Oral History Books - Page 4

Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles of Anna Heilman

Anna Heilman

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: University of Calgary Press Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $12.89

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A striking, gripping memoir of life in a concentration camp. 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 20 people found this review helpful.

Never Far Away: The Auschwitz Chronicles Of Anna Heilman gathers and presents the memories of Anna Heilman, who fought for survival in Auschwitz during the Holocaust. Anna's life in Warsaw became one of loss and a fight to live as she recalls her life before, during and after the war. A striking, gripping memoir of life in the camp and a very strongly recommended addition to academic and community library Holocaust Studies and 20th Century European History Studies readling lists and reference collections.

Well wriiten Chronicle 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderfully written and descriptive memoir. Anna's vivid and beautiful memories of her life before the war are particularly involving. I, personally, was captivated by them. Her concetration camp memoirs are heartbreaking and informative. A very worthwhile read.

emotionally educational 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This book gives much insight into pre-war conditions in places such as the Warsaw Ghetto, etc - none of this taught in History classes; Annas memoirs are deeply moving. I wish the book read more smoothly; every page has numerous footnotes explaining words definitions and who people were, causing constant interruption in such involved reading. I believe 98% of the footnotes could have been eliminated by including them within the paragraph, making the entire book smooth rather than disheveled. Her story is sad but moving and educational.

Editorial Review:

Brings to print the mysterious story of the Gunpowder Plot, where women working as slave labourers in the Union Munitions factory plotted to destroy Auschwitz crematoriums.

The Dentist of Auschwitz: A Memoir

Benjamin Jacobs

Amazon Price: $15.56 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 3 to 5 weeks By: University Press of Kentucky Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $6.34

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Remarkable Story of Courage and Survival 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I found out about this book after reading another book that the author co-wrote. It is called The 100-Year Secret and it deals with a portion of the material that is contained in The Dentist of Auschwitz. The author spent almost five years in various camps, riding in closed railroad cars in summer, open railroad cars in winter, on death marches in the dead of winter, and on "hell ships," that were mistakingly attacked by the RAF and he, along with his brother still outlived the Nazi monsters that created this world for them. How Jacobs managed to survive his voyage through "man's inhumanity to man" is at the heart of this amazing story of survival. I promise you will not be able to put this book down.

Editorial Review:

The story of Berek Jakubowicz (now Benjamin Jacobs), a Jewish dental student, is a gripping account of the horrors of the Holocaust. Jacobs was deported in 1941 from his Polish village and taken to a Nazi labor camp where he remained a prisoner of the Reich until the ending days of war. He is convinced that he owes his survival to the possession of a few dental tools and rudimentary skills as he was moved from labor camp to labor camp. Jacobs writes about the loss of family, what life was like as a prisoner, and the horrible truths about the Holocaust that only a survivor can tell.

“Goes far beyond most personal accounts of the Holocaust in reflecting the author’s raw courage, his will power, and his luck over a seemingly never-ending four-year period.”—Gerard E. Silberstein

To Be an Indian: An Oral History (Borealis)

Joseph H. Cash

Amazon Price: $16.95 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks By: Minnesota Historical Society Press Amazon Marketplace: 10 new & used starting at $10.00

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> Native American -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

In this remarkable collection of transcribed oral histories, members of Dakota, Lakota, Winnebago, and other communities tell of their personal experiences: reservation life, the Great Depression, self-government, traditions, and life in the 1960s. Together these voices present a rich and complicated view of what it is to be an American Indian.

Remember For Life: Holocaust Survivors' Stories of Faith and Hope

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Subjects -> History -> Military -> World War II -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

Memory is about choice. We can choose to remember the past in ways that provoke pain and stir our anger, or we can remember in ways that help us create the kind of world in which we most want to live.

Nowhere is this choice more important than in connection to the Holocaust. And never has it been more important than now, because we are the first generation that will live without the presence of those who can tell us in their own words what they have seen with their own eyes.

These 71 first-hand stories from survivors teach us to choose to remember for life. Their words are not about hatred and death, but about ethics, decency and love.

