Books
Voices from the Holocaust, Edited by Sylvia Rothchild, T HE HOLOCAUST BOOKS discussed in Robert Leiter's re- NAL Books, $14.95, 456 pp. view are listed in order mentioned: Witness to the...
...If it is true, as Richard Rubenstein and Arthur A. Cohen (in his recent book The Tremendum) have written, that the rela- tionship of the Jew to his God is the most crucial question after Auschwitz, then by right of its subject matter alone The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors is a work of vast importance...
...Kirkrldge Gathering The Company at Kirkridge, a supportive network for contemporary Christians will meet August 7,8,9, 1981 at Penn State University...
...After liberation when the struggle to regain our health became the single most important task, bars of soap were at a premium...
...III I I , ] clude Badenheim 1939 by Aharon Ap- writings about the Holocaust by those T HE ARGUMENT takes on another di- pelfeld, The Missing Years by Walter who were not there...
...It is a bit much to ask of even great numbers of people...
...Would you believe it, he's still alive,' he said . . . 'What?' the Lagerfuhrer screamed, positively foaming with rage...
...died in 1960 and Amery took his own life questions George Steiner's preference . . ." Other critics have spoken of the in 1978) and still they came to radically for Bruno Bettelheim's The Informed impossibility of approaching the divergent conclusions about the histo- Heart over any of the novels or poems Holocaust except through reverential si- rian's ability to extract truth from horror...
...Individuals and churches are asked to help sponsor this program...
...George Steiner Problems of methodology are central to Ms...
...Victor Frankl has several heartbreak- ing pages on what it was like to wake each morning in a concentration camp...
...This is the Jobian an- swer: God is great but beyond our mortal minds...
...10022 ror...
...Trunk's book makes clear is the extent and variety of Jewish resistance...
...Ezrahi would be to recopy the book, line by line...
...Arabs and Jews were to share authority...
...SISTER THERESE LENTFOEHR Classified II RATES: 70r a word, one time...
...Pariisan fighting, escapes from the camps, uprisings in the ghettos--these were only the most obvious manifestations...
...Rosenfeld work of the historian (especially the The House on Prague Street by Hana describes as painful and upsetting, dis- historian/survivor) who must, by reason Demetz...
...Over 30...
...Trunk offers one other possible expla- nation for why the Jews acted as they did...
...Some answers are far-reaching in their implications...
...THE LITURGICAL PRESS, Box 8, Collegeville, MN 56321...
...31 July 1981:447...
...But Kielar, in his description of the standing cell he was forced to endure, gives us a far more visceral sense of how slowly time moves for people who are in pain...
...Complete and Mail Today EXPOSITION PRESS, INC., Dept...
...it is almost certain that we ions have great psychological truth...
...Were one allowed to cross the threshold of his "house of the spirit," and share some knowledge of this "inner prayer," the reticences are inviolable...
...The Kapo laid a stick across the powerful neck of the dying man...
...Cost $40...
...How were the Jews, who had never been known for their militance, expected to engage in battle and defeat an army that had conquered nearly all of Europe...
...Doctors on the Bomb "The Last Epidemic--Medical Conse-quences of Nuclear War," a video film, is available for group showing on UHS or Beta Max 1/2 inch tape...
...Rosenfeld is far more willing to ing On mass suffering and, by removing dent Zionist and, before the outbreak of admit to the complexity of the argument...
...02172...
...Lisiero @ $10.95 plus $1.50 postage and handling per copy...
...Classified payable with order...
...Bibliography...
...We were deprived of decent soap for so long by the Nazis and we were further deprived of it by the rabbis...
...justice against the victims...
...In N.Y...
...Total Enclosed $ Name Address City State Zip 31 July 1981:443 mendous scream which stopped the Kapos in their tracks and then keeled over...
...The letters are preserved in ~he Ringelblum Archives and were written by all sorts of people, young and old, male and female, people differing in their religious, social, political beliefs...
...And he kept his marvelous sense of humor...
...and Jean Amery's At the Mind's Limits...
