by Elisabeth Sifton Fritz Stern ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 2013
A concise yet powerful contribution to an even larger history.
A convincing argument that theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his often overlooked brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi “deserve to be remembered together” for their courageous resistance to Hitler's Nazi regime.
Sifton (The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in the Times of Peace and War, 2003) and Stern (University Professor Emeritus/Columbia Univ.; Five Germanys I Have Known, 2006, etc.) have unique vantage points. Stern's parents were friends of Bonhoeffer, and he remains a friend to the children of Bonhoeffer's sister. Sifton's father, famed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, was also a friend and colleague. Both were active opponents of Hitler from the beginning. Bonhoeffer had won an international standing working against the Aryanization of churches in the 1930s. Dohnanyi attempted to help people targeted by the regime and began to compile a chronological record, together with documentation of Nazi crimes, for use after the regime fell. While working in counterintelligence, he recruited Bonhoeffer to join with him and his sister Christine in what the authors call “their conspiracy against the state.” Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer were subsequently involved in organizing the March 1943 plots against Hitler. Held for two years under appalling conditions, they were executed less than a month before the end of the war, as were other members of their extended families. Particularly powerful are the quotations from letters and communications from jail. The authors quote from a letter Christine wrote in September 1945: “I believe it is better to know for what one dies than not to know what exactly one is living for.” Sifton and Stern answer the question about whether Bonhoeffer has been remembered correctly and also discuss both men’s unsuccessful attempts to reach out to the Allies for support.
A concise yet powerful contribution to an even larger history.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59017-681-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New York Review Books
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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