Poland Books

I read this book with intensity, and believe me I don't read very much. I never understood the complexity or the intensity of WWII until I read this book.
I am a navy sailor and I have spent most of my time not realizing what that ment. I read this book after 9/11 and it helped me understand the sevarity of war and how tragic it is.
And even though it might be thought that I have a biased opinion towards my father's book, this is one that you will not put down!

Some books of this type are tedious and rehash the same stories of an awful time in our recent history. I began this reading with reservations, but immediately found it not only an easy read but a page turner. Being written in the first person gives life and excitement to what could have been just another story. This book puts you there. You feel their anxiety. You experience their near hopelessness and rejoice in their triumph. This is a must read for anyone.

David's story starts on the day the German army attacked Poland at the beginning of World War II. It chronicles one man's struggle to save his family from the Nazis and the heroic efforts he made to save hundreds of other people in the process. David never stopped believing in life and he never stopped believing in God. Through every twist and turn first, while hiding from the Nazis then in the Warsaw Ghetto and finally in Bergen Belsen his quick thinking kept his family safe.

You will not put this book down until David's final liberation. This book is a tribute to his zest for life. Through all the death and destruction David never lost his faith.

David Gilbert is a true hero. His story makes personal what now seems so far removed. It should be read by all those who want to learn from the inhumanity of the Nazi era. This book should be required high school reading. David's story is about life and one man's triumph over incredible odds.

Countries have a long history of ingratitude towards those who save them from peril. This book, in fictional form, was the first part of a planned trilogy detailing how the Polish army under King Jan Sobieski rescued the Western world from the encroachment of the Turks, by relieving the siege of Vienna in 1683. Without that victory, our entire history would probably have changed. What thanks did Poland receive for this tremendous accomplishment? It was dismembered by the very countries it had saved!
Sienkiewicz was a fine writer, unfortunately nearly unknown in these times. This is a robust work, but there is a dominant theme of patriotism infusing his characters. Rarely is love of country shown so clearly as in this work. It is also a love story, and a well-told one at that. The book has Sienkiewicz's usual elements: star-crossed lovers, strudy and loyal heroes, hissable villans, and characters who offer welcome comic relief. The writing is a bit old fashioned at times, but the patriotic feeling with which it was written practically leaps off the page at you. This book is much shorter than Sienkiewicz's other works that I have read, but its brevity does not diminish its impact.

This book is written beautifully and patriotically, you find yourself wanting to postpone evrything around you so can immerse you totally in the book
a well written novel by the master story teller sienkiewicz
definatly a keeper you will read it again
Have a good day

First of all, as much as I love this book, I'd suggest that the first Henryk Sienkiewicz book a person should read be either Quo Vadis or With Fire and Sword. They are long but worth it. This book - incredible as it is - is almost just a fragment compared with the giant scale and spirit of his other books that I've read. Even so, it is head and shoulders above most literature in so many ways.

You really get a sense of the times from Sienkiewicz, and this book is no exception. The descriptions of the armies and the countryside and the people in them establish a very concrete setting. Even so, Sienkiewicz infuses everything in the book with thematic relevance, but it is all done so very subtly that only gradually does the reader cumulatively percieve what the author wants him to understand. This must have been very difficult to accomplish, but he makes it seem effortless.

All the characterizations are centered on ideals and you come to know the people in the story through what they stand for and do. It hardly matters what any character's goal is. What's important here is the idealism and purity - or lack thereof - with which they pursue those goals. The heroes are extremely idealized, and the villians are predatory and evil. The "damsel in distress" is not typecast as a ditz. She is a full participant in the action - almost the main character - and her nobility is played off to great advantage against the trials she goes through. It's hard to resist such larger than life portrayals. Plus, the action is fast paced and always interesting.

Admitedly, this novel was the first of a planned trilogy that Sienkiewicz never completed and it shows a little. On the Field of Glory stands on its own, but it is still just a first act. Jacek's character is probably developed more fully in what would have been book two. In On the Field of Glory, we see powerful, passionate people who are being swept up into a greater conflict, but we do not get to see that greater conflict.

An excellent book that stands on its own, but it's a great loss to world literature that Sienkiewicz couldn't complete the trilogy!

This is an incredible story and told with such honesty. She doesn't try to paint a pretty picture, even of suffering, she just tells you what happened to her and her mother and her friends as best she can. What a remarkable woman!

I read this book many times for over a year. It is a wonderful book about a girl that survived one of the most infamous concentration camps during the Holocaust, it shows courage, strength, and the will to live.

