Eva Marie L. (babyjulie) -
Helpful Score: 1
I hate waiting days before reviewing a book but this week was hectic. Milton Meltzer did a great job with this book in my opinion. There was a near perfect blend of personal accounts and background information. A reader knowing next to nothing about the Holocaust could not only read this and follow along but also, by the end, have a good grasp on that period in time. At the same time a person well read on the subject can read Never to Forget and also take much away with them. The bibliography is outstanding and a great source for findign new books and authors, fiction and non. Meltzer even whittled the groups down a little for those targeting a certain aspect of the Holocaust. Two maps are included at the very back of the book, the first showing Europe and how far the Nazi's reached, the second showing death and concentration camps. Most of the camps in the latter map are fairly well known, with only a few of the lesser known camps being shown. A chronology is also listed which I'm sure can be a great help to many people. Interspersed throughout the book are not only songs sang in the ghettos and camps but a few charts and graphs showing different aspects, depending on the subject being targeted in that part of the book.
I learned a few things during the course of the book. I had never known that, in Frankfurt, where I've been many times, the Paul Ehrlich Strasse was turned into the Heinrich Himmler Strasse. When Bella Fromm wrote that "The man who saved humanity from by his cure for syphilis has been replaced by a sadistic butcher."
I'd read about the lack of help for the Jewish from other countried of course but I hadn't known that between 1933 and 1943 there were over 400,000 unfilled places in the immigartion quota for the U.S. alone. Like Meltzer writes, "Each place unfilled was a dentence of death for a European Jew." This, like much of what happened, makes you think long and hard.
Part of Rivka Yosselevscka's court testimony is included and her story is gripping to say the least. I haven't heard many personal accounts of Nazi treatment that weren't horrendous and this doesn't fail to shake a persons belief in humanity.
There is a fair amount written about the lack of understanding of the Jewish people's "lack of resistance". What is written here makes it very plain and easy to understand that "resistance" can not only be defined in different ways by different people, but that given different circumstances resistance can take many different forms. This is something that I haven't yet seen touched on to this degree in my reading.
It is also brought up that no other group but the Jewish people, for the most part, have been accused of "going like sheep to slaughter" and, from what I've read, this is correct. I've never heard this about any other Nazi targeted group. I can't imagine being a Jewish man or woman, surviving the Holocaust and then having to deal with this, among the dozens and dozens of other atrocities they still had to accept.
Meltzer quoted Elie Wiesel when he said that "The right question to ask is not 'Why didn't all the Jews fight?' but 'How did so many of them?". I don't think it can be any better articulated that that.
Never to Forget is a book I'd recomment to just about anyone wanting to read about the Holocaust. The reader has the "best of both worlds" in that there are personal accounts (while not many they are perfectly fit in) and basic information along with all of the extras. It's "easy" enough for a beginning reader of Holocaust material and still very much for anyone who has been reading the subject for years.
I learned a few things during the course of the book. I had never known that, in Frankfurt, where I've been many times, the Paul Ehrlich Strasse was turned into the Heinrich Himmler Strasse. When Bella Fromm wrote that "The man who saved humanity from by his cure for syphilis has been replaced by a sadistic butcher."
I'd read about the lack of help for the Jewish from other countried of course but I hadn't known that between 1933 and 1943 there were over 400,000 unfilled places in the immigartion quota for the U.S. alone. Like Meltzer writes, "Each place unfilled was a dentence of death for a European Jew." This, like much of what happened, makes you think long and hard.
Part of Rivka Yosselevscka's court testimony is included and her story is gripping to say the least. I haven't heard many personal accounts of Nazi treatment that weren't horrendous and this doesn't fail to shake a persons belief in humanity.
There is a fair amount written about the lack of understanding of the Jewish people's "lack of resistance". What is written here makes it very plain and easy to understand that "resistance" can not only be defined in different ways by different people, but that given different circumstances resistance can take many different forms. This is something that I haven't yet seen touched on to this degree in my reading.
It is also brought up that no other group but the Jewish people, for the most part, have been accused of "going like sheep to slaughter" and, from what I've read, this is correct. I've never heard this about any other Nazi targeted group. I can't imagine being a Jewish man or woman, surviving the Holocaust and then having to deal with this, among the dozens and dozens of other atrocities they still had to accept.
Meltzer quoted Elie Wiesel when he said that "The right question to ask is not 'Why didn't all the Jews fight?' but 'How did so many of them?". I don't think it can be any better articulated that that.
Never to Forget is a book I'd recomment to just about anyone wanting to read about the Holocaust. The reader has the "best of both worlds" in that there are personal accounts (while not many they are perfectly fit in) and basic information along with all of the extras. It's "easy" enough for a beginning reader of Holocaust material and still very much for anyone who has been reading the subject for years.
