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OPERATION YELLOW STAR / BLACK THURSDAY

Name: OPERATION YELLOW STAR / BLACK THURSDAY
Author: Maurice Rajsfus
ISBN: 978-0-9978184-0-6

by Maurice Rajsfus & translated by Phyllis Aronoff ; Mike Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 27, 2017

A heartfelt, timely plea to remember past atrocities.

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An unsparing indictment of Paris police during the Nazi occupation.

On July 16, 1942, 14-year-old Rajsfus was among thousands of Jews rounded up in Paris in compliance with German orders. Most were interned and deported, never to return, but he was fortunate enough to be released. In honor of his entire family, who were killed by Nazis, the author emotionally recalls that Black Thursday, which forms half of this book; he precedes it with Operation Yellow Star, based on newspaper reports and official papers, documenting the eagerness of French policemen “to take part in all repressive operations.” Loyal to the Vichy government, Rajsfus asserts, “the police got behind the racist ideology and imposed the laws that were those of a totalitarian state.” One of the major laws mandated that all Jews wear a yellow star, making them easily identifiable and subject to accusation, detention, and arrest. Sympathizers who took up the star themselves, as an expression of solidarity, were arrested, too. A few prominent cultural figures and wives of government loyalists were given exemptions, Rajsfus discovered, but when the writer Colette asked for an exemption for her Jewish husband, she was denied. The author’s memory of July 16 is harrowing: the family was awakened before 5 a.m. and told to pack in five minutes. Although arrests throughout Paris had been occurring for more than a year, still the family was surprised. Flanked by police, they were taken to a squalid house that served as a makeshift prison. Suddenly, an officer announced that all children 14 or older would be released if their parents agreed, and Rajsfus and his older sister found themselves alone on the street. They returned to their apartment, where, months later, they received a note from their father: “We are leaving for Germany.” Besides commemorating his family’s murder, Rajsfus raises awareness about how “the enemies of human rights are once more gaining ground,” spouting xenophobia that is easily transferable to any minority group.

A heartfelt, timely plea to remember past atrocities.

Pub Date: June 27, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9978184-0-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: DoppelHouse Press

Review Posted Online: April 9, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)