2007 books

[peteryoung]

11) Fred Uhlman, Reunion, 1971
A first-person novella about a Jewish German schoolboy who befriends a classmate from an Aryan, aristocratic family with Nazi sympathies. It's 1933, Hitler has just become Chancellor and official attitudes towards Jews are changing, as is the foundation of their friendship. As a microcosm of the Jewish German experience the book only skirts the edges of the politics, focussing instead on the tensions that pull the two boys apart. In his introduction Arthur Koestler describes the book's tone well: "There is none of the Wagnerian fury; it is as if Mozart had re-written the Götterdämmerung." Straightforward but quietly memorable.

Comments

[cherienb55.livejournal.com]

Hi -- not sure what led me to your LJ but now that I've found it, I see that we share a number of interests, and I like your book reviews. Mind if I list you as a friend? I am particularly interested in your thoughts about Poles and the Holocaust -- I have a very specific interest in that area!

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not, and I see we both also have SF as an interest. Most of what I post is either brief book or music reviews, or photography (I'm at flickr here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ascendent).

I have piles of unread books – fiction, SF and non-fiction – with many about WW2. What's behind your "specific" interest?

[cherienb55.livejournal.com]

Also have piles -- but you seem to be a really fast reader, judging from how frequently you are doing reviews. I'm just in the middle of "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. Better than some similar stuff I've read recently.

In 1994 I met a Polish woman named Zofia who had been a prisoner in Ravensbruck and Auschwitz, for the duration of the war. She was captured at the age of 40 taking info to the French consulate in Lithuania. She was 93 when I met her. We clicked right away, and she charged me to "tell people her story." Several years later she sent to our mutual friend in Poland a collection of poetry that she had written while a prisoner at Auschwitz. My friend gave it to me after Zofia died; she felt Zofia would have wanted me to have it. I have had it translated into English, and some of it is extraordinary. My translator tells me it is, as far as he knows, the only poetry that was actually written AT Auschwitz, although many former prisoners have written poetry after. So I have this charge to do something with this, and have been researching Zofia and the Polish experience with the holocaust, and have done a couple of presentations. It is amazing to me how many people have no idea that 3 million or so non-Jewish Poles were also killed during WW2. When I visited the Holocaust Museum in Wash. DC several years ago there were about 5,000 books written on the Jewish experience, and about 5 on the Poles. So I have an opportunity to do something with this material that could be of interest to someone. Just stalled on where to go with it. I know that she was first in Ravensbruck, then Auschwitz until the "march [back] to Ravensbruck," and there until they were moved out and finally "liberated" by the British. I know that she spent some time in Britain before returning to Poland, and I just have a hunch that she may have testified on Ravensbruck while she was there -- she was very intelligent and well-educated. So I need to get to the national archives in Britain to follow up.

Anyway, very short version of a project that I have been working on since 1998. Hence my interest in anything holocaust-related.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Very interesting indeed, I look forward to reading more on your LJ.

Online I've written on 3 books about Poland/Holocaust/WW2 – one being a fake – here (http://flyingsauce.livejournal.com/tag/poland). Look forward to any comments you may have.