I loved this book. It told the real life story of a girl who survived against great odds in one of the most deadly concentration camps. It was wonderful.

Whether you believe in, are curious about, or completely disagree with Revisionist arguments, this book is definitely worth the time to check out. It doesn't matter what side you're on, this book will stir strong emotions. The Rudolf Report can only be loved or hated.

Rudolf cites many sources and photographs for all of the information contained in the book, many texts in English and many texts in German. He debunks popular refutations on Revisionism, brings up widely asked questions, and offers insights to why these inconsistencies may be.

All in all, this is one of the best arguments for Revisionism that you will find. It analyses every aspect of Auschwitz in a scientific way and doesn't give the hint of frustration with the Jewish people like so many other Revisionist books.

This is definitely something you want to check out.

I am surprised to see this book has not been reviewed. Perhaps it is not selling well, as it is available for free as a PDF download from the author's web site.
The Rudolf Report totally destroys the assertion that the Nazis operated homicidal gas chambers in the Auschwitz/Birkenau camp complex. The writing is factual and expository, and the style is matter-of-fact, but the conclusions are inescapable. Some half-hearted attempts have been made to refute Rudolf's work, but none have made any inroads into the core of his case: chemical analysis of the buildings and ruins at the camp disprove the thesis the cyanide gas was used inside the alleged gas chambers.

The author has been prosecuted and convicted, and is now in prison in Germany, for the very act of writing this book.

I heartily recommend this work for it's veracity and relevance.

But they Can't. This book is BANNED in Germany. This is the first book that the author was sentenced in absentia back in 1993. It has never been refuted, Actually it has been confirmed by world-renowned chemists as accurate. Germar Rudolf sits in jail asking the simple question:

What sort of Truth is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

Sam Harris is an amazing person. He recently visited my school in woodstock ill. He told all about his amazing life and the things that he went through. He is now working on starting a holocoust museum in chicago and think that buying his book, although not a large amount, would be a generous contribution to this amazing persons effort to educate the future generations about what happened.

Sam Harris cam to my and gave a talk about his horrifing experience at the concetration camp where he hide for 3 years. He story so was sad when he read it i cryed. but it was very imfortmative. He is a wonderful and has acommplished so much.

I first heard of the book when Samuel Harris came to my school. The entire student body gathered to hear his story. As I read the book I cried again as I had cried as he spoke. To have lived through such a terrible event and have the courage to talk about it is beyond comprehension or comparison.

A Scrap of Time is a collection of short stories that masterfully presents the Holocaust experience from the perspective of survivors, witnesses, and victims in the villages of occupied Poland. Acts of personal courage, the day to day decisions that meant life or death, personal attempts to carry on with dignity, are all expressed here in powerful language and moving tales that evoke the Holocaust as it is not often told: as an experience that was as personal as each person who lived it. I have read and re-read this book several times. Each time, the stories seem to resound with their original power. Ida Fink, a Polish survivor of the Holocaust, is a master storyteller. With the very first sentence, she has the ability to create scenes of astonishing clarity and suspense. You simply cannot put the book down until you finish the story. With simple, lyrical language, she creates scenes of tremendous emotional impact. I don't believe I will ever look at the Holocaust in quite the same way. No television documentary could ever do justice to the Holocaust experience as these unforgettable stories of the personal lives of human beings in the most impossible of situations.

Ida Fink uses vivid langauge and impectable details to bring faces to the Holcaust. She tells haunting stories about Jewish life in Poland before and after World War II. Fink's stories are beutifully told and evoke every emotion; from fear to joy, hatred to pity. The book tells about individuals and gives faces and lives to the often impresonal Holocaust.

Though the concentration camps are never mentioned, these 23 short stories are a haunting collection about life in Poland at the time of the Holocaust. The theme of the anthology is on the excruciating agony of life in a broken world. These are stories of resistance, submission, betrayal, hope, regret and remembering.

Each story is the nightmare of an otherwise quiet ordinary people, previously living a secure and ordered existence. What is most striking is the uniqueness of the tone and style in each short story; and that none of the stories talk of the camps, only the horror before and after.