...Of course, the opposing view is also expressed, that the camps came into being to prove the existence of God once and for all, to bring him out into the open at last...
...Though the rigid monastic regime undoubtedly told on his Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...so the issue becomes im-the only completely decent review . . . Both authors were survivors (Friedman mediately clouded...
...This time there was no doubt that it was the end...
...This is what the Jews were, not cowards, not heroes and not really mar- tyrs, just a diverse group of people re- sponding in diverse ways to the same event...
...Most of these people separate God from man...
...The Nazi terror was such an anothaly in Jewish history--so widespread, methodical, and relentless--that the resistance was correspondingly unique...
...Write/phone collect (509) 328-4220...
...There are other moments of dread horINTERNATIONAL PROGRAM DIRECTORS Major non-profit international development agency seeks EXPERIENCED managers to direct overseas-based multi-million dollar programs in Sub-Saharan Africa...
...CM 325 Kings Highway, P.O...
...66r three times...
...This man had been one of the wealthiest of Czech industrialists, and "In the last analysis he had been murdered because the SS doctor had earmarked his body for research while the Jew was still alive...
...Rosenfeld terested in the Jews of Eastern Europe...
...Hitler by Peter Hellman, Atheneum, $11.95, 267 pp...
...Trunk implores any reader who finds his argu- ment unconvincing to simply read his book...
...memoir...
...We did one series a year, com- pleting them in 1955...
...not without first having kicked the hacked-off stumps in the direction of the heap of' corpses...
...born of the concentration camp experi- lence...
...This began a friendship which continued until his death...
...In all friendships there are reti- cences...
...For Trunk and for Friedman, any infringement of Nazi rule--praying when it was outlawed, the smuggling of food into the ghettos, even the wearing of the yellow star--constituted resistance...
...Unable to loosen it, the man takes a shovel and "with one blow he chopped all the fingers off the blue hand...
...Box 144, Water- town, Mass...
...Gaining access to that section of the crematorium where the autopsies were performed, Kielar sees a glass jar con- taining the swollen and blackened liver of the huge Jew...
...But with the Nazi domination of Europe the British adopted the White Paper Pol- icy of 1939, which amounted to a total reversal of the Balfour Declaration...
...If, following the reasoning of Ezrahi and Rosenfeld, Anne Frank's diary has been popular because it was "antisep-tic," then Anus Mundi may go down in history as the most important neglected work of the twentieth century...
...The cost is $25 for members...
...Somehow when it is translated into millions, the very same kind of murder committed a million times over, then is God brought into the picture to explain and account for it...
...Sisterhood...
...He wanted to know what the liver of such a giant would look like after three days of constant beat- ings...
...Holocaust "imposes an artificial mean- Holocaust literature," was born an arMr...
...Gonzaga University Desire Priesthood...
...But somehow the orthodox rabbis heard about this bin of soap and decided the contents were not kosher enough for Jews and prevented us from gaining access to it...
...Potential audience three to five million...
...And God failed the test...
...63r six times...
...N.Y., N.Y...
...We were all happy and excited about it...
...They "record resigna- tion and desperate calls for help, faith in divine providence and utter atheism, apathy and feverish efforts to find some kind of rescue, natural optimism and un- limited despair, a clear sense of what was in store and completely unfounded illu- sions...
...Trunk quotes from the autobiography of Rudolph Hoess, the Kommandant of Auschwitz...
...Asked what they thought the meaning of the Holocaust might be, several sur- vivors attribute to God Zionist impulses, the need to uproot the Jews by whatever means and return them to Israel...
...based Regional Director...
...Because it is only one single person...
...To register or for more informa- tion write Kathy Mourant 718 Glenn Rd., State College, PA 16801...
...British policy on the Jewish question had much to do with the status of Pales- tine...
...Checks should be sent to: Pub-lic Interest Video Network, P.O...
...I hope it won't take long.'" Trunk believes that the postcards and letters of Jews soon to be "relocated" give us a clear picture of the spiritual and psychological mood ot .he people...