The stories are arranged to accompany the weekly Torah readings and many of the Jewish holidays, but they are just as meaningful when read on their own, in any sequence. The themes -- journey, identity, resistance, community, refuge, righteousness, and many more -- are universal, but the people are real. And their lessons about how to live more fully the life we are given shine through those dark years.

Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust

Gay Block, Malka Drucker

List Price: $49.95 By: Holmes & Meier Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 9 new & used starting at $7.08

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A beautiful photo-interview essay on altruism... 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 29 people found this review helpful.

This book is wonderfully formatted, arranged by geographic area of Europe. Each interview starts with black and white photos a person who helped Jews and other persecuted people during WWII. A personal narrative of that time in their lives follows, and each interview closes with a color photo of that person as they were in 1992 when the interviews were done. A complicated and moving picture of altruism emerges, and one gets a glimpse of how individuals chose to protect others at the risk of threat to themselves and their families.

Editorial Review:

A welcome addition to Holocaust literature, this work presents a series of 49 personal reminiscences of non-Jewish citizens in various European nations who risked their lives to hide resident Jews from the Nazi horror. Most of those interviewed felt their actions were done out of friendship and for people caught in a web of hatred and anti-Semitism. They did not feel that they were acting heroically but that they were doing what was right. Portraits by Block of each of the rescuers accompany the text. These 49 are representative of the 9,295 rescuers honoured at the Yad Vashem in Israel. This is recommended reading for general readers as well as for college and university libraries.

The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom

Adam Hilberg

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Subjects -> History -> Europe -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Worth the read--but get the background first 5 out of 5 stars.
28 of 29 people found this review helpful.

This is the daily diary of the man who was the head of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation and most of the ghetto period. Czerniakow was misunderstood by a lot of people, and to avoid this I suggest some background reading about the ghetto first (Emanuel Ringelblum's Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, Bogdan Wojdowski's Bread for the Departed, John Hersey's The Wall (fiction)). This is because Czerniakow does not give a lot of detail about life in the ghetto (and occupied Warsaw before the ghetto) for the ordinary person. It does not at all mean he was unaware of conditions; he was trying to do an impossible job and please everyone at the same time: the ghetto residents, the other council members, the profiteers, the Polish city administration, the German army, and the SS. That he accomplished any positive goals at all is remarkable and his story must be looked at from that perspective. It comes across clearly that he acted according to his conscience and put his personal concerns last. Without the introductions and the supplementary notes the diary might be difficult to understand, as Czerniakow did not always put down full names or explanations and kept entries brief. It was suggested he may have been afraid of it falling into the wrong hands with good reason. Therefore, I would say it takes a reader with some knowledge of the ghetto period and the Nazi occupation of Poland to get the fullest understanding from this book. I do on that basis give it the highest recommendation.

Editorial Review:

Adam Czerniakow was for almost three years the chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat-a Jew, devoted to his people, who served as the Nazi-sponsored "mayor" of the Warsaw Ghetto. This secret journal is not only the testimony of an unbearable personal burden but the documentary of the Ghetto's terminal agony.

From that Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938-1947

Lucy S. Dawidowicz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An extraordinary personal document 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

As a counterpoint to her more comprehensive scholarly work on the holocaust, this book provides several personal vignettes of that period in history. Beginning in New York City the account covers making arrangements for the trip, the author's stay in Vilna, a center of Jewish culture in Poland including elements of daily life, cultural, and political events, her narrow escape from Poland as the Nazi invasion progresses, and the finally agonizing wait in New York as news of the insuing catastrophy arrives in bits and pieces. This book provides insight into what it was like to live through that period in history, and may help those close to them to understand people who actually lived through it.

