In what are, sadly, probably the waning days of the ailing Pope John Paul II, I found Brandys Diary to be a memorable portrait of the early days of the then newly elected "Polish Pope." Throughout the 3-year span of WD, comprised of a selection of passages from 2 volumes of Brandys' journals (the complete volumes were published in his native Poland), are anecdotes of the effects this Pope had on the streets of occupied and dispirited Warsaw. Because the West weakly buckled at the Yalta conferences, giving in to Stalin's territorial demands, Poland, Hungary and other central European countries turned into Russian "satellites." Shocked and disappointed at Western indifference to their desperate situation, the Poles saw new hope in the newly elected John Paul II and he embodied their new hopes for freedom. Feeling that "He has come to lift us out of the mud," the Polish people found redemption in this Pope, believing that "the holy fire of faith burns in this Pope." Brandys lauds this Pope's "liberality" also, reporting on the 1979 televized Mass performed at Auschwitz and of his plea for tolerance of other religions, including the Jewish faith. As for the ever-unanswered "Jewish question" which plagues Poland, Brandys wisely concludes "The whole truth is clearly too complex ever to be grasped." Papal views are not the sole comprisal of WD, of course. Throughout the text of this quick read with it's abbreviated diary entries, we glean Brandys' feelings on such diverse peoples like Americans: "I envy them their innocence and naivete;" Russia: "the deranged void" whose existence he prefers to totally ignore and whose literature, touchingly enough, frightens Brandys ("especially the stories of Gogol"). Woven throughout WD are the usual descriptions of life under occupation: the long lines at stores everywhere, the chronic shortages of necessities...witness Brandys' sarcastic "There is no lack of anything here except for the half that has been amputated." Passing references to then-new historical figures and events are of interest, too. A October 1979 entry remarks on playwright Vaclav Havel's "huge act of heroism" in his choosing trial and sentencing over emigration in defending his "dissident" stand on human rights in then-Czechoslovakia. In the 1981 a certain Lech Walesa starts to get mentioned as he heads the Solidarity movement: "He incarnates the spirit of the street and is the hero of the lines." As 1981 is the cut-off point for the diary, however, we are left hungray for more bird's-eye views of these all-important leaders and movements. It is impossible to convey all that is contained within the 260 pp. of WD. Its' richness goes way beyond what is discussed above as Brandys digresses into weighty questions of spirituality and divine Providence. A 1979 quote helped me understand a 1999 quote from my college professor who believes that the starting point for postmodern society began as a direct result of the Holocaust. Unable to believe that such a massive change in society could result from this one aspect of the second World War in Europe, Brandys' comment "With Auschwitz, it is impossible to defend oneself against the idea we've been abandoned by Providence" makes me understand her position a little more. After all, Brandys lived through such atrocious times and survived to tell the tale.

Based on actual events that surrounded post WWII Europe. Realistic and heart wrenching meet miraculous providence. There has to be a sequel.

This is an amazing book that integrates photos and text very successfully. This is not just a photo book, nor just a wonderful story about the miraculous revival of the Jewish community in Poland. The author's personal journey, as the son of two Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivors is just as intriguing and extremely well-written. I appreciate his open-minded approach and ironic self doubt. I was especially moved by the chapters about the old Jewish man living near Tarnow, and the 'Jewish' priest in Lublin. The sections where the author takes us back to his American childhood were also especially charming and enlightening. The black and white photographs are well-placed throughout and add an extra level of understanding to this contemporary narrative. A must for all those interested in Judaism, the Holocaust, and what it means to create an identity in the wake of tragedy.

Also recommended: Helen Epstein--'Where She Came From' Thane Rosenbaum--'Second Hand Smoke' Nathan Englander--'For the Relief of Unbearable Urges'

It would be wonderful to say that the Allies succeeded in rescuing a huge percentage of the Jews Hitler meant to annihilate, but that wouldn't be the truth at all. In fact, many readers may be stunned by the level of disinterest and cruelty displayed by supposedly-civilized countries like the US and England when it came to helping the decimated population of European Jewry. Biderman's account is both awesome in its honesty and troubling in its assessment of our inaction. Not only will the reader get a striking visual image of what Biderman suffered and survived, but also of the issues that made it possible for there to ever be a Holocaust in the first place. After reading this book, you will be touched and heartsick, but you will be more enraged than anything else. And that, in Biderman's view, is the first step to ending the hatred and prejudice that killed 6 million Jews and which continues to kill people all over the world each day.

