A lamentably familiar, chilling reminder of the depths to which humans can sink.
A survivor of the Holocaust chronicles his horrific experiences in the “barbed-wire hell” of Auschwitz.
A Dutch physician, de Wind was transported to Auschwitz in 1943 and was alive when the Red Army arrived in 1945. He stayed at the camp, working as a doctor for the other survivors and writing this book. It was published in the Netherlands in 1946 but nowhere else, so this is its first appearance in English. Readers who assume that victims marched directly from the trains to the gas chambers will quickly learn that many had to endure numerous other awful crimes before they were executed. Auschwitz was not one but a series of huge camps, only one of which contained the crematoriums. An estimated 1.3 million were sent there, and about 83% died. The author begins with his train ride from a Dutch camp. Prisoners were locked in an ordinary freight car with a bucket for a toilet and no food or water for a trip that lasted three days, sometimes longer. Upon arrival, all luggage and valuables were confiscated; children, the aged, and the infirm were often immediately gassed. Jews capable of working as well as non-Jews were stripped naked, shaved, sprayed with disinfectant, ordered to choose clothes from a pile taken from dead prisoners, and packed into overcrowded barracks. Most worked in mines, quarries, heavy construction, or factories, many operated by long-established Germany companies. The conditions were barbaric: The diet, which consisted of about 1,500 calories per day, according to the author, could not sustain even a sedentary person, so most died after a few months, and their skeletal bodies were burned. Auschwitz contained a few privileged institutions such as a hospital, food preparation facilities, and warehouses; prisoners assigned in these areas had a greater chance of surviving. That included the author, who delivers a harrowing account that contains the same horrors, unspeakable behavior, suffering, and occasional humanity revealed in other concentration camp memoirs.
A lamentably familiar, chilling reminder of the depths to which humans can sink.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8575-2683-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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