...he tells of a young woman who drew his attention because she kept running back and forth, helping small children and elderly women un-dress and keep calm...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed...
...A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, University of Indiana Press, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about $17.50, 210 pp...
...But when I found his review of my Marian anthology, 1 Sing ofaMaiden in Commonweal (Feb...
...For too many, the answer was no, in both a physical and spiritual sense...
...man has choice and can "help enthrone God or the Devil...
...If his creative work suffered during these years it was not because he was nursing a neurosis...
...When asked to describe God, the largest group of survivors felt that He was everything that Jewish tradition had claimed--omnipotent, benevolent, un-doubtedly omniscient, and loving as well--even though his ways must remain incomprehensible...
...land, Friedman was appointed director of 31 July 1981:439 and then get sick and then be savagely beaten--and the frail spirit broke...
...It was Merton himself who in 1939 initiated our correspondence over a poem of mine he .9had read and liked...
...creative and counsels us, as readers, to understands that these men speak from With the Nazi occupation of Poland, react to these works with diversity, flexi- unassailable positions and that their opin- Friedman went into hiding and spent the bility...
...As to th e question why in my study of Merton's poetry, Words and Silence, as a "soul sister" I had not revealed "more intimate glimpses of Merton's inner vis- ion and its motivation," let a line of Abbot Flavian's address to his monks after Merton's death give something of an answer...
...20, 1948), though the review was entirely favorable, I was irked by his closing re- mark that for poets writing on the Mary- theme, it too often served as "only a hook on which to hang their own portrait, or worse still, their own case history...
...The Crime and Punishment of l. G. Farben by Joseph Anus Mahdi: 1500 Days in AuschwitzlBirkenaaby Borkin, Free Press, $10.95, 250 pp...
...Robert Brenner, Free Press, $12.95, 266 pp...
...ISBN: 0-682-49664-2 $10.95...
...After the liberation of Po- assume still another reading stance for to solve...
...Less Than Slaves by Benjamin B. Ferencz, Harvard The Faith and DoaM of Holocaust Survivors by Reeve University Press, $15, 249 pp...
...mension when we approach the Laqueur, Timetable by Amos Elon and Faced with works that Mr...
...Voices from the Holocaust, Edited by Sylvia Rothchild, T HE HOLOCAUST BOOKS discussed in Robert Leiter's re- NAL Books, $14.95, 456 pp...
...As she stood at the gas chambers, she called out to him: 'I knew all the time that we were being taken to Auschwitz to be gassed, and I deliberately avoided being chosen for labor because I wanted to take care of mychildren and go through all this in the full awareness of what was happening...
...Well, one day a storage bin of soap was discovered, which had been previously overlooked...
...Here we see an Auschwitz before the advent of sys- tematic death, a recreation sight for sadistic Kapos...
...As the extermination began, resistance changed its shape...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave., NYC 10016...
...On the contrary, these notes, covering some seven hundred pages of manuscript, witness to a mammoth task of reading and research no neurotic could ever have accomplished...
...Even Ms...
...Palestine would not become a Jewish state...
...we knew him from his spoken word...
...It was the end...
...The bitterness of many Jews, their be- lief that Jewish ritual can affect no change, is easily understood...
...Under the basically pro-Zionist Bal- four Declaration of 1917, Britain was to oversee the governing of Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish homeland...
...The Jews might also have actually wondered whether it was worth fighting for one's life in a world where the human beast could rule undisturbed amid the passive silence of the entire civilized world...
...Re-quire fluent French/English, prior Third World experience & minimum 3 years commitment...
...Here we have portrayed Britain, a nation founded on the principles of civility, dis- counting the pleas of a truly despairing people...
...view are listed in order mentioned: Witness to the Holocaust by Azdel Eisenberg, The Pil- grim Press, $17.95, 649 pp...
...Station, Washington, DC 20036...
...But war moving from one underground locaconfront the works of survivors in mar- "the discrepancy between honoring (the) tion to another...
