The Chief Rabbi of Israel recounts a harrowing journey from child prisoner in Buchenwald to champion of Holocaust survivors.
The son of successive generations of rabbis from Poland, Lau was just five years old when he and his family were separated during the Nazi roundups of Jews in of 1942. His father was sent to Treblinka, never to be heard from again; the author and his mother and oldest brother, Nephtali (who had already escaped from Auschwitz and returned) were first interned in a Polish ghetto, then sent by train in 1944 to Buchenwald. On a split-second decision by his mother during the selections, Lau was cast toward his brother in the men’s cars, as if she had understood that the women and the children were killed first. A baffling presence to the Nazis, the child was sheltered and protected by various prisoners—may of whom Lau later tried to find. His relegation to “block number eight” seemed to have saved him, and he was checked on by his brother, who was remarkably resilient and persevering. American troops liberated Buchenwald in April 1945; Nephtali and Lau, despite battling postwar illnesses such as typhoid fever and measles, finally made their way to Israel, where an uncle welcomed them and Lau began his long, rewarding journey to becoming educated and ordained as a rabbi. Alternating his Holocaust memories with more recent events such as visits back to the camps with dignitaries and heads of state, Lau inserts poignant details, such as first learning about the fate of their mother, while administering wedding services in the 1970s, by a woman who had known her in Ravensbrück. Lau addresses frankly the postwar silence about the Holocaust and the issue of Jewish submission. His deep knowledge of biblical scripture informs every page of this finely tuned work. Uplifting story of peace, reconciliation and an incredible life’s journey.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4027-8631-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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