This book details the well-organized assistance to Jews by Polish gentiles during the German-Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II. Unfortunately, from time to time, we hear ignorant claims about Poles being indifferent to the plight of Jews, or even secretly delighting in their extermination. This is patently untrue, as this book makes clear. Highly recommended!

If you liked Zvi's biography, you will love this book. Full of insight and inspiration, Zvi shows us the light!

Kane & Abel is the story of two men born in the same day, thousands of miles apart. One is extremely rich, the other has a childhood of poverty, emprisionment and doubts. They meet in America under special circumstances, ans their lives will never be the same again.

The beggining of the book is very good and well written, in a psychological way, to say the least. Archer is able to show the reader the early life of William and Wladek using a system that alternates chapters between his two main characters.

However, after they meet, the story seems to get a little too futile, each character trying only to destroy the other's life. I thought this was very shallow. And the fact that their children get together is a punch-line so beaten that I can only understand that it was Archer's hook to write another novel, "The prodigal daughter".

William and Abel got old too quickly, and the final quarter of the book, where they are older men, has too many events, poorly dealt with. Also, the ending was unsattisfatory, but again I must suppose that he was already thinking about the sequel when he wrote the final passages of "Kane & Abel".

I rate this book four stars for the early chapters.

Two men who by some strange fate are born on the same day in 2 different parts of the world.....but destiny makes them each other's worst enemies. One a polish immigrant and the other the son of a bostonian millionaire heir of a large fortune.. The life struggle as both men try to outwit each other.. A tale of ambition,power,struggle,lust blends all aspects. The climax is sure to melt your hearts away it was unbelievable. If anyone can guess the ending without reading it i'd be surprised. A must read novel!!Don't miss it!

Having finished As The Crow Flies, I eagerly turned to Kane & Abel with much anticipation, but wondering how could I like this book as much as I loved ATCF. It was not difficult. I LOVED THIS BOOK TOO!!! Archer is an amazing writer of epic, engaging and "unputdownable" novels. With about 100 pages to go I could not help but to speed up to learn about the fates of William, Abel, Florentyna, Richard et al. I need to re-read those pages to see if perhaps I was a bit hasty! While the end pairing off is a bit predictable, it is heart-warming and a character or two could be left out. K&A might also cause the reader to rethink her or his actions in life and perhaps take a different take on things. Do read this- you will not be disappointed and you will not believe how moved you will be.

Do you like history, for instance, World War II? If you do, read The Devil's Arithmetic. The historical fiction book tells about what happened to the Jews in concentration camps in Poland during World War II. Hannah-Chaya experiences things that changed some thoughts she had.
Hannah goes back in time to 1942 after walking through the door to Elijah. Jews were captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to concentration camps or (death camps). There was little food for the Jews there. They got to eat watery soup. At camps they were tortured or killed and they were branded with numbers.
Hannah was going to Lilth's Cave with two other girls and they would have to stay there forever. What will happen to her? Will her life come to an end? To find out read The Devil's Arithmetic.
It was a good book, because there was a lot of information. You got sadness when you read about how the Jews were tortured or killed, and how little food they got. It was cool to read and see Yiddish words. I was amazed when Hannah's aunt told her she was Rivka because you would have never guessed that. I give this book three stars, because it gives historical information. Some of the words were hard to understand. I would have given it four stars if the words were easier to understand.

Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen is a disturbing yet powerful book. I highly recommend it to children and adults of all ages. It is written in a very understandable way. This book talks alot about the history of the holocaust being that it is set in pre-WWII and in Poland. It is an excellent book for learning a piece of history that will never be forgotten and also a great book to just sit down and read. This book was written in first person and shows how a person as an individual felt during the holocaust and how they were treated in the concentration camps, and gives somewhat of an idea of what was going through their heads at the time. Usually, the feelings of people are generalized and instead of talking about what one person felt, since there were so many, it is generalized. It is a more realistic look at things, that is most probbly the reason why it gave the book a disturbing touch to it. It is about a girl named Hannah who has a grandfather and great aunt who have never ending stories and lectures about the Nazi's. She is at her house for the passover (pesah) and as tradition, someone opens up the door letting in the prophet Elijah. Hannah was chosen. Once she does, time changes and she is transformed to her aunt's best friend Chaya which is also her middle name. During that time, she is at a wedding where the Nazi's invade and take everyone there to concentration camps. They are kept in box cars for almost two days and finally are taken to the places where their heads are shaved and they are tattoed a number instead of having a name. At the camps Hannah is living a nightmare and day by day people are sent to the gas room where they never come back from. It is there that Hannah learns what it is really like to live the stories she has heard from her grandfather and have them become a reality. This book didnt have very many weaknesses, although, Yolen may have been able to make an even better and more outstanding book if she didnt keep things that simple. The plot could have been a little more elaborated on but the book is still excellent . From strengths to weaknesses, this book is an excelent way to learn a little about one of the worlds most unforgettable wars. Yolen kept me clutched to the book and had me not knowing what was going to hapen next. I never knew what was going to happen to her, weather she would live or die..

