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Michael Lev

Auteur de Sobibor

4 oeuvres 27 utilisateurs 7 critiques 1 Favoris

A propos de l'auteur

Comprend les noms: Mikhail Lev

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(eng) VIAF:64425845

Crédit image: Michael Lev

Œuvres de Michael Lev

Sobibor (2002) 22 exemplaires
Passover Haggadah (2000) 3 exemplaires
Passover Haggadah 1 exemplaire
Parṭizanishe ṿegn 1 exemplaire

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Nom canonique
Lev, Michael
Nom légal
Lev, Michael
Autres noms
Lev, Mishe
Date de naissance
1917
Sexe
male
Lieux de résidence
Ukraine (birth)
Études
(Yiddish language)
(Yiddish literature)
Notice de désambigüisation
VIAF:64425845

Membres

Critiques

Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
I found this book difficult to read. Not in the sense that it was poorly written, just that it was hard for me to really get into it. Part of this is because the English translation of the original Yiddish doesn't flow in the same way as books written in English. In the first couple of chapters, there are actually a couple of places that the translation was very jarring, and I had to re-read passages to try and make sense of them.
I had a sense of detachment throughout the first part of the story -- I never really became emotionally involved with Berek. When he essentially disappeared from the narrative during the uprising itself, I didn't miss him.
I found the latter part, during the trials, more interesting than the first part of the book. It wasn't until this point that I was able to really connect with Berek, and really see some of the emotional trauma he was undergoing during the trial.
All in all, it was a good read. I won't say 'enjoyable,' as very little Holocaust literature is flat-out enjoyable, but I was glad I read it.
… (plus d'informations)
½
 
Signalé
Meijhen | 6 autres critiques | Jul 20, 2008 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
Sobibor is the story of 14 year old Berek Schlesinger, a Polish Jew, whose parents send him away from his shtetl to hide from the Nazis in the woods. He scrapes by getting a little help from a friendly elderly Pole and his wife and eventually reuniting with his beautiful cousin Rina who he had presumed dead and who he seems to love in a way that is distinctly uncousinly. While trying to reach Russia or at least some relative safety with partisans in the forest, Berek leaves Rina to find some water only to find her gone on his return. After he discovers that Nazis have taken her to the death camp Sobibor, he determines to go to the camp in search of her. There he is taken under the wing of a jeweler who is as close to indispensable to the Nazis as one can be inside a concetration camp, and Berek's life continues through his association with Kuriel the jeweler.

At this point, the book seems to break away from Berek's narrative entirely to chronicle the successful Sobibor uprising from the view of its leader Alexander Pechersky. I found this section to be much more captivating than the beginning of the book, but it was a little difficult to adjust to the abrupt turning away from the base of the plot. The book continues after this unexpected diversion to follow Berek after the war as he encounters former SS from the camp and uses his extensive knowledge of the atrocities in Sobibor and his feeling of responsibility to those who died to help convict the officers of war crimes.

Unlike several Holocaust novels I've read, Sobibor requires more base knowledge of the Holocaust to appreciate its nuance, despite its footnotes that clarify some of the more basic elements. I'll be the first to admit that I occasionally appreciated the nuance and the undertones that required some consideration to understand, but I also found myself baffled at some points and would have liked some more explicit explanation of events instead of subtle hinting at goings on.

"...What, you want to know, has happened to Kapo Shlok? Listen to this: On the way here, two stones fell from the sky; one, thrown by the Germans, broke the Kapo's backbone, and the other, thrown by the Jews, finished him off."

The book was slow to start but really hit its stride with the chronicle of the uprising. Lev's depiction of the uprising is brief yet powerful. In less than fifty pages, Lev brings Pechersky to life following his escape into memories while he is cramped in a cattle car traveling from Minsk to Sobibor but also establishing his character as a leader that people are inspired to follow in even the most dire situation.

In the dark, deep cellar prison in Minsk, it had been so crowded that only on the fifth day, when most of those who had been driven down there had already died, could they find room to lie down. Every time they opened the door to carry out the dead, the guard, himself a former POW, would ask, "Will it be long yet before all of you die?"

"Long!" a certain man would answer.

...Once the senior guard had said, "We're sick and tired of you already, but there's been no order to do away with you. Haven't you dragged this out long enough? Strangle one another and let there be an end to it!"

The same man who used to answer "Long!" cried out in the darkness, "You'll never live to see that day!"

The convicts hadn't elected that man as their leader - not all of them even knew his name. (...) He wasn't the leader, but everyone obeyed him.


