Tag: Holocaust

Mosab Hassan Yousef “Son of Hamas”

No comments

Hamas hasn’t left the news cycle—both in a negative light and, from pro-Palestinian quarters, in a positive one. Yet back in 2010 a book came out about the organization that shows it from the inside—and hardly in a laudatory vein.

It’s called Son of Hamas, and with good reason: it was written by Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the seven founders of this Palestinian group. The eldest child in his family, Mosab was raised fully in line with Hamas policy. At 18 he was arrested by Israeli law enforcement for attacks on Israeli soldiers. About a year later he was released and for a long time became his father’s trusted aide.

Only no one knew that from that moment he spent nearly ten years working for Shabak (Shin Bet), Israel’s security service. During that time he managed to prevent numerous terrorist attacks and save many lives on both sides. He helped in the arrest of high-ranking Hamas operatives, and in 2007 he left the Middle East; three years later he was granted political asylum in the United States—something that required Israeli services to officially reveal his identity.

Mosab renounced Islam and in 2005 was secretly baptized in Tel Aviv. Since then he has been an outspoken opponent not only of Hamas but of Islam as a whole.

Read more

David Gay “The Tenth Circle: Life, Struggle, and the Destruction of the Minsk Ghetto”

No comments

Right now, when the whole world has turned viciously on Israel, when denying the Holocaust is fashionable and being an antisemite has suddenly become not shameful again, even politically correct, it is a hundred times more important to remind ourselves what real genocide is. At least to oneself, because those unwilling to hear won’t hear anyway.

Books about the Nazis’ “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” have always held a special place on my list. Because, as I’ve said many times, for me this is not an empty phrase and not a “Zionist fabrication.” And then, unexpectedly for me, the BAbook publishing house began selling a book I had never heard of before, even though it was first printed back in the USSR. Now, its author, David Guy, has decided to reissue it, in part in response to the October 7 massacre in Israel.

And I’m grateful the book caught my eye, because people know very little about the history of the Minsk Ghetto. The one that’s usually on everyone’s lips is the Warsaw Ghetto, vast, on whose ruins—among other places—the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 fought, only to be crushed by the Nazis when Soviet troops were already not far off. The ghetto itself has been shown more than once in cinema, and Roman Polanski’s Oscar-winning The Pianist is almost entirely devoted to the story of one Jew in that ghetto.

Read more

Book: Eva Mozes Kor “The Twins of Auschwitz”

No comments

Josef Mengele is one of the Nazis whose name is synonymous with the atrocities of the Hitler regime. He was not only personally responsible for sorting prisoners at Auschwitz but also conducted horrifying experiments in his camp clinic.

One of his “projects” was an attempt to understand the nature of twins. Because of this, twins had a slightly higher chance of survival—not being sent directly to their deaths—even if they were unfit for labor in the camp. However, Mengele never considered them human and subjected both adults and tiny children to monstrous experiments. To him, they were nothing more than test subjects.

Eva Mozes Kor was one such twin, destined to die so that Mengele could observe how it would affect her sister. But against all odds, Eva survived. After the war, she wrote her memoirs about her time in that hell.

Eva lived with her family in Transylvania when the war arrived. Her father wanted to escape to Palestine, where Jews were beginning to build their own state, but her mother couldn’t bring herself to leave everything behind and take the children into the unknown. Because of this, their once well-off family was among the first to experience the hatred and cruelty of their former neighbors. And when they finally decided to flee, it was already too late.

Read more

Book: Art Spiegelman “Maus”

No comments

A comic book about the genocide of Jews? Sounds unusual, but why not? The important thing is to convey knowledge, and the method is secondary. Some people read books, some only watch movies, and some consume information exclusively through comics. And it’s long been foolish to think that comics are just for kids or the unintelligent. As the history of manga shows (see my review of Frederik L. Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics”), sometimes comics can convey more knowledge than a specialized encyclopedia.

So the existence of such a comic didn’t surprise me at all. What did make me slightly wary, though, was the prestigious award it received. I have this odd quirk—I tend not to trust overly hyped or award-winning works. It seems to me that these awards often follow their own internal logic, which doesn’t always correlate with actual quality.

Maus by Art Spiegelman is “the only comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize,” as proudly stated on the cover. And it tells the story of a Polish Jew, Vladek Spiegelman, who struggled to survive after Nazi has occupied Poland but ultimately ended up in a concentration camp with his wife.

Read more

Book: Ben Elton “Two Brothers”

No comments

I haven’t written in my blog for a long time, but I’m returning with a book that has unexpectedly become highly symbolic of current events—when one country, under the pretext of “brotherly help,” wages war against another. And a third, also supposedly “brotherly,” sometimes helps the first, sometimes tries to stay on the sidelines. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Since childhood, I was taught that we must never allow the return of Nazism. I was psychologically crushed when, at around 12 years old, I saw the film “Triumph Over Violence“ (in Russian its title literally means ‘An Ordinary Fascism‘) on TV (I even felt physically sick from what I saw). For many years, I’ve continued reading and reflecting on how the dehumanization of entire nations and the transformation of people into monsters become possible. Documentaries, memoirs, and historical works are often far more terrifying than any fiction because with fiction, you can always think: “Well, this is just made up—things couldn’t have been that bad.” Even though you know they could. And they were. And now we see just how easy it is to “repeat it”—ironically, by those who, on a genetic level, should have carried an unshakable aversion to repeating it.