Perhaps, the author's own words (see below) taken from the first, title story captures why this collection is ultimately crucial to an impression, an understanding of those times. [Recommended for Young Adults/Adults]

[quote]
I want to talk about a certain time not measured in months and years. For so long I have wanted to talk about this time, and not in the way I will talk about it now, not just about this one scrap of time. I wanted to, but I couldn't, I didn't know how. I was afraid, too, that this second time, which is measured in months and years, had buried the other time under a layer of years, that this second time had crushed the first and destroyed it within me. But no. Today, digging around in the ruins of memory, I found it fresh and untouched from forgetfulness. This time was measured not in months but in a word--we no longer said "in the beautiful month of May," but "after the first "action," or the second, or right before the third." We had different measures of time, we different ones, always different, always with that mark of difference that moved some of us to pride and others to humility. We, who because of our difference were condemned once again, as we had been before in our history, we were condemned once again during this time measured not in months nor by the rising and setting of the sun, but by a word--"action," a word signifying movement, a word you would use about a novel or a play.
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Sidney Finkel, Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die (2005) Paperback, 104 pp. ISBN: 0-9763562-0-1

Reviewed by Kenneth Waltzer, Michigan State University

Sidney Finkel, who remained silent about his youthful experiences during the Holocaust for nearly fifty years, and who, since the mid-1990s has become one of the most accomplished speakers appearing in schools and universities in and near Chicago, has published a memoir - Sevek and the Holocaust: The Boy Who Refused to Die. The book is a stirring, quick read, written in a voice that accesses the fright and fearful growing independence of a small boy who, from 1939 to 1945, was in the Piotrkow ghetto, in slave labor camps in central Poland, and then in Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. On the day before Buchenwald was liberated, Sevek was marched out with hundreds of other youth and placed on a train to nowhere, and was not freed until nearly a month later when the train came to Theresienstadt. Sidney was among those who were sent thereafter to England and about whom Sir Martin Gilbert has written in The Boys (1995). He was thirteen years old and had lost nearly all his family. He was now told, as others were, simply to forget his pain.

Sidney Finkel has never forgotten his pain, although he long refused to address it. Nor has he forgiven himself for his wish at Buchenwald to be free of his father, who was also in the camp. Like many survivors whom American Jewish writer Meyer Levin, traveling with the U.S. Third Army as it reached the camps, came to know "had somewhere to have betrayed someone, through leaving" [In Search (1950)], Sevek had in a brief encounter at Buchenwald separated himself from his father in order to be spared. Sidney Finkel has spoken to large numbers of audiences and now written this memoir to address the enduring pain. In the process, because he is also smart, diligent, and a clear, unpretentious writer, and because he is connected to many other survivors and tied to remarkable networks of history and memory linked with Piotrkow, Buchenwald, and "the Boys," he has given us a strong and informed record of a young Polish-Jewish boy in the Holocaust.

Sevek was born in Lodz in December 1931 and raised, the son of a Jewish flour mill owner, near Piotrkow Trybunalski, about 16 kilometers south of Lodz. This same town produced Israel Meir Lau, former chief Ashkenazic rabbi of Israel and winner of the Israel Prize, and his brother Naphtalie Lau-Lavie, former Israeli consul general in New York. Ben Helfgott, British weight lifting champion in the 1950s, also came from Piotrkow. Sevek was in the closed ghetto 1939-1942 and, like youth elsewhere in the Nazi ghettos in Poland, grew increasingly independent of his parents - working as a runner at the Hortensia glass works and as a laborer unloading trucks at ten years old. He survived the deportations from Piotrkow to Treblinka in October 1942, which swept away his mother and a sister to the gas, and he was, while hiding or living with his father and an older brother, put to slave labor at a succession of factory slave labor camps, including the Dietrich-Fischer woodworks on the Bugaj in Piotrkow and later a munitions plant in Czestochowa. He chopped wood to be used as fuel in German steam-operated trucks. He has no memory of work at Czestochowa where workers filled shells with ammunition but recalls finding himself now alone, without his father or brother.

Sevek entered Buchenwald in mid-January 1945, and was registered as number 113752 in the camp. He arrived in the same transport from Czestochowa as Ben Giladi, 113653, who, for thirty years has been putting out The Voice of Piotrkow, a remarkable journal of town history, and who edited the town's yizkor book, A Tale of One City: Piotrkow Trybunalski (1991) Hungry, demoralized, all alone, Sevek stole food at Buchenwald and was punished by assignment to potentially killing work in the quarry. The clandestine camp underground rescued him by having him placed in block 66, the children's block, where - with other youth - he was sheltered from the worst conditions and from work altogether, either at Buchenwald or in outlying commandos. His encounter with his father occurred at this time and he shunned the older man, who gave him some of his scarce bread. He writes: "Who was I? What kind of animal had I become...? This encounter was so powerful that it stayed with me for the rest of my life." (p. 84) Sidney never again saw his father, who was probably sent to one of Buchenwald's outlying camps and died, and he himself was later marched out to what might have been his end had luck and endurance not aided his own search for survival.

