Despite the interpolations and footnotes of Gelissen's coauthor, a freelance writer who doesn't seem to fully understand the...
The amazing story of one of Auschwitz's longest survivors.
There's no such thing as a typical Holocaust story; the "Final Solution'' was so atypical as to effectively nullify the concept. Still, Gelissen's story is particularly unusual in that she was on the first transport to Auschwitz in 1942 and survived until the camp's liberation in 1945. The number on her arm, 1716, was so low that guards were disbelieving, thinking nobody could have lived that long. But Gelissen survived: a woman in her early 20s who was neither mistress to a guard nor a kapo; who received no preferential treatment except that which she ``organized'' for herself; who was so honest that she was chosen unanimously by over a hundred starving women to divide ten Red Cross packages that somehow made it into their block. Gelissen explains that it was precisely because she was on the first transport that she lived: As the Nazis were perfecting their death machine, she was honing her ``organizing'' skills, learning to acquire things through barter and cunning. When her sister Danka contracted malaria, for example, she got her quinine with the help of sympathetic fellow Polish male prisoners. She arranged for Danka and herself to be chosen by Dr. Mengele for what she believed would be easier, indoor work, but discovering that they had been chosen instead for experiments, Gelissen pulled Danka off the doomed line and the two blended back into camp life. Later, as winter approached, Gelissen had herself and Danka chosen by Mengele again, this time for the relatively humane laundry detail, where they worked until the death marches that immediately preceded liberation.
Despite the interpolations and footnotes of Gelissen's coauthor, a freelance writer who doesn't seem to fully understand the culture of prewar Polish Jewry and who provides verification in an unnecessary attempt to strengthen Gelissen's testimony, this is an uplifting tale of courage and humanity.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-7070-X
Page Count: 275
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
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
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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