Holocaust Testimonies

...Instead, they remained alive, with the living death of what had happened with- in them...

...Nevertheless, he reads and learns, passing first-hand and other commentary on to us...

...How does one live with the memory of having buffed one's own mother alive, or of having stolen food from a sister, or shoes from a sleeping comrade...

...He finds, as the saying goes, that truth is stranger DeepenCommitment Through Life-longLearning Participate with us in a dynamic community of faith and learning at Weston School of Theology, a national Jesuit theological center...

...KAREN SUE SMITH, a former associate edi- tor of Commonweal, is the editor of Church magazine...

...Gould loves to expose myths, myths associated with everything from the origins of baseball to the origins of life...

...Malka D. tells of being one of a group of thirty people locked in a concentration camp cellar, deprived of light or food, and in fear of torture...

...He is highly, in fact terribly, successful in his effort...

...And respond they do...

...The book consists of thirty-five essays...

...Langer compares the oral testimonies he's studied against written accounts, and finds that though the latter convey the troth, the very fact that they have a structure and coherence means they don't accurately por- tray the Holocaust, because, as the oral tes- timony shows, there was no shape or mean- ing to what happened...

...How do you come to terms with a Nazi ordering hot water for a newborn in order to boil the baby...

...Langer says that the survivors didn't, in a sense, survive, because that word has a moral resonance that doesn't represent the truth...

...The terrible fact is that the Nazis did succeed...

...Little did I know that I sent him to the crema- torium...

...The title essay is classic Gould...

...J. Frank Devine, S J, Director of Admissions Weston School of Theology 3 Phillips Place, Department C1 Cambridge, MA 02138-3495 Telephone: (617) 492-1960 Fax: (617) 492-5833 Weston School of Theology A National Jesuit Theological Center in Cambridge, MA 27 September 1991:553...

...Norton, $22.95,510 pp...

...tells us, falsifies and thus diminishes the suffering of actual, decent people...

...They had no way to imagine, and thus prepare for, the grief and degradation that would be imposed on them, and it is impossible for them to resolve the pervasive, corrosive loss each of them has sustained...

...If we make them heroes or saints we comfort ourselves at the cost of failing to honor them...

...He is absolutely opposed to what he calls "the grammar of heroism and mar- tyrdom": such words as "nobility," "vic- tory," "dignity...

...don't bury me while I'm alive.'" In the concentration camps, those who were to be killed immediately were sent to the left, and the others sent to the right...

...many do not even mention them...

...The author himself calls it the best of the five, in part because "I have become a better writer by monthly practice...

...Early on, Gould asks the read- er to "Bear with me," and, on many occa- sions, one does have to make that commit- ment, as he unearths intriguing connections among seemingly unconnected events...

...For the past twenty years, the Harvard pale- ontologist and author, most recently of A Wonderful Life, has been sharing his knowl- edge of evolution with the public in a style which has become uniquely his own...

...NANCY HAEGEL is an associate professor of materials science at UCLA and a Kellogg National Fellow...

...And of course, we cannot be on guard against evil if we do not acknowledge it...

...It coex- ists with normal life, but it never fades and it always diminishes the victim's opinion of all humanity, including him or herself...

...Madeline Marget mean tied their penis?' asks the interviewer, and she replies, 'Yes, so urine wouldn't come out.'" Nathan A. describes a mass murder in a Polish town, and of being made part of the burial detail that followed...

...It is the agony they inflicted, ongoing within their victims, that the sur- vivors tell about...

...We invite the collaborative participa- tion of lay and religious men and women, in the process of developing and enhancing their intellectual and practical skills in the service of today's Church...

...Making new families doesn't com- pensate for the loss of the old ones...

...DENNIS O'BRIEN is president of the University of Rochester...

...postage stamp...

...The main themes will be familiar to those acquainted with Gould's work evolution (with pointed reminders of our historical and continuing tendency to misunderstand or misuse the theory), the oddities of nature, apparent trivia with a larger story to tell...

...His most recent book is God and the New Haven Railway (Beacon...

...Gould has received thousands of letters over the years...

...You 552: Commonweal HOLOCAUST TESTIMONIES The Ruins of Memory Lawrence L. Langer Yale University Press, $25,216 pp...

...Programs for a Life of Ministry .9 Master of Divinity .9 Master of Theology .9 Master of Theological Studies .9 Licentiate in Sacred Theology .9 Sabbatical Renewal We also offer: .9 Distinguished Faculty .9 A Community of Faith .9 Diverse Student Body .9 Access to the nine schools of the Boston Theological Institute Financial Aid Information Available For more information contact: Rev...