Sidney Finkel participated in a symposium at Michigan State University in spring 2005 and told listeners that the traumas of his youth remained very much with him. This comes out in the book but in a delimited and controlled way. The book will not traumatize college or school readers and is developing a large readership in the schools. Indeed, the book also celebrates qualities of endurance and courage, including the obstinate will to live and the courage to confront fears and respond to new challenges. It is about independence of a fearful kind. Sidney's son, who wrote an afterpiece, notes "Every time he speaks or writes, I know he confronts the same demons - the fears and anxieties which come from being engulfed by evil." Yet speaking and especially writing helps the process of healing and of identity reintegration, as we know from studies about the transformation of traumatic to narrative memory and assists in remaking the self. The memoir also serves, because Sidney read well around his own story, incorporated suggestions from others, and became very knowing, as a good history of a Jewish youth making his way, hanging on to life, in a world of horrors in wartime Poland and Germany. After the war, Sidney would need to be reeducated in a different kind of independence that might reconnect him with others. England was the start of such a benign return to life.


Kenneth Waltzer is professor of history in James Madison College at Michigan State University and directs the Jewish Studies Program at Michigan State University.He is currently researching and writing on The Rescue of Children at Buchenwald.

Mr. Finkel's story is one that each and every one of us should read. For the last four years, I've had the honor of hearing him talk to my 8th graders. This gentle man tells his story of lost youth, survival, and recovery. Please, read this story.

Kirkus Reviews | Kirkus Reports | Kirkus Literar
March 2005 Vol 1 / Issue 1
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Since its launch in September 2004, Kirkus Discoveries has received hundreds of submissions, from self-published books to books from large publishing houses to out-of-print titles from corporate imprints. From poetry to novels to children's books to academic treatises, the variety of books flowing into the Kirkus Discoveries offices seems to be limitless.
Many of the books that Kirkus Discoveries has reviewed so far have not been "discoveries" so much as, well, disappointments. Our hope is that our reviews of those have at least been constructive. Within the rough, though, we're gratified to have found several diamonds. Thus, here, in the inaugural Kirkus Discoveries monthly newsletter, we present 15 of the books we're happy to highlight. They include a book that a major publisher bought after it was reviewed by Kirkus Discoveries and an unpublished manuscript that we hope will not go unpublished much longer." SEVEK" IS ONE OF THE 15

After years of self-repression, Finkel, formerly Sevek Finkelstein, now tells his powerful story of survival in early-1940s Poland. Prompted by his daughter and feeling a need to exorcize his demons, Finkel presents his (and his family's) experiences before, during and after the Holocaust. His straightforward manner, told in raw, spare language, renders his memories all the more affecting. He begins with a sheltered childhood in a fairly well-to-do family with loving parents and siblings and mischievous adventures, but then quickly shifts to years of countless atrocities and horrors including running for cover as German planes fired all around him; having his eldest and dearest sister shot dead in a cemetery after her newborn was thrown out of a window by German officers; living in a cramped and disease-ridden ghetto; constantly hiding from certain death at a bevy of concentration camps; eating grass for survival in the final days before reaching freedom; and, finally, resuming an education in a foreign country after a six-year lapse. The memoir also includes a harrowing account of death in the Treblinka death camp where Finkel's mother, sister Frania and 20 or more close relatives were killed, as well as his brother Isaac's miraculous survival as a Polish army officer caught in enemy territory. With the exception of certain passages that become slightly vague and out of touch with the narrative thread, the narration is smooth and free of pretension-particularly in the chapter entitled "Deportation" and the sections depicting the underground of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Chalk up the infrequent moments of opacity to the protracted length of Finkel's silence on the subject, during which his memory, sense of time, and comprehension were surely distorted.
A poignant memoir with a refreshing absence of melodrama or pomp.

I absolutely loved this book. I could hardly put it down and had it read
in 3 days. Even though I have read some children's diary
entries from the Holocaust, this book gave me a new perspective on their
experiences. Hearing Sonya's own reasoning and conclusions about things that were happening to her was my favorite part. Watching her having to make decisions as an inexperienced child deprived of adult protection really touched me.

Leslie Cohen's "Trapped Inside The Story" tells how Sonya Hebenstreit survived -- barely -- the horror that was visited upon the Jews of Lvov, Poland, under Russian and German occupation.

