Top-notch microcosmic World War II history and an excellent illustration of the immense power of the written word.
Swedish journalist Åsbrink (1947: Where Now Begins, 2018, etc.) offers new information about the founder of IKEA’s Nazi ties, but that is secondary to the engrossing tale of a young Jew in Sweden during World War II.
At first rejecting Otto Ullmann’s daughter’s request to write his story, the author found it as compelling as readers will. Eva Ullmann gave her an IKEA box filled with letters from Otto’s parents dating from 1939, when the 13-year-old was one of 100 children sent to Sweden. The program that enabled him to escape was part of the Swedish Israel Mission, led by Birger Pernow, a pastor who was devoted to converting the Jews and felt that his child relief program would be effective. The plan was to bring 100 children whose parents had good reputations. Otto embarked on Feb. 1, 1939, on the train to Sweden. At first, he and 21 children were taken to a children’s home in Tollarp, and it would be years before he was finally sent out as a farm hand and found friendship. The author then introduces IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, who grew up the son of a wealthy farmer whose family had immigrated some years before. Otto and Ingvar met and became friends even as Ingvar participated in Nazi causes. Åsbrink expertly exposes Sweden’s tendency toward Nazism at the time, with geographical proximity as well as threats pushing the inclination. Her book, she writes is “an account of Sweden before the country became a ‘good’ one.” Ingvar’s grandmother and father were both devoted Nazis and were thrilled when Hitler took over their former home in the Sudetenland. Meanwhile, Otto was a lost young boy trying to survive and learn a new language. His only support and encouragement came in the form of the more than 500 letters from his family, which the author seamlessly weaves into the narrative. Just as important were the letters they received (now lost) from their son, knowing he was safe.
Top-notch microcosmic World War II history and an excellent illustration of the immense power of the written word.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-59051-917-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
HISTORY | MODERN | HOLOCAUST | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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