Available on YouTube with English Captions
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Fires on the Plain (野火, Nobi) is a 1959 Japanese war film directed by Kon Ichikawa, starring Eiji Funakosh - 0ne Hour Fifty minutes
Available on YouTube with English Captions
Sunday, September 24, 2023
The Counterfeit Countess:' The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Silwa -2023-
Sunday, August 20, 2023
Paisan - A 1946 Film directed by Roberto Rossellini - running time two hours- distributed by MGM
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Madame Pimpernel- also titled as Paris Undercover is a 1945 Film Set in Paris during the German Occupation
Sunday, December 19, 2021
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein - 2019 - 384 pages
Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein - 2019 - 384 pages
Last month I read The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel by Jennifer Cody Epstein. I added her two other novels to my Amazon wish list. When Wunderland was marked down fifty percent, as a Kindle, I happily acquired it. Set largely in Germany, Wunderland centers around the impact of the Holocaust on three women. Ava Fisher and her mother Ilsa have never been close. Renete, Ilse’s very close friend when they were growing up, is the third.
Ilse and Renete grew up very close. Hitler has come to power, Ilse joins Hitler youth organizations and begins to write articles about how Jews were destroying Germany. Through a series of revelations Renete discovers her mother has kept secret their Jewish ancestry. Epstein vividly portrays how both girls lives are impacted by the Nuremburg laws, the Gestapo. Things were never easy between Ava and her mother Ilse, supposedly her father had been killed on the Eastern Front. Terrible attacks on Jews are depicted.
Once Renete’s ancestory comes out, it changes everything. We see the pervasive way German Society is destroyed.
The narrative moves from Germany in 1936 to New York City in the 1980s. There are lots of delightful literary references including a number to a German translation of Alice in Wonderland.
From the author’s website
“I am the author of the USA Today bestseller Wunderland, now out in paperback. My prior works include The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, winner of the 2014 Asian Pacific Association of Librarians Honor award for outstanding fiction, as well as the international bestseller The Painter from Shanghai. I have also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Nation (Thailand), Self and Mademoiselle magazines, and the NBC and HBO networks, working in Kyoto, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok as well as Washington D.C. and New York. I’ve taught at Columbia University in New York and Doshisha University in Kyoto, and have an MFA from Columbia, a Masters of International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a BA in Asian Studies/English from Amherst College.
I currently live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband, filmmaker Michael Epstein, my two amazing daughters and an exceptionally needy Springer Spaniel.”
I hope to read The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, set in Japan during World War Two, soon.
Saturday, December 11, 2021
The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin - 2021
The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin - 2021
On a personal note, at age 22 my uncle Melvin Ramsey was killed defending London in a fighter plane. He was an American but before the USA joined the war, he signed up for the Canadian Air Force. When in London I looked for his grave but could not find it. I never met him. His loss hurt my mother and grandmother terribly.
As the work begins, just before Germany starts World War Two, Grace Bennett, along with her best friend Viv, realize their dream of escaping the provinces and moving to London where they will live with her late mother’s best friend, Mrs Weatherford. Grace worked in her uncle’s store and hated it.
In order to get a job in London one had to have a letter of recommendation from a prior employer. Grace’s uncle refused to give her one. Viv had forged her self a letter but Grace’s integrity made her refuse this. Viv got a job at the highly prestigious department London department store, Harrods, where Mrs Weatherford’s son worked. Mrs Weatherford gets Grace a job at a bookstore where after six months she can get a letter to get a job at Harrods along with Viv and Colin, Mrs Weatherford’s only child. Grace has never had time for reading and at first feels totally out of place at Primrose Books.
The owner is very cantankerous, being short with Grace and giving her little direction. The shop is a disorganized mess. Grace makes it her mission to organize the shop, making it a pleasant place where people will want to shop. Soon she has transformed the shop.
War is declared. A handsome customer, George, talks to Grace about the magic of reading. Just before leaving for the war he gives her a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. After a few months, the blitz bombing of London begins. Grace volunteers three nights a week as an air raid warden. Grace begins to love reading. She reads from classics like Middlemarch to others sheltering in tube stations with her.
The horror and terror of the blitz gets worse and worse but the English are not beaten down. We see the impact of rationing on Mrs Weatherford’s cooking, she converts her flower garden to a “victory” vegetable garden.
Grace and the book store owner become very close as he opens up to her.
Tragic things do happen. I found this book very moving and uplifting. If London can survive the Blitz, it can survive the pandemic. I loved the close of the book. Some on Goodreads have said the book is “too romantic” for them.
Madeline Martin is a New York Times and International Bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance.
She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), one incredibly spoiled cat and a man so wonderful he's been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she's not writing, researching or 'moming', you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves research and travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany.”
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Hitler and the Habsburgs: The Führer’s Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals by James Longo- 2018
Hitler and the Habsburgs: The Führer’s Vendetta Against the Austrian Royals by James Longo- 2018
This book is the story of intersecting lives of people very different from each other, Adolph Hitler and the Hapsburg family.
