Powerful testimony from 29 German women survivors of the Third Reich that provides not only a stunning portrait of life on the home front but also insights into a society that spawned both Hitler and the Holocaust. Wanting to find out why German women ``did not behave like the humane peacemakers, the nurturers that people believe women really are, [and] stop the Nazis,'' Owings, a TV news-writer based in California, visited and revisited her subjects over a period of years, usually in their homes, where she was cordially received. Those interviewed include a former concentration-camp guard; the widow of a Resistance hero; a lifelong Communist residing in what was then East Germany; and an unrepentant Nazi schoolteacher. Also offering testimony are Lotte Muller, a plumber, who was sent to Ravensbruck—the notorious women's camp—because of her Communist connections; former countess Maria von Lingen, who always thought of herself as more a European than a German; Margret Blersch, a physician who helped save people the ``Nazis would have murdered;'' and Erna Dubnak, a low-paid worker who hid her ``dear friend'' Hilda Naumann, a Jew, throughout the war. During the war, most of the women endured great hardships as bombing raids intensified, food grew scarce, and the Russians advanced. The collapse of the German economy and the climate of fear that the Nazis created initially ensured the support of many of Owens's subjects—but according to Freya von Moltke, whose husband was executed by the Nazis, even those who didn't support Hitler carry a burden of guilt: ``People who lived through the Nazi time, and who still live, who did not lose their lives because they were opposed, all had to make compromises.'' Oral history at its best, and a much-needed record of WW II German women, who ``faced the day-to-day consequences of the Third Reich with impudence or despair, hesitation or hope, with shame, and with blinders.'' (First printing of 7,500)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1993
ISBN: 0-8135-1992-6
Page Count: 550
Publisher: Rutgers Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 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.
