With bravery and chutzpah, a husband and wife demonstrate that there’s no moral compromise with history.
In a joint memoir, a pair of notable Nazi hunters review their half-century of disputing acceptance of mass murderers in decent society.
The authors, husband and wife, tell their story by turns. Serge was hidden in a cupboard in the south of France as his father was taken by the Germans to be killed in Auschwitz. He was 8. Beate was a German Christian child living in the ruins of the Third Reich. They met as adults, and their reciprocal affection complemented their innate passion for justice. Aware of the importance of press coverage of the atrocities around them, they publicized the histories of the perpetrators who carried out the Nazi regime’s killing of France’s Jews. In one wonderful photo-op, Beate contrived to publicly slap the face of German Chancellor—and quondam Nazi—Kiesinger. They created commotions, brandished placards, held press conferences, broke windows, and traveled the world. In acts of civil disobedience, Beate chained herself at appropriate venues and arranged to get arrested in diverse jurisdictions; some courts, anxious to avoid publicity, were not ready to prosecute. Serge researched, produced irrefutable documentation, and provided exhaustive dossiers to reporters and prosecutors. He became a lawyer and, with his son, took part in many trials and legal proceedings, several of which were provoked by the Klarsfelds. They were active in the exposures of Klaus Barbie, “the Butcher of Lyon,” and of Kurt Waldheim, the former secretary-general of the U.N. The Klarsfelds believed there were no closed cases. There were always more war criminals, anti-Semites, and Holocaust deniers in more places—more than enough for the independent anti-fascists to continue their lifelong mission despite bomb threats and attempted murder. Avenging the memories of the millions who lost their lives was, and remains, an important vocation. As their story unfolds, readers may note a faint, unavoidable touch of vainglory; never mind, what they have accomplished is worthy of high praise.
With bravery and chutzpah, a husband and wife demonstrate that there’s no moral compromise with history.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-27982-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
