Being that there are so many accounts and various testimonies of the halocaust, is there any fiction or non-fiction books that you thought were the best. That may be slightly evil in asking what story about murder is the best, but there are so many different ones, and some are bound to be better than others.
I for one, thought that Night was brilliant in that depressing sad way, and I have to say that I never liked Anne Frank and her story of mourning.
"Night" was excellent. It made me look for some other Wiesel stuff to read, which led me to "Dawn", which could almost be a fictional continuation of "Night", as it's about a holocaust survivor in post-WWII Israel that has to execute someone.
Tadeusz Borowski's "Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber" is I believe a fictional concentration camp from another survivor/author, but whereas Wiesel went on to write and write, I think Borowski killed himself a little while later. Grim, grim.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is a little different as in it deals with the Siberian work camps in the 60s instead of WWII, but there are definitely a lot of similarities and it is no less captivating as he is an excellent writer and this semi-fictional account came from his 10 years' (I think) of hard time in one (or more) of those camps.
I think some of the other things I read by Wiesel had to do with these camps as well, since I can see it being kind of hard to sit and let the same thing happen all over again.
Oh, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s "Mother Night" has some pretty strong connections to the concentration camps as well, and the stories that come up from that were terrific/terrible. It wasn't exactly the main topic of the book (thought it is all related to WWII), but when they get to a guy recounting his days in the camps and talking about the sonderkommando, you'll be right back in "Night".
I have a book that was written by a French prisoner in the concentration camps. He came to one of my humanities classes once and gave a lecture. When he finished, there was not a dry eye in the bunch. Even the professors had tears in their eyes. Sadly, he has not been able to do lectures since. His health was bad at the time and has greatly declined.
His book is heart breaking since he was not a Jewish person, but a French soldier, he was seen as only someone who's ideas needed to be changed to see things as the Germans saw them. So he was brought around to witness so many things. He learned quickly not to try to help because it was just worst for those he tried to help. I will try to find the title of the book. It was not a widely published book. I actually bought a copy from his daughter, who came with him for the lecture.
"Ashes and Diamonds" by Jerzy Andrzejewski was very good and is worth the read. It was written pretty shortly after the war (1948), attributing to the very real sense the imagery in this book gives.
What's "Night"?
Oh I so wish to reas some Solzenycin, but I havent yet...I'm even (almost) sure I did buy a book but I can't find it...
As for the holocaust, it's -sadly- one of my favourite themes in history. I've asked myself if it's perversion, but I think it's 'natural' for us to wonder about all that and want to know more... And all the survivors want is that all that won't be forgotten, so I think we have to read more and more about it all to keep the memory, also because soon there won't be any more of those who lived that, as the ones that are still alive are obviously very old.
So, have you ever heard of Primo Levi? I'm sure his stuff has been translated. He was an Italian Jew who survived Auschwitz and wrote about his experience in a book called Se Questo E' Un Uomo (literally: if this is a man, I dont know if the title has been translated differently), plus another one (La Tregua . The Truce(???))about the months he took to come back to Italy, and some short stories, among the many he wrote on other subjects, including science as he was a Chemist and might have never been a writer if it wasn't for his experience in Auschwitz...which would have been a pity as I find his style absolutely wonderful. He also wrote a novel (called Se Non Ora, Quando? - If not now, when?), about some Polish Jews during the war. Oh, and his last work was an essay about the concentration camps, called I Sommersi E I Salvati (The drowned and the saved), and it's amazing. He committed suicide in 1987 if my memory doesn't fail (anyway just some 10 years before I discovered how much I loved him...I was so dreaming of writing him a letter if he was still alive...)
Last edited by Koa; 06-11-2004 at 04:43 PM.
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
Koa, the author of "Night: is Elie Wiesel, who was in the concentration camps, and won the Nobel Peace prize in 1986. The synopsis of the book is, "A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful...the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again".
It has a follow up called "Dawn" in which he tries to deal with what to do after the concentration camps and decided to work for revenge and is supposed to kille someone at the end of the book, but he doesn't know if he can or not or whether he should.
I recommend them both.
Interesting, even if that synopisis makes it sound like it was the latest Hollywood movie...I trust it not to be so at all.
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
It's quite short Koa, and the synopsis is hollywood worthy, I just copied it from the back of the book, too lazy to write my own. But I think it's worth a read, it is pretty simple and basic in it's tale, but it just hits at all the problems accuratly and lays them in plain view.
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