Living history, written with enormous affection and passion. (1 map, 51 b&w photos)
The compelling story of a young Jewish woman who hid in Germany under the noses of the Nazis from 1943 to 1945.
Roseman (History/Univ. of Southhampton) has unearthed the remarkable life of Marianne Ellenbogen, née Strauss, who grew up in Essen. When the Nazis came to power, the Strausses suffered along with the other Jews of Germany as Hitler instituted the policies that led to Auschwitz. But Marianne, a self-reliant young woman, actually went to Berlin to train as a teacher in Jewish kindergartens. There, she fell in love with a young man named Ernst Krombach. Her family had money (from their grain business) and was initially spared, but the Krombachs were picked up and sent to the camp at Izbica. Incredibly, a young Wehrmacht officer risked his life to serve as a courier between the Krombachs and their friends, carrying letters and supplies into the camp and returning with news from the prisoners. When the Gestapo finally came for the Strausses in August 1943, Marianne managed to slip away in the confusion and spent the next two years hiding, more or less in the open, passing as an Aryan and sheltered by a small leftist group known as the Bund. All her immediate family died in the camps. In 1984 she published her memoirs in a small German periodical, attracting the attention of Roseman, who then interviewed her extensively and chased the elusive threads of her story all across Europe. When she died in 1996, Roseman and Marianne’s son Vivian found a treasure-trove of documents—diaries, letters, photographs, government forms—in her house, thereby permitting Roseman to reconstruct her story in astonishing detail. “I felt like an archaeologist,” the author admits, “stumbling on ancient gold, untarnished and unaltered.”
Living history, written with enormous affection and passion. (1 map, 51 b&w photos)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6326-9
Page Count: 475
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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