I must say this was a great read. It definitely had the same air as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. For instance, Gyuri tried so hard to survival in the camp by calculating everything he did. Unfortunately, it did not pan out the way he wanted it to and his body started to decline. What worried me about Gyuri is… Read more →

This book was so weird. It was extremely harsh-toned and vulgar – he had a lot of passages about male genitalia (Maybe he is in the closet, I don’t know I wont judge). What I thought was interesting was this the first book, albeit fiction, in the perspective of a Nazi perpetrator. In my Brother’s Shadow is about the BROTHER… Read more →

I must say, this was a nice book to read. It is different from what we have read so far. I am sure the rotating theme in this novel is whether or not lying is okay if it for the benefit of others. Jacob was sent to the guard station and heard on the radio that the Russians were coming… Read more →

This book – where do I begin? The Stefan Maechler part of the book was great; he began with Wilkomirski’s childhood as Bruno Grosjean and how he became Bruno Drosekker, then eventually Binjamin Wilkomirski. What I found interesting was that Maechler interviewed Wilkomirski, asking him about his childhood and how he “survived the Holocaust.” During the interview, he made no… Read more →

In my Brother’s Shadow was written by Uwe Timm. To me, this book did not have the air of a memoir but that of a personal essay. It was very unorganized and not in chronological order. In my response paper I drew comparisons between this book and “Night” by Elie Wiesel because they both do not use chapter numbers. I… Read more →

I was not expecting to read a comic book, but this was a pleasant surprise. I like how the author, Art Spiegelman, was actually a comic book artist so he used his talent to tell his father’s story. I also liked how the author weaved his current life with the memories of his father. The book did seem quite heavy,… Read more →

Night was written by Elie Wiesel. If I believed that Gad Beck’s was amazing, this one tops the cake! Despite the melancholy tone of his book, it was an outstanding read. One of the aspect from the text, that hadn’t jumped out to me until our class discussion, was the absence of time. For example, there are no chapter numbers… Read more →

An Underground Life was written by Gad Beck. This has been, so far, my favorite text in the course. It was a fantastic read and the tone was light-hearted and humorous. Humor is not expected when reading a Holocaust memoir, but I think this is the directionality in which Beck wrote his book. Two major aspects in his book was… Read more →

At the Mind’s Limit was written by Jean Amery. This text was by far the hardest to read. He was so far detached from his own work that he would write a sentence or two about his experience, but then quickly refute it. The entirety of his paper was philosophical mumbo-jumbo to mask his true feelings. Like Levi, this was… Read more →

Still Alive was written by Ruth Klüger. Her story was pretty much how I expect a Holocaust memoir would be. She gave recounts of her life growing up during the Holocaust. However, I wasn’t expecting her to be a child in her story. The one aspect that stood out to me was the fact that she was a female Holocaust… Read more →