The Devil's Arithmetic is an emotional story about a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who travels back through time to the year 1942. I read this book because I had read several excellent reviews about it. It turned out to be one of the best books about historical events that I have ever read. The author's decriptive tone gave me a clear image about the different chacters, settings, and events. The theme in this book is that, as hard as it may be at times, you must learn to empathize with others to understand their feelings and points of view. It is never easy to understand what someone has gone through unless you have experienced the same ordeal. Hannah had a hard time understanding what made her grandfather, who had survived the Holocaust, so angry when he saw Nazi footage on television. That was until she herself went through a concentration camp.
The story has three main settings. It begins in Hannah's grandfather's apartment in New York. The story then moves to a small Jewish village in Poland, where Hannah lives for a short period of time. The third and most important setting is in a concentration camp in Poland. This is where most of the book takes place.
Although the vocabulary in this book is not remotely difficult, the reader has to know a bit of backround about the Holocaust to understand the book. It is also a very emotional story, full of sacrifice and hatred. For these reasons, I would recommend this book to anyone who is in the sixth grade and above.

"Maus: My Father Bleeds History" is a very interesting book. It is written in a way not many books are. The comic book outline is very unique. It is like a comic book within itself. The thing is that this is not a comical story. The story is about the Holocaust. Another interesting aspect about this story are the main characters. They are animals. The Jews are are mice, the Poles are the pigs, and the Germans are the cats.
Art Spieglman is the son of Vladek Spieglman, a Holocaust survivor. He is also a survivor in life. Art is a comic book artist who is writing about his father's life as a Jew in World World 2 Europe. Vladek's hardships and the mistreatment of the Jews are hard at times to read and the illustrations make the story feel much more real. The struggles of trying to survive, not knowing who is your friend or enemy, and the personal relationships between the characters, make this a memorable story.
This book is good for anyone who likes history and a personal story. I recommend this to anyone who doesn't want to do a lot of reading. The things people go through in extraordinary circumstances make you think what you might go through if you were faced with those same problems. Basically this book makes you think. Which is a good thing, because for me that means it's good.
On a scale of 1-5, I give this story a 4.5.

First of all, if you've read or are reading the other reviews, ignore the blather about how the whole "Animal Farm" metaphor--Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc..--being racist and demeaning.

Art Spiegelman attempts to tell the story of his father Vladek's life in Hitler's Europe. By and large, the book is a detailed, objective retelling of his Vladek's story. However, as Art himself will realize, "I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" and "Reality is much too complex for comics--so much has to be left out or distorted." Thus liberated from the impossible standard of complete objectivity, Art is free to insert two important subjective elements into the story--the depiction of different races as different species, and the insertion of himself as a character in MAUS.

Obviously, Art is not a overt racist--in fact, in the second part of MAUS, Art will scold his father for distrusting a black person, and a German-Jewish couple will help Vladek return home after being freed from the death camps. The point of portraying Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, etc. is to show what race relations during Hitler's Europe might have been like.

The characterization of race doesn't end there, though--as the scene shifts from Nazi Germany to the present, and as Art must suffer the daily trials and tribulations of life with a father permanently scarred by his experiences, Art depicts himself as a mouse as well, a confession that he himself is unable to completely escape the aftermath of the poisoned race relations of the Holocaust. Maybe this makes him a covert racist. But if he is, then who isn't?

Art's involvement in MAUS goes beyond interviewing his father, though. Later in the story we will see that Art was treated in a mental hospital and sees a psychiatrist regularly. As the book cover declares, "MAUS is a story about the survivors of the Holocaust--and of the children who somehow survive the survivors."

The storytelling in MAUS is stellar, and the craftsmanship is as well. The comics medium allows Spiegelman to employ some interesting tricks. For example, whenever Vladek is trying to sneak around, he is portrayed with a pig mask. When Vladek and Anja are trying to escape from the ghetto, Anja, who in real life was easily identifiable as a Jew by her appearance, is drawn with a long tail, while Vladek is not.

In sum, MAUS is a gripping story of his parents' experience during the Holocaust, filled with countless brushes with death, tales of betrayal, and plenty of terrible, graphic illustrations of victims being executed. It is not a history text in the most austere and empirical sense. Rather, it is a confession that the Holocaust defies dispassionate and detached analysis.