It's a biography written in the first person that literally traps the reader who has the good fortune to pick it up, and discovers a narrative so compelling that it's impossible to put down. Now far removed from Europe before and during World War II, many of us have only a superficial understanding of what it took to survive as a child when war and Nazi inhumanity decimated families and forced grade-school students to skills and horros far beyond their year.

Leslie Cohen's book make it vivid and is a compelling addition to the literature of human struggle in the time when the pits of hell opened and devils spewed forth in jackboots.

This was a book I couldn't put down. There were times when I felt that I was right next to Soyna/Nomi as she lost loved one after another. Her fear and confusion, as well as her bravery and ingenuity, were so well conveyed that her world seemed right there in front of me. Few books I've read have made the Holocaust experience so real and terrifying. Leslie Cohen's telling of the story is vivid and touching. Highly recommended for middle school and older, as well as for parents.

Even if you're not traveling, you can travel in your armchair with this history. A great way to make your way through the fascinating story of Poland. Highly Recommended!
James Conroyd Martin, Author of PUSH NOT THE RIVER Push Not the River and AGAINST A CRIMSON SKY Against a Crimson Sky: A Novel

Written by Poland history and culture expert John Radzilowski, A Traveler's History of Poland is a primer of Polish history written for anyone looking to better experience and understand the nation's culture and legacy during their visit. From Poland's origins, to the end of the Commonwealth, war, occupation, and the Holocaust, the all too often violent rule of Communism, the ascent of Polish pope John Paul II and the dawn of modern Polish independence, A Traveler's History of Poland succinctly surveys history and does not whitewash the sufferings and atrocities that all the different ethnicities of people in Poland have endured across the decades. A highly readable, enlightening, even-handed and accessible account ideal for readers of all backgrounds.

The history of Poland is complex and convoluted...An amazing story shaped by those inside and outside of Poland -- and those with Poland's best and worst interests at heart. Western Europeans and North Americans have, for the most part, received a disorganized story shaped partially by the real events, but one also framed by various conquerors, suitors, allies, enemies, the well-intentioned, and the truly evil at heart...with a little myth and pure B.S. thrown in for good measure. Many readers, for example, will discover that the events in and about Poland leading up to and through WWII did not really come about as we were taught in school. Centuries ago Poland set out down a path of more representative forms of government -- another historical context we typically don't hear about.

There is no way that a book of barely 300 pages can deliver a comprehensive study of (in the words of historian Norman Davies) "God's Playground". But this volume does a good job of providing historical context for both visitors and the geographically/politically curious. Author Radzilowski may seem to run through the centuries at a fast clip -- and at first I was wondering if his bullet point facts would end up being just a part of some historical list. But as you read along you come to the understanding that he is plotting out a trend line for you to follow. Maybe you can remember all the Polish monarchs and their external allies and foes...I'm not that good at names, dates, and battles. But you should be pleased to come away with a better formed generalized understanding of the country and its people.

I have been extremely fortunate the past few years to have "acquired" some wonderful Polish friends and colleagues. This has fueled my curiosity about Poland, and lead to my first trip there last year. I'm planning a second trip soon, and this book, along with several books on more contemporary Polish history and events, has been a real asset.

I give the book five stars not because it is the best history of Poland, but because it accomplishes precisely what it sets out to do.

In the back of the book there is a nice historical chronology, a listing of Polish rulers, a list of English language sources for Polish history, and a historical gazetteer.

The book ends on this note: "The Polish people have taken everything fate has to throw at them, including the worst crimes of fascism and communism, and have not succumbed. Though its position in the world is not certain, Poland is no longer a plaything of the great powers. Poles earned the right to govern themselves and make their own mistakes and at last to write their own history."

Enjoy!

I have read a great deal about the Holocaust, and I've read quite a few personal accounts, but this one is extraordinary. It has an immediacy that comes from having been written just after World War II, so that it is in essence a primary source document. But it's also a great piece of literature, a love story, and (despite the graphic horrors it describes) it ultimately is uplifting. Everyone interested in how humans can survive horrendous trauma with dignity intact should read this book.

I have read a great deal about the Holocaust, including personal accounts, but this one stands out for several reasons. Because it was written just after World War II, it has an immediacy and authenticity that others written later might lack. It's amazing that it was only published a few years ago, and it still isn't well known, though it deserves to be. It's really a kind of primary source document. But it's also great literature, really well-written and moving and ultimately (despite some of the horrors so graphically depicted) it is uplifting, a testament to the human spirit's capacity to retain its dignity despite everything. Highly recommended.