A fresh, engrossing contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, focusing on heroics rather than despair.
A deep dive into the lives of 10 heroic individuals who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
This book, which derives its title from the Yad Vashem complex on Jerusalem’s Mount of Remembrance, enters an already crowded field of Holocaust titles, so it is noteworthy that Hurowitz begins with a humble disclosure: “The Holocaust always seemed something distant to me.” Refreshingly, the author makes no pretense of inheriting the stories he tells; most of his ancestors arrived on American soil well before Hitler’s rise. This transparency will grip readers from the start. Although the author’s subjects repeatedly risked their lives—and those of their family members—by defying orders to round up Jews, none of them were Jewish, thus making their acts of kindness that much more inspiring. “I made the decision not to include any Jewish rescuers, although several make cameo appearances,” writes Hurowitz. “They deserve their own volume.” Each story takes place under unique circumstances, and the author is patient in his unfolding of the impressive exploits of his subjects: among others, Portuguese Consul General Sousa Mendes, who, upon finding himself stationed in France at a perilous moment, joined forces with a young Polish rabbi; Gino Bartali, a Tour de France superstar who smuggled lifesaving documents inside his bicycle; and Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who never stopped providing visas for Lithuanian Jews, even as the doors of his career slammed shut behind him. The history lessons here are both distressing and awe-inspiring, and Hurowitz reminds us that none of these rescuers sought recognition or celebration; they were simply moved to do the right thing in a moment of immense peril. In a time when our humanity is challenged by new heights of instability and new waves of antisemitism and ethnic hatred, it is an understatement to say this book is timely.
A fresh, engrossing contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, focusing on heroics rather than despair.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-06-303723-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