...There was no ethical context into which one could fit, or can fit now, actions the Holocaust's circumstances dictated...

...Soon--in the next decades--all the Holocaust survivors will be gone...

...Because of the similarity and repetition of themes, this is a book best savored in small bites, more enjoyable as a snack than a cover- to-cover meal...

...on the con- Wary, age seems to make the recollections worse...

...Langer's subject is the Holocaust's total lack of connection to goodness...

...I am...I feel like I killed him...

...Witnessing barbarism, Langer tells us, is in its own way as bad as suffering it...

...The passing of years doesn't help...

...Very few of the interviews Langer quotes focus on the tormenters...

...This bit of encouragement to those who practice the writer's craft is espe- cially welcome from Gould, the acknowl- edged master of the popular science essay...

...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., a journalism professor at Loyola University in New Orleans is, with Jeff Theilman, author of Volunteer: With the Poor in Peru (Paulist...

...Moreover, the virtue of his own work does, to some extent at least, dispute his claim...

...The correspondence, reflected in postscripts or subsequent essays, moves the author outside a world populated pri- marily by land snails (his favorite research topic) and Nobel Prize winners (his friends and colleagues...

...Langer says: "She seems to tear the words out of the silence that possesses her on this issue...

...Finally, she whispers, the men took string and tied it around themselves...

...Line after line and page after page, Holocaust Testimonies batters us not only with the dreadful facts, but with the author's eloquent insistence that we "share this dissonance...

...He did not know what being sent in one direction or the other meant, and when he and three of his brothers were sent to the right, he said, to his youngest brother, using the inti- macy of Yiddish, "'Solly, gey tsu Tate un Mame [go to poppa and momma].' And like a little kid, he followed -- he did...

...In every instance Langer raises, the sufferer has sustained permanent damage that cannot be ameliorated...

...Lawrence Langer, using as his primary text videotaped interviews of survivors, gives unrelenting-- and, with his argument, undeniable-- evidence not only that the horror of the Holocaust never ends for its victims, but that it ought never to end for the rest of us...

...One--the son bury his mother...

...Nancy M. Haegel .9 ully for Brontosaurus is D Stephen Jay Gould's fifth 4 volume of essays collectD ed from his monthly contributions to Natural History magazine...

...It begins with a discussion of stamps from Monaco, looks back to a crucial meeting in 1913 affecting the course of zoological naming, and concludes with commentary on a recent brouhaha about the brontosaurus on a U.S...

...I have quoted these testimonies at length because Langer's achievement derives from the source he has chosen to use, as well as from his willingness to see and hear people as they are...

...But anyone who reads Langer's book will heed the injunction I've heard from my earliest days, and that I believe all Jews--and good people of every heritage and religion--want broadcast and obeyed: Never forget, i THE QUESTIONS SCIENTISTS CAN ANSWER BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS Stephen Jay Gould W.W...

...Gould's interaction with librarians, octogenarians, and former presidents (a letter from Jimmy Carter receives a lengthy reply) gives credence to his statement that "the 'perceptive and intelligent' layperson is no myth...

...and she called out, 'Moyshe, I'm alive...

...Some people were buried alive,".., the earth used to go up and down because they are living people...

...The people he presents had no choices...

...the people were civilized, she says, and afraid to relieve themselves in the presence of others...

...It is the essays, not the book as a whole, to which readers respond...

...The men and women who have con- tributed interviews to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale (Langer's source) are identified by a first name and an initial: George S., Sidney L., Barbara T. This nomenclature, in other cir- cumstances reminiscent of the elementary school classroom, here evokes the deper- sonalization of imprisonment, of the num- ber tattooed on the arm, as each person, in middle age or older, gives his or her tes- timony...

...Their use, he convincingly REVIEWERS MADEL1NE MARGET, a writer and reviewer, is working on a book about the humane delivery of high-tech medical care...

...The worst of it, however, was the lack of toilet facilities...

...BOOKS An accurate map of hell olocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, is an uncompromising exploration of hell...

...Abraham P. recalls his arrival at Auschwitz with his parents and four brothers...

...Reading this fine and valuable book is difficult and painful, because there is nothing redemptive about the experience he describes...

...Those who perished in it will have no one to mourn them as individuals, or to directly bear witness...