Thankfully, the narrative keeps the fire it acquires during the account of the uprising as it follows Berek into the post-war period. Lev gives us an inside view of the trials of several high ranking SS murderers from Sobibor, but more interesting and thought-provoking are the brief encounters he has with the former torturers of Sobibor. Berek and his wife pass by Erich Bauer, the chief gas-master of the camp responsible for the deaths of thousands, in a crowded park in Germany. The encounter has the surreality of a meeting with a ghost. During one of the trials, through sheer happenstance, Berek comes upon the father and brother of two of the SS killed in the uprising who lament their son and brother being dead in Berek's hearing. Lev also captures the former commandant of Sobibor, Kurt Bolender, who charms restaurant guests as an immaculately groomed head waiter but soon finds himself desperately trying to prove he has a Jewish grandmother to somehow lessen the penalties he faces in his war crimes trial.

Sobibor while often confusing and on occasion awkwardly written, presents the Holocasut from a slightly different angle. Instead of focusing exclusively on the suffering that took place, Lev explores the uprising and the aftermath. This unique angle provides a lot of food for thought for any student of the Holocaust. It begs the question of why uprisings weren't more common and more successful. Was it having Pechersky as a leader that made it possible or were the Germans so lax in that camp at that time that the inmates had a rare window of opportunity to pursue an otherwise impossible course of action? How can thoughts of someone as the pinnacle of evil be reconciled with thoughts of the same person as someone's brother - someone's son? How long should the search for justice have gone on? Would it have been better for Jews like Berek to leave the past to the past and free themselves from the burden of pursuing justice or to spend countless years pursuing evil men who have since become weak and feeble and even a bit ridiculous in the extremity of their love for Hitler and his twisted ideals? Lev's narrative asks all these questions and provokes us to consider their answers while at the same time shining a bright light on a valiant and successful uprising that proved that what seemed impossible could be and was accomplished.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
yourotherleft | 6 autres critiques | Mar 27, 2008 |
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.
A geode of a book, with a rough, dull surface hiding a beautiful yet uneven story within. This book was translated from Yiddish, and the tone and pacing are rough in English. The choice of what to footnote is odd - in the first section, words which are likely to be familiar to anyone reading this book are defined. Later, however, the footnotes provide information of the post-war lives of historical figures who appear, and these add depth to the story. Perhaps the latter were the author's notes, and the former the translator's? I found the middle section, which deals most directly with life in the camp leading up to the uprising, to be the most engaging; the first section sets it up, and the third, dealing with the trials of those in the camps, felt more unfocused and disjointed; I had trouble finishing it.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
nolly | 6 autres critiques | Mar 4, 2008 |
It has taken me far longer than usual to finish this book. It was the most difficult book I have read on the Holocaust and I have read The Theory And Practice Of Hell and The Survivor among many others. It is not that the tale is more horrific than others. I think it is the voice of the book which gives it its poignancy.

I knew of the Sobibor camp and the escape but not in detail. The style of writing used by Mr. Lev is described as historical fiction. I have not heard of that before but it is apt. The book begins with the story of Berek, a fourteen or fifteen year old Jewish boy at the outbreak of WWII. On the run from the Nazis for awhile, he eventually comes to the Sobibor death camp. Through various fortuitous events he is not killed outright and participates in the escape, led by Alexander Pechersky. Berek also survives the escape which, in reality, few did.

The power of the book lies in the voice of young Berek. I could see the Polish forest where he hid, his friend Rina, the camp, etc. To use such a young voice to tell the tale was a brilliant decision by Lev. This is why it was so hard for me to read. After fifty years of study of the Holocaust it is this book which hurt the most to read.

There is a section on the escape told through the leaders. Alexander Pechersky was, after only a short while in Sobibor, the unelected leader of the escape and is revered still. The plan was well thought out and several hundred inmates got out of Sobibor. Unfortunately most of them perished in the surrounding forests or were shot by the camp guards while escaping. Such was the nature of the Nazi hold on Europe. Nevertheless the escape, in as far as it was known at the time, was a point of pride for all in the camps. It remains so today.

The third section of the book concerns Berek, now called Bernard, who has become a doctor and is obsessed with the capture and conviction of Nazi war criminals. The chapters which took place in Brazil were, for me, impossible to understand. I did some research after finishing the book and was able to verify the fate of Stangl and Wagner. I don't know why Berek was in Brazil as it seems he did nothing there. I suppose I could be missing something but I could not figure it out.

All in all if you want a poignant understanding of Europe and the death camps this is a good place to start.
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
candyschultz | 6 autres critiques | Feb 28, 2008 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
4
Membres
27
Popularité
#483,027
Évaluation
2.9
Critiques
7
ISBN
2
Favoris
1