But sometimes, there are brilliant books on this very subject, and “Two Brothers” by Ben Elton is one of them. Perhaps because it is based on the real-life story of the author’s own family.

Read more

Book: Jan T. Gross “Neighbors”

No comments

It might seem strange to begin a discussion about the book Neighbors by Jan Tomasz Gross with reflections on management, but for some reason, that’s the thought that came to me as I considered the book after finishing it.

Having managed people for many years, I’ve developed a few principles that I’ve always tried to adhere to in both work and life. One of them is to speak openly about what has happened and to draw lessons from both one’s own missteps and the events of history, even when they are extremely unpleasant. For me, Neighbors is precisely such an example. It is an honest account of events that took place in several small towns in Poland in 1941, when the areas around Białystok, previously occupied by the Red Army, were taken over by German forces following the launch of their war against the USSR.

The main focus of the book is on the pogrom in the village of Jedwabne, where, on July 10, the majority of the Jewish population was massacred. For many years, it was believed that the Jews were killed by German soldiers, specifically the so-called Einsatzgruppen. However, facts emerged that shocked many in Poland. It turned out that there were no Germans in the village at the time, and that all the atrocities were committed by Poles—the Jewish neighbors with whom they had lived side by side for decades—once the new authorities made it clear they would turn a blind eye to everything. And from there, it was just a short step to taking Jewish property and dividing up the spoils.

Read more

Book: Viktor E. Frankl “Man’s Search For Meaning”

No comments

I continue reading books about the experience (though calling it “life” is impossible) in Nazi death camps. This time, I’ve taken up a short but well-known book by world-renowned psychologist Viktor Frankl. When he was sent to a concentration camp, he tried to hide the manuscript of his book, but he couldn’t save it. So, he began gathering insights and “writing” the book in his mind and secretly on scraps of paper, as a way to hold onto sanity amidst the horrors of the camp and to find something to cling to—something to survive for.

When he was finally liberated, he quickly recorded all he had reflected on during those horrific years in the form of a book, which he initially didn’t even want to publish under his real name, though he was eventually persuaded otherwise. In 1946, the book was published as Man’s Search for Meaning.

Although Viktor Frankl lived many more years, passing away in 1997 at the age of 92, this book is considered one of his greatest works.

Read more

Heather Morris “The Tattooist of Auschwitz”

No comments

Those who have known me for a long time remember that the Holocaust holds a special place on my list of important subjects. I read about it myself, and I tell my children what happened and how it happened. Such things must be remembered. So, not a year goes by without me reading a book on the topic or watching a related film.

No one recommended The Tattooist of Auschwitz to me; I happened upon it on a bookstore shelf, and then my wife read it before I did. Although it’s a novel, it is based on the real-life memories of Lale (Ludwig) Sokolov, who worked as a tattooist in Auschwitz for several years during the war, survived, and eventually moved to Australia.

Heather Morris, the author, merely recorded his memories and turned them into a novel. Before this book, she wasn’t well known, working in a hospital and trying her hand at screenwriting. Then she was introduced to Lale…

Read more

Laurence Rees “Auschwitz. The Nazis & The Final Solution”

No comments

I have written more than once that the topic of the Holocaust is very important to me. I’m certain this is directly tied to the fact that the extermination of Jews during World War II personally affected my family. But this is also an example of something people must never forget so that it never happens again.

The book Auschwitz by Laurence Rees didn’t exactly fall into my hands by chance; modern algorithms recommended it to me because I had read other books on this topic. Until that day, however, I knew nothing about the author. Laurence Rees is a British historian who has devoted much of his career to studying Nazism, its causes, and its rise. Auschwitz: The Nazis & the Final Solution is just one of his books, in which he attempts to explain not only the history of one of the most infamous death camps but also the development of such a horrific concept as the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.”

Before I share my thoughts on the book, I’d like to quote the author’s own words with which he concludes the book. I couldn’t put it better myself (I have read the book in Russian and couldn’t find the original quote so here I place the back translation from Russian, sorry):

Read more

Auschwitz: A History in Photographs

No comments
auschwitz

In 2013, my wife and I took a road trip through Poland. One specific stop on our itinerary was Auschwitz, not the town, but the museum located on the site of the former concentration camp. This was a place I absolutely wanted to visit. The genocide of the Jews is part of my family’s history.

I won’t talk about the museum itself right now, that’s a subject for another conversation. But before leaving, I bought a photo album titled Auschwitz: A History in Photographs from the shop near the exit. It’s one of the few books I took with me when we moved to another country. However, for some reason, I only started to study it in detail five years later. I don’t quite know how to write about this book, but I still want to.

Read more