A haunting and unrelenting volume of Holocaust-centered works.
Rosensaft explores the grief into which he was born in this collection of poems.
The author was born in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp to two survivors of the Holocaust. His older brother, Benjamin, was killed at a concentration camp during the war, an event that the poet references in “A Refusal To Forgive the Death, by Gas, of a Child in Birkenau”: “my mother’s son / my mother’s child / his ashes diffused / toward the stars / almost three years / before I was born.” Rosensaft’s poems reverberate with loss as he grapples with the guilt of Polish bystanders who watched Nazis round up their Jewish neighbors and with his own longtime distrust of German names: “the difference,” reads one poem, “between John Smith / and / Hans Schmidt / is that I never wonder / whether John’s father / killed my brother.” His ruminations extend beyond the scope of World War II to subsequent genocides as well as more recent events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement: “we must now all shout / that Black lives matter / until no child of God / ever again dies gasping / ‘I can’t breathe.’ ” The opening poem, “in the seconds after the truck hit me,” reveals the poet as a grandfather, still acutely aware of the fleetingness of life and all that can be lost in a split second. Rosensaft’s poems are sparse and measured, filled with images of ghosts, fires, ash, and darkness; they’re rarely portraits of quiet grief. More often, he animates the words with simmering anger as they voice frustration toward perpetrators, bystanders, and even God. It’s a cohesive collection, though some of the most affecting moments are when the author wanders further afield, as when he remembers his deceased parents while at a hotel in sunny San Remo: “paradise comes in different forms / we each have our own / if we can find it / mine is here.” Even so, his staccato verses always find their way back to the Holocaust era, reminding readers that some parts of the past are always present.
A haunting and unrelenting volume of Holocaust-centered works.Pub Date: April 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952326-54-7
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An eye-opening and thought-provoking read.
Antisemitism is alive and well and worth talking about.
Fersko, senior rabbi at the Village Temple in Manhattan and vice president of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, argues that Americans of all backgrounds must discuss antisemitism. The author notes that many people view antisemitism as a problem of the past, an issue that is rare and isolated in 21st-century America. She demonstrates convincingly that this mindset is misinformed and that antisemitism is on the rise. Early on Fersko provides a lengthy explanation of antisemitism as “the longest-held, farthest-reaching conspiracy theory in the world.” She explains that antisemitism is a belief in a variety of lies and stereotypes about Jews and Judaism, which manifests in everything from seemingly innocuous remarks to outright physical violence. Fersko points to seven points of dialogue that Jews and non-Jews need to address in order to help battle antisemitism, including race, Christianity, microaggressions, the Holocaust, and Israel. Throughout, she urges readers to educate themselves about the past and to learn to recognize the prejudices about Jews that many Americans inherit unknowingly. Though Fersko addresses such obvious sources of antisemitism as right-wing and racially based extremist groups, she makes it clear throughout the book that the American left is also a major source of antisemitism today. In some cases, this is seen in virulent anti-Israel stances, where left-wing activists portray Jews as racists and oppressors. In other cases, American liberals simply perpetrate tropes and stereotypes about their Jewish friends and neighbors, often through microaggressions, misplaced humor, miseducation about the Holocaust, etc. Though there are certainly points for debate, the text serves as a meaningful starting point for dialogue. If nothing else, she provides the important reminder that the age-old specter of antisemitism is not extinct; in many ways, it’s stronger and more dangerous than at any time since the Holocaust.
An eye-opening and thought-provoking read.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781541601949
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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