A profoundly disturbing yet ultimately hopeful story of a young man's passage through the heart of darkness. Hasselbach was once considered the golden hope of the neo-Nazi movement in East Germany. Standing over six feet with blue eyes and blond hair, he was the perfect ``Aryan.'' According to Hasselbach, as a young man in the GDR, he was repulsed by the arbitrary power and intimidation of the state. This, along with an ambivalent relationship with his father (a radio announcer considered ``the voice of the GDR'') and an abusive relationship with his stepfather, combined to foster a tremendous feeling of resentment against all symbols of authority, especially the state. Here are some subtle insights into the nature of rebellion and hatred. He came to see the neo-Nazi movement as the only available means to protest against the state. And in that movement, Hasselbach found the solidarity and community missing in both his family and East German society. Some of Hasselbach's revelations are shocking: He writes, for example, that in unified Germany, right-wing terrorists received more lenient treatment than left-wing terrorists; he reports on the well-coordinated international network of neo-Nazis (including the American movement); and, perhaps most provocatively, he notes the connection between neo-Nazism, homosexuality, and the S&M scene. The cast of characters in this real-life bildungsroman is indeed fascinating and horrifying, from sadistic youths to little old ladies demanding more desecrations of Jewish cemeteries. Eventually, Hasselbach recognized ``the psychological horror at the heart of everything we did'' and broke with the movement. Then, hunted down and marked for death by his ex-colleagues for his ``treachery,'' Hasselbach struggled to convince the authorities, the public, and his former enemies on the Left that his conversion was sincere. An ominous look into contemporary German society that reveals a thriving neo-Nazi ideology. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-43825-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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