Usually when I buy comic books (aka graphic novels) it is even more for the art work than for the story. However, the deceptively simple art work in "Maus" is perfect for the compelling, gripping story of author Spiegleman's father, Vladek, a Jew caught in Nazi Europe during World War II. The story concerns Vladek's survival of the Holocaust, even though being in a concentration camp, his love story with his wife, Anna, and his eventual life in America afterwards. More complex art work would have taken away from the story. This story has such epic, universal appeal that you want nothing to distract you from it. You hate to say that anyone has depicted stereotypes absolutely true to life but in World war II Europe, Spiegelman's depiction of the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs, and the Americans as dogs, can only be called dead-on accurate. The author was very lucky in one respect though. If his father Vladek was even a tenth as great in real life as the Vladek shown here, I would expect the son of such a person to be able to create this book.

This truly a brilliant book, no other author that I've ever read was able to capture the art of description like Kosinski. Though it will make you sick to your stomach and callenge you to question man's treatment of man, the things you will gain from the expierence will stay with you for a lifetime. I recomend all teenagers who have every question who they are or why they are here to read this book. Any adults who wander why the world is the way it is or who have never wander before should this book, because after reading it you'll never stop wandering. This book answers many question about the human soul and is a great experiment with the human phsyche. But for as many question it may answer, twice as many will be asked of the reader. It is a piece art the requires input as well as output. You become that little boy, you experienec horror, saddness, pain, loss of faith in God and in you own family. But it will also bring you to turns with mortality and let appreciate the good fortune you most likely expierence. I suggest you read this book and share it with you friends.

If ever you thought there wre limits to human cruelty and depravity, all you need do is read this book. It is the closest thing to a tour of hell that the 20C could provide.

The story centers around a sensitive and intelligent child, who was left in the hands of a caretaker in the countryside during WWII. When the caretaker dies suddenly, the child is left to fend for himself in the Polish countryside, where the population is superstitious and poverty stricken. He lived through a succession of horrors, including beatings, exposure to sex, and threats to his life. He survives, of course, and makes extremely interesting observations with the clarity - and peculiar warp - of a child. He also becomes as cruel as his tormentors, but still reachable and able to grow. It is a glimpse of what that war was like.

This makes Painted Bird a brilliant novel, undoubtedly Kozinski's best though also his first. It is a tradegy that Kosinski lied about his past, perhaps to market the book and also to create a myth about himself, saying that this was autobiographical when in fact he had spent the war in relative comfort with his parents. When the truth became known, he committed suicide. But that does not diminish the magnitude of his acheivement here.

OK, I admit, I should have been older than 14 years old when I first read this novel... it is more graphic than your average WWII book or movie. This novel is an unusual perspective on the holocaust. There are no factories full of jewish labor slaves, no ghettoes, no concentration camps. Instead, there is a small child, seperated from his parents in time of war, lost in the countryside of rural central Europe. In the course of the novel, we discover how the social chaos brought about by WWII plays itself out among common peasants in the countryside as they are reduced to the lowest behaviors imaginable in the absence of peace, stability, clear governance, and a socially agreed-upon sense of right and wrong. And the victim (or victims) is the child who witnesses (and lives with) this state of violence.

In response to the review title "More lies about Jerzy", I find it shallow and naive of the reviewer to call this book gratuitous violence invented for entertainment simply because the events depicted are not truly autobiographical. It is a novel. Last time I checked, novelists seem to make stories up on a regular basis. No need to discount the value of the narrative because of its condition as fictional. As for the suggestion that Jerzy did not write this book, I wouldn't be surprised if he had help smoothing his prose into readable English. Kozinski is not a native speaker of English. In fact, he learned the language as an adult. So he needed help with the language... who cares? The plot, characterization, and overall design of the book bear the creative mark that no proof reader or ghost writer could put on a narrative. I don't doubt that this is Jerzy Kozinski telling this story, and the spirit of the narrative, the pain the child feels (he is so traumatized by his experiences that he becomes mute and needs to undergo therapy as an adult to recover his ability to speak) is an expression of WWII as Kozinski experienced it. We don't need to know if Kozinski is the boy in the narrative. The knowledge that Kozinski could identify and describe this violence in a way that actually upsets you and makes you angry is enough for me. Kozinski has written an excellent novel about WWII and its aftermath, which, unlike Schindler's List, doesn't make you feel warm and cozy about how all the good people triumphed in the end... this novel will leave you with the lasting impression that there is no end-of-story resolution/redemption for those affected by war.