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Arts & Entertainment

Never To Forget

ooks, film, music explore Holocaust themes.

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Suzanne. Chessler
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olocaust Remembrance
Day, observed April 25
this year, recalls those
who were lost and honors those
who survived — sometimes in
silence but often in very public
ways. •
A number of people absorbed
with the history and unanswered
questions have sought
deeper understanding
through research and com-
municate their findings for
large audiences.
Many personally affected
by the horrors of those times
have chosen to open their
hearts and reveal experiences
through memoirs, while oth-
ers express their emotions
through imagined characters
brought to life in fictionalized
accounts.
Below are summaries
of some of the most recent
releases focusing on the deep-
est tragedies of World War II
— histories, biographies, novels
and electronic media.

Histories

WITNESSE S
OF WAR

CHILDREN'S LIVES
UN, DER THE NAZIS •

People unable to travel to
the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington,
D.C., can become familiar with
its displays and artifacts through
a new edition of The World
Must Know (The Johns Hopkins
University Press; $29.95).
Michael Berenbaum, who has •
served as project director of the
museum, put together this paper-
back edition, which includes new
photos, redrawn charts, a section
on the Holocaust in Greece and
an updated bibliography.

There were some 50 attempts
to end Hitler's life, accord-
ing to British historian Roger
Moorhouse, and those attempts
are described and explored
.in Killing Hitler (Bantam -
Books; $25). This text, based
on new research, describes
early attempts on his life before
Hitler gained massive control in Germany

48

April 20 • 2006

and moves through later plots against him
at the end of World War II.
Readers will find that a number of plans
for Hitler's annihilation were daring and
very close to success.People involved in
the efforts ranged from enemy agents to
close associates.

In the weeks after the British freed
Bergen-Belsen, 14,000 of the 60,000 survi-
vors died: The reasons for the deaths after
the Nazis were defeated became the quest
of documentary filmmaker and historian
Ben Shephard and are reported in After
Daybreak: The Liberation of Bergen-
Belsen, 1945 (Schocken Books; $24).
The author, working with oral histories
and military documents, describes the
difficulties the British faced, the mistakes
they made and the feats they accom-
plished. He also calls attention to the -
survivors and how they began to reclaim
their identities.

•What happened to children during the
Holocaust is described in detail in Cruel
World: The Children of Europe in
the Nazi Web (Knopf; $35). Author Lynn
H. Nicholas, who also wrote The Rape
of Europa and became an expert in art
repatriation, writes about the horrific
experiences — from the deaths of Jewish
children to the kidnappings of Nordic-
appearing youths for "Germanization."
Nicholas, who describes exploitation by
political and religious groups, also probes
the efforts to put families back together.
Her text is based on research into govern-
mental
and military archives and individ-
.
i
ual interviews
with those who survived.

Robert Beir, an amateur Franklin
Roosevelt scholar, was in his 80s when he
decided to research whether Roosevelt,
his hero, had ignored the Jews of Europe.
His findings are published in Roosevelt
and the Holocaust (Barricade Books;
$26.95). ,
The book also provides the story of
Beir's life as he served in the U.S. Navy.
Beir worked with fiction writer Brian
Josepher to complete the text.

and political history, reports information •
on individuals, including a Czech-Jewish
boy in Auschwitz, two Jewish girls in the
Warsaw ghetto and two teenage members
of the Hitler Youth.
Stargardt tries to break through stereo-
types as he unfolds the terrifying events
that changed the lives of young people. He
also aims to show how the horrors of war
impacted attitudes toward family.

Herman Obermayer never saw battle,
but his experiences in the U.S. military are
recalled in Soldiering for Freedom: A
GI's Account of World War II (Texas
A& M University Press; $32.95).
Using letters he wrote while in service
as the foundation for his text, Obermayer
covers reactions to the American occupa-
tion, race relations among enlisted men and
problems of supplying troops. Obermayer, a
former editor-publisher of two daily news-
papers, covers what he-saw as a witness to
the trials of Nazis at Nuremberg.

British historian David Cesarani traces
what he considers the making of a Nazi
in Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking
the Life, Crimes, and Trial of a Desk
Murderer (Da Capo Press; $27.50).
Adolf Eichmann, directly responsible for
transporting more than 2 million Jews to
their deaths in concentration camps, was
not predisposed to mass murder, Cesarani
contends.
The author maintains that Eichmann
learned to hate in controlled and imper-
sonal ways and discusses how racist or
fanatic thought can lead to genocidal
tendenCies.

Biographies

Howard Reich, a veteran jazz critic,
writes about his mother's emotional pains
as a Holocaust survivor in The First
and Final Nightmare of Sonia Reich
(Public Affairs; $22.95). He describes her
affliction with post traumatic stress dis-
order.
The author's mother, who refused to
discuss her past, had seemed to overcome
the experiences of the Holocaust, but she
fled her Illinois home one night in 2001
believing that someone was trying to kill
her. That event is central to the narration.

Diaries, schoolwork, letters and art-
work served as resources for the book
Witnesses of War (Knopf; $30), an
account of the way the Nazi regime affect-
ed children. Author Nicholas Stargardt,
who has written widely on German social

The person known as the first woman
rabbi, Fraulein Rabbiner Jolla's, was
ordained in 1935. She tried to comfort
people during the time the Nazis were
coming into power and eventually lost her