...and the British would permit further expansion of a Jewish National Home by immigra- tion only if the Arabs agreed to the proPeople Ideology People Theology NEW PEISP|gTNE8 811 RELIOIOU| DOOMA l rlo Llslsro A challenging analysis of Pope John Paul II's trend toward conservatism in response to I!beration theology and other pro-gressive ecclesiastical movements...
...Although James Baker mentions what he rightly calls Monica Furlong's "occa- sional lapses into pop psychoanalysis," he takes seriously what she describes as Merton's "amateur journey into neurosis in the 1950s...
...ful fictions--Elie Wiesel's Night and ideal critical perspective...
...I believe that the most success- orienting and humbling, what, then, is the of his calli1~g, seek out the authentic...
...State add tax...
...There followed a few brief exchanges...
...Families tried to stick together at any price...
...As to my having been a "pen-pal" of Merton's, albeit a "poetic" one, I have never so considered myself...
...One man lost his faith over a cake of soap...
...And to judge God by it . . . Somehow with regard to the death of the Six Million European Jews, God has to be dragged in to explain what ought to be explained Commonweal: 446 simply by the fact recurring again and again of the mistreatment of one portion of humanity by another portion of hu- manity...
...Rustum Roy, scientist and Christian activist will present, "Enrich- ing your Faith with Modern Scientific In- sights...
...He rarely spoke of this kedly different ways than we do the ideal and fulfilling it is a real one and period of his life, in which his wife and works of those who perished, just as we poses critical problems that are not easy daughter died...
...some of the horror, commits a grave in- the second World War, an historian in-' He discusses responses other than the...
...Her own two child- ren had already been taken...
...We needed them to keep clean and fight in- fection and pychologically to scrub away the stench of death all around us...
...The victims preferred dying with dignity and with scorn toward the killers...
...The world knew him from his books," the Abbot saiti...
...19112, 20th St...
...He replied at once, saying, "I felt rather cheap after making those statements, reflecting on all Catholic poets en masse, I wouldn't have said what I did if I did not believe it --but wish I had avoided the subject...
...Public Broadcasting Special Tax-deductible contributions needed to complete matching funds for a one-hour PBS special on Nuclear Disarmament, on TV later this year...
...Raymond Bailey in his The Mysticism of Thomas Merton, namely, that "Merton was the healthiest and most normal man he had ever known...
...T HE UNKNOWN DIARIST of the Lodz Ghetto, who did not survive the war, asked an important question: "Is it possible to come out of such unimagina- ble depths, of such unfathomable abys- ses...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 418) are available to him...
...11787 (516) 582-8655 Please send me...
...By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature by Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, University of Chicago Press, $15, 262 Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 by Bernard PP...
...I .9decided to write him and did, gently chid- ing him for his remark...
...Holocaust by Arthur A. Cohen, Crossroad, $9.95, i 10 pp...
...Backed by the AMA...
...Exploring the role of ideology in faith and history, Fr, Lisiero calls for the Church to shed her hierarchical, functionalist system in favor of an anti-dogmatic, evangelical praxis of chango a "Christianity of liberation" in-spired and permeated by the Gospel example of Christ...
...During the selections for the gas chambers, "husbands often broke ranks and ran to their families in the first group, despite the fate in store for them if they did so...
...then he rocked on it for awhile until something cracked...
...Wasserstein, Institute of Jewish Affairs and Clarendon Press $17.95, 389 pp...
...Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution by Isaiah Trunk, The Tremendum: A Theological Interpretation of the Stein and Day, $15.95, 371 pp...
...Special concern was given to the children, and people tried to ease their final minutes...
...Major credit card orders accepted by phone or mail If $15 or more...
...Will supervise international & local national staff, conduct liaison & negotia- tions with host country & inter- national officials & report to U.S...
...Suddenly one of the Kapos bent over him...
...copies of PEOPLE IDEOLOGY--PEOPLE THEOLOGY by~ Fr...
...How is it when a man murders another man you never hear that God is at fault...
...The reward was Israel...
...30 for others...
