A sad phenomenology of human degradation.
A former prisoner of Auschwitz recounts his experience in the camp and his hellish transformation into what he calls an “extermination-camp man”—a human sub-species focused solely on survival and lacking all feelings and the attendant care for others.
At 16, the author was a spoiled teenager living in Paris who loved science, mathematics, and gambling. His childhood had been difficult, full of upheaval as his family moved around Europe: not close to his parents, and not resident anywhere long enough to make real friends, he became a self-sufficient individualist. He was multilingual, adaptable, and familiar with unpleasant changes—all factors that helped him survive the brutality of Auschwitz (where strength, luck, and “the flexibility of a contortionist” were required). Steinberg freely formed alliances with the hardened criminals who were running the camp, who could dispense extra food or other favors. “I concluded that each of these monsters had a flaw, an Achilles heel, which it was up to me to find: this one needed flattering, that one had a repressed paternal instinct or the need to confide in someone who seemed to take an interest in him.” At one point, sick with dysentery and scabies (which cause painful skin ulcers), he concluded that, for all intents and purposes, human relations had ceased to exist and he didn’t even know his own bunkmate. Later, he used his basic knowledge of chemistry to bluff his way into a laboratory assignment in the I.G. Farben factory where prisoners were forced to work. In the lab, he met Primo Levy—who later was to describe Steinberg as a soulless manipulator, an animal obsessed only with his continued existence. Ultimately, Steinberg agrees with this assessment, and admits that he doesn’t even remember meeting Levy—“perhaps because I hadn’t felt he could be useful to me.”
A sad phenomenology of human degradation.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-6064-2
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
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
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