As terrible as it feels to critique a book about the horrors of the Holocaust, I found this to be not as gripping as some others (the one that had the biggest effect on me was Primo Levi's "Survival In Auschwitz: the Nazi Assault on Humanity"). However, we must remember that this was one of the first books that made it onto shelves, back when it was difficult to get such books published. I have...
more As terrible as it feels to critique a book about the horrors of the Holocaust, I found this to be not as gripping as some others (the one that had the biggest effect on me was Primo Levi's "Survival In Auschwitz: the Nazi Assault on Humanity"). However, we must remember that this was one of the first books that made it onto shelves, back when it was difficult to get such books published. I have a huge amount of respect for it just for that (and, obviously, for the suffering that the author faced, and his courage in being able to tell his story).
From a purely aesthetic standpoint though, I wasn't overly enamored with the book, probably because in school I was oversaturated with Holocaust stories and had heard the tales before. He didn't bring any new perspectives or ideas to the table for me. What it was for me was a good, solid, very true-to-life memoir that sometimes danced around the cruelty of man to man in the interest of conveying the bigger picture.
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