs alike making money as if it were Yellowstone or Machu Picchu. The very best book for any Jew, or any human being, planning the same soul-searching trip. (52 photos, 53 maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-231-10964-4
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
Hoffman, author of the much-admired memoir Lost in Translation (1989), here returns to her dual roots, Jewish and Polish—and her history of the intertwined fates of the two peoples shows that they can indeed be complementary, not oppositional. Hoffman's goal is larger than her distillation of history- -acute and pointed, but a bit too schematic—can fully support. But her thesis is a fascinating one: that Poland, with historically large populations of Germans, Ukrainians, Jews, and other ethnic groups, was truly a multicultural society that can serve as an object lesson in how to achieve (or not achieve) a balance between minority group identity and ``a sense of mutual belonging.'' Where she does succeed fully is in her attempt to ``complicate and historicize the picture'' of Jewish-Polish relations in order to get beyond stereotyped views of Poles as congenitally anti-Semitic and of Jews as economic exploiters. Hoffman offers a nuanced view that excuses no act of hatred or violence yet considers, for instance, the difference between peasants' superstitious belief that Jews were lucky and genuine anti-Semitism, or how the endless conquering and division of Poland increased tensions and mistrust between Poles and Jews. Hoffman traces the history of Jews in Poland back to its origins in medieval times, before fervent Polish nationalism was born and the country was a beneficent refuge for Jews. She then focuses in on one shtetl, or village, Brask, as a microcosm of the waxing and waning of relations between the two peoples. In Brask, Polish peasants and Jewish craftsmen and merchants lived side by side: Poles attended cantorial concerts, and Jewish musicians played at Polish weddings; Poles incorporated Yiddish phrases into their speech, and Jews adopted the dress of Polish gentry. And yet, Hoffman concludes, each was seen as fundamentally ``Other.'' But Hoffman is optimistic that the gulf can be—and is being- -crossed. This insightful overview points out how we can begin to understand a complex past and apply those lessons in the future.
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-395-82295-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
