Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lest We Forget, 25 Oct 2005
A book that needs reading however distressing it maybe. Not a topic that everyone immediately finds appealing but very interesting none the less. Firsthand accounts of pre, mid and post holocaust from everyday people who lived during some of the most horrific times of the 20th century. A well collaborated and historically useful book especially as time passes We are rapidly losing the generations who can recount what happened during the holocaust, and this terrible episode in history should never be forgotten.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunting, terrifying and essential reading, 7 Jul 2007
There is little that I can add that other reviewers have not already said. It is not possible to understand what drove the Nazis to do such terrible things, but this book gives those who suffered at their hands a voice. It does not make for easy reading. It made me cry more then once and I did feel a lasting impact from it. It is crucial to learn about the holocaust, however, since with the world being as it is, it is not unfesible that history will repeat itself.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It is meant to shock you, 7 Mar 2007
Lyn Smith has been recording the experiences of the Holocaust survivors for the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive for the last 25 years. Through the voices and memories of 100 contributors I could now sketch a drawing in my head which helped me to imagine at least a small part of what had happened in Europe since the Nazi regime took over the rule and how it changed the world until now-a-days.
The book is the collection of many people's, who survived the Holocaust, memories. Although a huge majority of them where Jews of different nationalities, starting with Central and Eastern Europeans and ending up with Romanians and Greeks, Nazis also killed a great number of Communists, Poles, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, people with disabilities, Soviet Prisoners of war and Gipsies.
The book starts with the pre-war memories of the contributors. Most of them are happy and very joyful memories of calm and cosy childhoods (as most of them were children at the time) whether it would be in Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary or Poland. The Jews in the Western Europe never felt anti-Semitism in their societies, whist the ones living in the Eastern Europe like Poland, felt it more. Many of the Jew survivors in the book stated they actually have never been very Jewish and they didn't practice their religion either, they identified themselves with their nationalities rather than their religion.
However after the Nazi regime took over the rule in Germany in 1933, the Jew persecution started. The Jews were forced to wear a David star on their shoulders, the Jews abusing propaganda was distributed through the media, the society was asked not to communicate with Jews, they were not accepted to schools and universities, their businesses were destroyed, their wealth was taken away and there were ghettos created. A bit later the Nazis started taking Jews to the "east" which meant some sort of concentration or work camps.
The book is not exactly about the dates, numbers and what Nazis did. It is more about the human psychology and emotions and the way people's heads and hearts work in the situations which no one has ever imagined would ever happen. The Jews' and other groups' persecution during the WW2 has been the most horrible thing that has happened in the human history that I've came to know about. Over six million people has been killed and some state that the numbers are a lot higher as the Nazis has been trying to destroy as much killing evidence as possible. The survivors in their memories narrate everything in detail about what happened, how they felt and what horror they experienced. The reader can know about how Nazi soldiers treated prisoners and what was the life like in camps. I also got to know about the thing called "Holocaust denial" which means that many people think it actually didn't happen and don't believe it happened. The thing what shocked me most in the book was WHY did Nazis did that, what would cause such a strong believe and motivation to do what they did? I can't believe that any of them really believed in what they were doing. Many call it inhuman but since the moment humans did that, and almost all of the society played their bigger or lesser part in it, I started comprehending it as completely human.
The war is over but anti-Semitism is not. The camp survivors, after they returned into the society after the war was finished, couldn't adapt so easily. They were not accepted by the society and after going so intensively through the cruel Nazi programme of dehumanization, they had the feelings of guiltiness of being "different" and of being "Jews". Many of those people didn't have home to return to and they had no roots and no relatives to come back to. Only being between the ones of the same destiny they could find the complete understanding because no living human on earth who has not been there could ever even imagine what they have gone through. However, the survivors' life was going further but their sleep never seemed to be calm again.
I would really recommend this book to everyone, because it's a book about people and if it were not Jews, it could have been some other group. I think that no one should ever forget Holocaust and other horrible things that humans have done to themselves. Also, it is hard to believe but survived only those who decided to survive and only the strength of spirit has kept those people alive. Some people even joked in the camps and children adapted a lot easier than adults. This book is wonderful also in demonstrating the inner strength of a human being.
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