by Emilie Schindler with Erika Rosenberg ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1997
Schindler's list of triumphs and failures as recollected by the Holocaust hero's unsung and oft-stung widow. Schindler shares firsthand impressions of her suddenly celebrated husband, Oskar, whose entrepreneurial, humanitarian efforts saved the lives of many condemned Jews during the Holocaust. Much of what she reveals about Oskar is unflattering, as she is intent on puncturing the myth that has evolved around her husband's life since the phenomenal success of Steven Spielberg's movie Schindler's List. She paints a portrait of a deeply flawed man who was as erratic, immature, and self-serving as he was generous and kind. While she was struggling to scrape money together to obtain enough food on the black market to survive, her husband was squandering it on women and ``small pleasures and on objects for which we had not the slightest need.'' Schindler's appetite for women was insatiable, and his wife learned early on to just grin and bear it if she wished to stay married. While she approached life warily, Oskar almost always acted impulsively in his personal affairs. He often became indiscreetly involved with lower-class women, yet when it came to dealing with the SS high command, Oskar could be at once ``engaging and determined.'' She traces many of her husband's undesirable traits to his turbulent fahter, whom she describes as ``a hopeless alcoholic who, in one of his awful drinking binges, raped his wife's sister and got her pregnant.'' While never diminishing her husband's efforts and accomplishments in rescuing Jews during WW II, her own humanitarian endeavors are the focus here. Often endangering her own life, she did all she could to keep ailing factory workers alive and out of the reach of the Nazis. A stark, strained account of a singularly courageous couple, at the point where black-and-white cinematography meets naked truth. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-04123-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
Share your opinion of this book
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.