Mrs. Giyoret's Reading List
Mrs. Giyoret decided that she should make a list of all the books she reads so that she can keep track of them, whether for rereading or for sharing with friends. And she thought that you, dear reader, may also like to share her reading list, so here it is.
Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. New York, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Source: Borrowed from the synagogue library.
Date: Finished 18 April 2018.
This is the first book on the Holocaust that really spoke to me. Although I'm usually a nonfiction reader, the nonfiction books I've read so far on the Holocaust have left me looking for a sense of what really happened, what it was really like. The author of the masterful tales in this book validated the stories wherever possible, and sources are given at the end of each tale. The tales are arranged in chronological order, leading from the closing of the Nazi trap on the Jews, through the hell of the concentration camps, to Allied liberation.
At first, I wasn't sure what difference Eliach Yaffa's effort to validate these stories made. Night is gripping, a supremely well wrought tour de force by a man whose adult life was lived as a witness to the destruction of the Jews under the Nazi regime. Scholars point out that many of the set pieces in Elie Wiesel's Night are unverified, although I personally feel that that doesn't make them any less "true" in a visceral sense. Man's evil impulses ruled Europe during the Holocaust, and the Nazis, individually and as a society, destroyed their victims at will and according to their inventive whims. Does the fact that some of the scenes in Night cannot be verified, and may be fictionalized to fit the narrative structure, make them less true, or less vital?
But the knowledge that the stories in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust are verified wherever possible gave them enormous emotional reality for me. The story "The Last Request" tells of a Jew who made a last request of the German who was about to kill him as all the Jews in his town were being executed. He asked to be allowed to say a short prayer, which he recited in Hebrew and then in German: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath not made me heathen". The Hasid then turns away, walks to the edge of the mass grave, and says "I am finished. You may begin." The Hasid's determination to serve God, as well as his dignified and civilized demeanor in the face of barbarism and death, struck me to the heart and will stay with me for a long, long time.
Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. New York, Oxford University Press, 1982.
Source: Borrowed from the synagogue library.
Date: Finished 18 April 2018.
This is the first book on the Holocaust that really spoke to me. Although I'm usually a nonfiction reader, the nonfiction books I've read so far on the Holocaust have left me looking for a sense of what really happened, what it was really like. The author of the masterful tales in this book validated the stories wherever possible, and sources are given at the end of each tale. The tales are arranged in chronological order, leading from the closing of the Nazi trap on the Jews, through the hell of the concentration camps, to Allied liberation.
At first, I wasn't sure what difference Eliach Yaffa's effort to validate these stories made. Night is gripping, a supremely well wrought tour de force by a man whose adult life was lived as a witness to the destruction of the Jews under the Nazi regime. Scholars point out that many of the set pieces in Elie Wiesel's Night are unverified, although I personally feel that that doesn't make them any less "true" in a visceral sense. Man's evil impulses ruled Europe during the Holocaust, and the Nazis, individually and as a society, destroyed their victims at will and according to their inventive whims. Does the fact that some of the scenes in Night cannot be verified, and may be fictionalized to fit the narrative structure, make them less true, or less vital?
But the knowledge that the stories in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust are verified wherever possible gave them enormous emotional reality for me. The story "The Last Request" tells of a Jew who made a last request of the German who was about to kill him as all the Jews in his town were being executed. He asked to be allowed to say a short prayer, which he recited in Hebrew and then in German: "Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hath not made me heathen". The Hasid then turns away, walks to the edge of the mass grave, and says "I am finished. You may begin." The Hasid's determination to serve God, as well as his dignified and civilized demeanor in the face of barbarism and death, struck me to the heart and will stay with me for a long, long time.
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