100 Books Like Gratitude

This book is a must-read for all people, to never forget what occurred.

Although the topic is serious and sad, Dr. Reitlinger managed to write a concise work on ha Shoah, which is itself a huge undertaking. What I loved about the book is that, here in one volume, one has a complete and thorough coverage of the Holocaust. It is long, but it can be digested given a few weeks of reading.

Again, with all of Reitlinger’s work, the reader is thoroughly immersed in the subject, while not getting tied down by minutia that some authors have a habit of doing. The book taught me that the Holocaust could have possibly been avoided, if men of goodwill had simply acted before Hitler became powerful enough to unleash World War Two.

Edmund Burke, the Irish-born British statesman was right when he said “All Tyranny needs to gain a foothold, is… show more.

This novel evokes an extraordinary range of emotions. Skibell works wonders with folklore and history, turning out a tale of tales that is by turns shocking and horrifying, tender, and outrageously funny. The language is deceptively simple and beautiful. Consider this description from the murdered narrator, on returning to his plundered neighborhood after climbing out of a mass grave: “In front of every house were piles of vows and promises, all in broken pieces. How I could see such things, I cannot tell you.” The balance here—of imagination, grief, and lightness—is exquisite.

Berta Geissmar was the Jewish secretary and confidante to legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler beginning in 1921.

In her memoir, published in 1944, Geissmar describes how the Nazi hierarchy interfered in the world of classical music, purging orchestras of Jewish musicians and banning works by Jewish composers. Although Furtwangler at first refused to do the bidding of the Nazis, he was eventually sidelined. And Geissmar soon became a Nazi target.

They blamed her for the bad publicity that the regime was getting in the classical music world, and seized her passport. Geissmar was eventually allowed to leave the country, and, ended up in London as the secretary of another legendary conductor—Sir Thomas Beecham.

I honestly felt my life had more meaning after I first read this book, as it touched on so much that was close to my heart.

I totally identified with the protagonist’s emotional journey: a childhood imbued with a sense of things lost and hidden, which, in adulthood, he tries to quell with erudition before the past erupts and he learns the truth of his tortured origins.

I found it really haunting and more in touch with the truth about the human condition than most books I’ve read. I’ve read it three times, once with my reading group, and I’m sure I’ll read it again. 

This is required reading to understand the Russo-German War.

This two-volume masterpiece was written by Paul Schmidt, who was actually Hitler’s Press Secretary during the war. Schmidt used the nom de plume of “Paul Carrell”, and although one would, at first glance, imagine that this author might write a biased and pro-Nazi apologetic study, that could not be further from the truth.

Carrell/Schmidt actually wrote a very truthful account of the war, pulling no punches and even criticizing Hitler’s leadership and his ideology throughout the study.

Carrell/Schmidt also happens to be an eloquent storyteller. He is the type of author who can manage to place the reader in the middle of the story, as if he/she is witnessing the events live. Very few authors can do this.

My wife is a pianist, and at a musical performance, the director of the local symphony orchestra said that this was a must-read book. So, of course, I read it, and I was hooked. Through the music of Strauss, Britten, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich, I learned a hidden story about the power of music to shape public opinion and, in the shadow of the Holocaust, speak truth to power.

I finished it with an appreciation for the power of music and the courage of musicians to reflect people’s yearning for a just and equitable world.

From the minute Glenn Kurtz found a decaying tape of his parents’ trip to Poland in 1938, I was hooked. I’ve imagined being able to glimpse the world my grandparents inhabited in “the Old Country.” And here it was for Kurtz: some of the only film footage of a Jewish world erased by the Holocaust in the last months before it was gone forever.

I was fascinated to follow along with Kurtz as he becomes a detective working to discover who is in the recorded three minutes, where they are, and what they are doing. But that’s just the beginning; as he discovers the past, he makes connections in the present and changes lives in the process.

Elsa Thon recounts her war experiences in a cinematic tale with the eye of an artist. A teenager in Poland who had apprenticed in photo retouching, she was recruited by the Jewish underground. She left her family behind in the Warsaw Ghetto, ending up in Krakow with false papers. This was difficult for her, a deeply honest person. She writes, “I lied all the time.” She takes the reader with her on her dangerous journey, the degradation of a labour camp, and a forced march. Elsa was also a student in my seniors writing class and I found her to be generous and good-humoured, despite her painful past. She lost her whole family in the Holocaust but she writes that it was her “destiny” to survive. 

Why include on this list the diaries of a secular Jewish woman who is in the grip of self-centered anxieties and an unusual, if not bizarre, relationship with her analyst? Because spiritual transformation begins and evolves in uncanny ways, leading one to find transcendence where one never would have expected it. Etty’s diaries and letters allow us to follow the process by which she became so profoundly lucid and open-hearted that she was able to see the humanity even in the Nazis organizing extermination.

Steinman reaches out across a cultural divide to seek out Poles who are pursuing the truth about the past, however painful, and recovering the history of their lost Jewish neighbors. She brings to life the ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation. Her journey changed her, and it will change you.