An exceptional addition to the genre of Holocaust histories.
Examining France’s gradual slide toward genocide in the Nazi and Vichy era.
Sociologist Luft provides a sober, well-documented portrayal of the Catholic Church’s ultimate failure to avoid mass executions of French Jews. Her history, beginning in 1933 and continuing through the closing months of the World War II, chronicles a number of personalities whose actions and inactions shaped the fate of France’s Jewish population. Luft is always quick to note the brave acts of individual Catholics who risked their lives and livelihoods to save others and to defy German influence. However, her focus is mainly on church leaders whose wavering allegiances and misguided decisions brought about ruinous consequences. Her study begins by highlighting two powerful opponents of antisemitism—Cardinal Jean Verdier and Pope Pius XI—who both died just prior to Germany’s invasion of France. In their wake, Catholic leaders, such as Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard and Archbishop Pierre-Marie Gerlier, though sympathetic to the plight of Jews, mistakenly believed that cooperation with the Nazi and Vichy regimes would bring about positive results. They were tragically wrong. Luft summarizes the Catholic Church in this period as “an institution divided in purpose, paralyzed by politics, and unwilling to confront the regime consistently.” She deftly explores and interlays the various issues motivating these clerics and those around them: French nationalism, Jewish assimilation, refugee crises, fears of communism, blind allegiance to Marshal Philippe Pétain, and of course, antisemitism, to name a few. The author’s approach provides the reader with insights into the ambiguous, precarious, and even hopeless situations that individuals faced, demonstrating the humanity of those confronting almost impossible choices. Her overall critique points to the tragedy of “fatal optimism” in the face of unrestrained evil. Both experts and lay readers will benefit from this thought-provoking work.
An exceptional addition to the genre of Holocaust histories.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780674251045
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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