A revealing epistolary portrait of one of WW II's most daring heroes and mysterious victims. Several books record how this Swedish diplomat in Hungary intrepidly rescued more than 100,000 Jews bound for extermination camps. But no book until this one (to be published on the 50th anniversary of his disappearance into the Soviet gulags) has offered such an intimate look at who Wallenberg really was. His formative years, it could be argued, occurred on the University of Michigan campus, where the young architect student was much affected by the ``can do'' American spirit that contrasted with his continental education. To give nature (vs. nurture) some due, we can credit much of his individualism and adventurousness to Gustaf Wallenberg, the ``Dearest Grandfather'' to whom most of Raoul's letters are addressed. Later correspondence bears postmarks from locations as far-flung as Mexico City and Johannesburg, but Wallenberg's epistles from Palestine are especially instructive for those trying to gauge whether or not his heroic period in Budapest was motivated by any specifically pro-Jewish attitude. On his way to a banking position in Haifa in 1936 he writes, ``Knowing the average South African Jew, I'm a bit pessimistic, but the trip may turn out to be pleasant nonetheless.'' Once there, however, he states that the Jews of Palestine ``are optimistic to a man, and were energy a guarantee for success the results would be excellent.'' While not all the scores of letters, memos, and dispatches here are of interest, overall, Wallenberg's personality comes through forcefully. The man who repeatedly risked his life to save Jews from Nazis and Hungarian fascists appears in these documents to be someone who enjoyed thwarting Eichmann and lesser bureaucrats, and who admired the Zionist enterprise and those who could help it. A valuable addition to Wallenberg and Holocaust literature, shedding new light on a shining exception that proves the darkest of rules. (16 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1995
ISBN: 1-55970-275-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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
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
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