Like many popular works of non-academic non- fiction, telling the story of the impact of Hitler on the ancient Hapsburg dynasty involves telling of events that the most likely readership of the book already know in order to convey some information that will be new to them.
The book begins with Hitler’s pre-World War One years in Vienna. He was greatly traumatized when he could not get into art school. He saw that Vienna, capital of the Empire was highly cosmopolitan, Jews were accepted more there than anywhere else in Europe. (Longo often quotes Stefan Zweig and writes about his deparature for Brazil, driven out of Austria by what he sees as the decay of European culture.). Hitler lived in abject poverty, ever outraged by wealth of others, especially the Hapsburgs. Longo tells us the assasination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Hapsburg throne (June 28, 1914, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina). This event precipitated World War One. Hitler fought in the war. He would come to see the Jews of Austria and their puppets the Hapsburgs as to blame for Germany’s defeat, as Logno details.
One of the sons of Arch-Duke Ferdinand scandalized the royal family by marrying a German woman of insufficient nobility to be a Hapsburg Queen or royal mother. The marriage was accepted but only as morganatic. Somehow this made them outsiders in the very inbred Hapsburg family and gravely offended Hitler who was highly offended by what he saw as the personification of the “mongrelization” of the Aryan race.
When Germany took control of Austria in 1938 the two sons of Ferdinand were arrested by the Gestapo and became the first Austrians sent to the Dachu Concentration Camp. They were assigned to latrine duty and treated in a savage fashion.
The women in the family, including the Archduke’s only daughter,Princess Sophia Hohenberg, declared war on Hitler. In the face of torture, near starvation and betrayal they sustained the family.
Longo very movingly tells us what happened to survivors after the defeat of Hitler.
I purchased this book during a flash sale for $1.95. It is now back up $12.95.
I think anyone interested in the Hapsburg, the end of dynastic rule in Europe, World War Two in Austria will find this book fascinating. It deserves a place in Holocaust literature.
James Longo is a professor and chair of the Department of Education at Washington & Jefferson College. He is a former Fulbright Scholar and Distinguished Chair of the University Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria. He has lectured throughout Europe and America and has written eight books..from the publisher
Sunday, March 8, 2020
The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder - June, 2020
The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder - June 2020
Last month I posted on a deeply moving short story by L. Annette Binder ,”Lay My Head”, from her award winning debut collection, Rise. Here are my opening thoughts on this profound story.
My earliest reading memories are of being read fairy tales. Long ago our youngest daughter saw an edition of The Complete Fairy
Tales of the Brothers Grimm on my book shelves years ago and asked if she could keep on the shelves in her room. She still has it booked marked so I know she is reading it.
One of the associations in literature throughout history is that of beautiful people with goodness and unattractive, ugly people with evil. You see this every where from the latest popular novel to the great works of literature. I increasingly think this, as it is mostly women who are described as beautiful, represents the deeply pervasive image of women as commodities for men to consume. This prejuduce runs so far down into our consciousness that most repudiate my idea. Illness as it changes appearances away from standard notions of beauty is seen as a manifestation of evil within the person, either an ancient curse or inherent malignancy coming out for the "beautiful" people and their admirers to fear. These are part of what I see as themes of "Lay My Head".
I was very happy and gratified to be given the opportunity to read an advance review copy of her forthcoming novel, The Vanishing Sky. The Vanishing Sky is set in 1945 in Germany as the country’s defeat is inevitable. The story centers on the Huber family.
The central character is Etta, mother of two young men.Max is in the army, serving on the Eastern front. Her younger son, Georg is in the Hitler Youth. He is not quite old enough to fight the coming America invasion,he is very devoted to the German cause and is being prepared for the final stand. There are lots of bombing raids, in one very moving scene Georg and other boys find a body in a bombed out building. As things get worse her husband Josef becomes ever more nationalist, oblivious to reality.
Their son Max returns from the war. He has suffered serious mental harm. He wants to back to fight but his mother tries to hide him from Nazis rounding up soldiers. There is a very
powerful Holocaust related scene.
The Hubers are just an ordinary Family caught up in a nightmare. Just sort of people that have died in wars for thousands of years, to no point.
The Vanishing Sky is a fine work of art. There are many subtle touches that create a cinematic feel of perfect verisimilitude. It conveys a strong sense of day to day Life in Germany as the war ends.
From http://lannettebinder.com/
“I was born in Germany and grew up in Colorado. Like many immigrant kids, I learned my English from primetime TV and the Saturday morning cartoons. My parents spoke to me in German, and -- to their dismay -- I started answering in English before the boxes were even unpacked.
The Vanishing Sky, my first novel, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury and Bloomsbury UK in June 2020. It is inspired by my family's experiences in World War II Germany.
My collection of stories, Rise (Sarabande Books), received the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Literature. My fiction has appeared in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, One Story, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, Third Coast, Fairy Tale Review and others.
I have degrees from Harvard, UC Berkeley and the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. I live in New England with my husband and young daughter”
I give The Vanishing Star my total endorsement.
Mel u