...God's plan was a kind of bargain: I'll permit the Jews to be killed, slow down Hitler's war machine and defeat him by means of his Jewish obsession .9...
...Kielar watches as a drunken Blockfuhrer tries to remove a wedding ring from the hand of a corpse...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published.9 physical health, through all our correspondence there is no indication of what one might designate as neurosis...
...She finds wanting this need for ic, insists that writing about the become known as "the father of "systematic explanation...
...What Mr...
...B RrrAllV and the Jews of Europe 19391945 by Bernard Wasserstein is a portrait of the world's passive silence...
...The Story of the Village Auschwitz and its Realities by Jean Amery, Translated by of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There by Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld, Indiana Univer- Philip P. Hallie, Harper Colophon Paperback, $4.95, 303 sit3, Press, $I2.50, 110 pp...
...Another survivor observes the mitzvot (or commandments) as her personal re- venge against the Nazis, If she did not, she believes the Nazi triumph would be complete...
...One survivor believes that the Holocaust pro- vides concrete proof of God's existence, a sign that the Jews are unique and the rest of mankind is made up of savages...
...One man believes that God's plan was to de- stroy Hitler and "to accomplish (this) He offered His people, we Jews, as his sac- rifice...
...This is a book of profound questions and equally profound answers, a book that throws our complacence into sharp relief...
...Far more unusual are the survivors whose faith was unblemished or even strengthened by their experiences in the camps...
...The wedding ring rolled along the floor...
...Father Nigro, Gonzaga University, Spokane 99258...
...How many of us, members of a com- paratively staid society, are so unshaka- ble in our resolve...
...Competitive salary, benefits, plus allowances...
...He conceives of it as a moral and psycho- logical element, "a possible refusal to show the murderers any panic or hysteria that might have given additional pleasure to the sadists among them...
...The letters tell us how diversely different people reacted to the same events...
...Prof...
...It was precisely during these years that Merton and I were in almost constant communication, due to my helping him in organizing and typing out the six series of "Orientation Notes," conferences to the choir novices...
...Most shocking and revelatory are the early sections of the book...
...Few if any knew him in his secret prayer.., this is what gave the inner life to all he said and wrote...
...Softbound, 282 pages--$5.95+ $1.00 postage and han- dling...
...Wieslaw Kielar, Times Books, $14.95, 312 pp...
...With a coarse laugh he picked it up...
...Demetz's House on Prague Street, has argued that these books cannot be Philip Friedman's Roads to Extinction to name only two titles--are a species of "reviewed" in any traditional sense...
...In Solitary Witness In Solitary Witness by Gordon Zahn -- The true, unexpurgated story of Franz Jligerst&tter, who refused to serve in what he believed was an unjust war and was beheaded by Hitler...
...That was enough...
...Reinhard Baumgart, a German crit- Polish-born Philip Friedman, who has ence...
...Partition was dismissed...
...But Reeve Robert ]Brenner's book, The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors, an-swers the question in any number of ways, many of them disturbing, others surprising and heartening...
...These mutilated fingers made a far more harrowing impression on me than dozens of dead bodies loaded on platforms...
...Hitler's 'Final Solution' by Walter Laqueur, AtlanticLittle, Brown, $12.95, 262 pp...
...Any nuclear war is totally contra-indicated for the survival of the gone pool...
...Send resume & salary history to: Arthur Stegmayer Catholic Relief Services 1011 First Ave...
...Box 2120 $mlthtown, N.Y...
...Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust by Philip Friedman, Edited by Ada June Friedman, The Conference Avenue of the Righteout: Portraits in Uncommon on Jewish Social Studies and the Jewish Publication Society Courage of Christians and the Jews They Saved from of America, $22.50, 616 pp...
...Since through the years Merton occasionally sent me a journal to read "to amuse you," as he liked to say, I can attest to their being rich and illuminating in personal insight...
...Order from Physicians for Social Responsibility, P.O...
...In a word, my opinion coincides with that of a "prominent Louisville psychiatrist" cited by Dr...
Vol. 108 • July 1981 • No. 14
