A significant new chapter of Holocaust history.
An uplifting story of music emanating from the depths of one of the 20th century’s most horrific periods.
Drawing on abundant archival sources, Paris-based journalist Eyre makes his book debut with a well-researched dual biography of two men who brought the consolation of music to the Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen: Polish nationalist and amateur musician Aleksander Kulisiewicz (1918-1982) and Jewish choral conductor Rosebery D’Arguto (1890-1942). Although Aleks, as he’s referred to throughout, had been a member of antisemitic groups as a young man, he later renounced those views. After Germany invaded Poland, he joined an underground network of tutors, which led to his arrest when Nazis rounded up teachers, students, and intellectuals. Rosebery had been a choir director in Berlin before leaving for Warsaw in 1938; returning for what he thought would be a brief visit, he was arrested in 1939. Eyre depicts in harrowing detail the brutality inflicted on the camp inmates, including Aleks and Rosebery. Aleks managed to survive by his wits and an astute sense of camp structure and hierarchy. He took to composing poems and lyrics, bearing witness to the carnage and inhumanity sometimes by overlaying his own words on existing melodies. When he discovered that Rosebery had convened a choir in the Jewish barracks, he was astounded, and the older man quickly became Aleks’ musical mentor. He was devastated when Rosebery was sent to Dachau and then to Auschwitz. When the camp was evacuated and the war ended, Aleks emerged emaciated, ill with tuberculosis, and deeply depressed. Mentally, he claimed, “he still lived in the camp,” making it impossible to feel joy or even friendship. Two marriages failed, and he was a distant father to his children. Instead, he became obsessively devoted to gathering music, poetry, and art of the camps, including the 50 songs that he had created and others he had memorized, and worked tirelessly to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
A significant new chapter of Holocaust history.Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9780393531862
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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