Editorial Review:

From that Place and Time is the memoir of Lucy S. Dawidowicz, an American-Jewish historian who set out to study Yiddish language and Jewish history at YIVO, the Jewish Scientific Institute in Vilna, Poland, in 1938. Escaping Poland only days before the Nazi onslaught, she worked in the New York YIVO during the war, and returned to Europe from 1946 to 1947 to aid Jewish displaced persons in Munich and Belsen with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Dawidowicz's memoir not only describes her pre-war year in Jewish Eastern Europe, but also treats the ghostly post-war period, and her role in salvaging what remained of Vilna's scorched Jewish archives and libraries.
Nancy Sinkoff's new introduction explores the historical forces, particularly the dynamic world of secular Yiddish culture, which shaped Dawidowicz's decision to journey to Poland and her reassessment of those forces in the last years of her life.

Striking Back: A Jewish Commando's War Against the Nazis

Peter Masters

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Leaders & Notable People -> Military -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A terrific read. Shows D Day as it really was. 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

One of the best written books about the invasion and the training leading up to it, from the aspect of Jewish teen refugees who were formed into a commando unit of the British army. No histrionics,just good writing.

A Hidden Masterpiece about Ignored Heroes 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I have read this book about seven or eight times. When I finally met the author, Peter Masters, he asked in his usual humble style, "Why?" Here are my answers. It tells a largely ignored story in a literate, humane, and humble way. It tells how people who were victimized in outrageous ways were able to strike back and help defeat their oppressors. It also tells a story of which I (and all of the other World War II history buffs of my acquaintance)was totally igonorant. Finally, it is a story of courage in the face of outrageous horror that stands as a model of how we should react to terror today. In a nutshell: 87 young Jewish refugees were formed into an elite, secret Commando unit of the British Army; all spoke fluent, idiomatic German; all were required to hide their real identities and take on native British personas and names;they were trained in intelligence, reconnaissance, prisoner interrogation, and German tactics; they landed at D-Day, performed courageously thorughout the European war; 19 of the 87 died; the survivors lived to see the defeat of their tormentors. This is a fascinating story of human courage in the face of outrage. And the good guys win! Now my question: why hasn't this book become the subject of a movie or mini-series? In any event, order it now and read it, perhaps seven or eight times -- and tell all your friends to do the same.

Editorial Review:

The amazing, true story of a member of a secret World War II British commando unit, 3 Troop, 10 Commando.

Am I A Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman

Calel Perechodnik

List Price: $26.50 By: Westview Press Amazon Marketplace: 17 new & used starting at $11.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Important Document 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

When I read Perechodnik's book years ago, I was profoundly moved by the experiences of the writer in the war years. Having just travelled to Germany and seen some concentration camps, I started reading avidly on the Holocaust and the experiences of survivors and perpetrators. The poignant title of the book was the thing that caught my eye and it remains one of the most startling and powerful accounts of the evil that took place in WWII. It is amazing that this first-hand account survived and I wish it was as highly circulated and read as Anne Frank's diary. Perechodnik's account lets us into the sacrifces one has to make in extreme situations and the guilt he feels throughout the war for abandoning his wife and kid entreats us. A harrowing experience. Let us never forget the humanity in us.

Personal note: the most nightmarish book I have ever read. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is not a review, only a personal note. I read the book in its original Polish edition. And having read a number of books on Holocaust and supposed Polish participation in it I just expected some new information on this subject. But this first hand account of what happened to the Otwock Jews and of barbaric behaviuor of Poles from Otwock cannot be more persuasive on the existence of common guilt of the Polish nation for not fighting Holocaust and what's more for taking part in it. Let's not jugde the caught by the horrible times "policeman" His writing stops beating of your heart. After one long evening of reading I went to sleep and had the worst nightmare of my life: I was put into a transport to Treblinka

Woodstock: The Oral History

Joel Makower

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An invaluable history told by the people who lived it 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I have read this book over and over, and it never fails to fascinate me. Anyone who wishes they were in Bethel, NY on August 15th, 1969 should buy this book. It's filled with facts that I've never heard anywhere else, and most importantly, it is told by the people who were there: everyone from promoters and artists to festival-goers and burger-flippers. Fans of the movie and the music should invest in this book- it's a great read.

woodstock 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I think this book was great i enjoyed it it covered a lot of things about woodstock performances, people. i also think that if i were to get a wqoodstock book to get Information about it i would choose this book