The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
by Daniel Mendelsohn
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel MendelsohnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-21
ISBN: 0060542993
Number of pages: 528
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
Book Review: History Nuggets amidst the Travels, Reflections, Bible Verses, etc.
Summary: 5 Stars
This work hits home, as my progenitors are from Boryslaw (near Bolechow), and the sense of defeat that Mendelsohn experienced while learning his Jewish heritage as a child (pp. 31-32) recounts my own childhood experiences related to my Polish heritage. But let's focus on historical issues.
Bolechow was founded by a Polish nobleman in 1612, and the Jews there enjoyed various privileges. (p. 50). This should not contribute to the stereotype of Poles as landlords. The vast majority of Poles living on these territories were peasants whose lives were comparable to that of the Ukrainians.
Only 48 of some 6,000 of Bolechow's Jews survived the Holocaust. (p. 148). Elderly Jews interviewed by Mendelsohn consistently said that, "The Ukrainians were the worst of all." (e. g., p. 144, 454). No sooner had the Germans entered the area in mid-1941 than the Ukrainian collaborationists helped the Germans find and kill prominent Jews (pp. 197-198)(and, not mentioned, also prominent Poles). Ukrainians also participated, often without prompting, in the German rounding up of Bolechow's Jews (pp. 208-210), including the one for their one-way trip to Belzec. (pp. 227-229). Jewish children were variously thrown out of windows, had their skulls bashed-in (p. 227), were stomped underfoot, and were impaled on pitchforks. (p. 456).
Mendelsohn is mystified by these creative cruelties displayed by the Ukrainians towards the Jews (and, not mentioned, later also towards the Poles). Actually, and not mentioned, this is primarily explicable in terms of the unlimited terror and genocide taught and practiced by the OUN (see my Listmania: Ukrainian Fascism...). However, other Ukrainians (and Poles) are repeatedly mentioned for having aided Jews.
While confined to the ghetto, the Jewish community had to deal with collaborationist Jewish policemen. These are recalled unfavorably by elderly Jewish survivors (p. 392), who evidently don't support the premise that the desperate circumstances excused their conduct. Also, a group of fugitive Jews who had been denounced by fellow Jews: "`You see, the Germans implanted spies', Jack continued. `That means, Jews who ran away, they were spying on the group and revealing everything. I imagine they were being forced or blackmailed into betraying them, somehow, something.'" (p. 149).
As for other historical topics, Mendelsohn touches on the 5-7 million Ukrainians murdered by the Soviets (pp. 454-455), the Nazis' extermination of Poland's intelligentsia (e. g., pp. 458-460), their sparing of the Karaites (pp. 340-341), the Soviet betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising (p. 426), etc. However, his mention of the Danes' rescue of Jews (pp. 403-404) omits three important facts: The extreme mildness of the German occupation, the prolonged cooperation of a key German official, and the hefty payments required by Danes to ship the Jews to Sweden. Overall, though, it is obvious that Mendelsohn has done his historical homework.
Summary of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
In this rich and riveting narrative, a writer's search for the truth behind his family's tragic past in World War II becomes a remarkably original epic?part memoir, part reportage, part mystery, and part scholarly detective work?that brilliantly explores the nature of time and memory, family and history.
Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost is the deeply personal account of a search for one family among his larger family, the one barely spoken of, only to say they were "killed by the Nazis." Mendelsohn, even as a boy, was always the one interested in his family's history, but when he came upon a set of letters from his great uncle Schmiel, pleading for help from his American relatives as the Nazi grip on the lives of Jews in their Polish town became tighter and tighter, he set out to find what had happened to that lost family. The result is both memoir and history, an ambitious and gorgeously meditative detective story that takes him across the globe in search of the lost threads of these few almost forgotten lives.
A whole culture lies behind the story Mendelsohn tells, and a lifetime of reading as well. For our Grownup School feature, he has given us a tour of some of the books behind his own, in a list he calls 10 Great Novels of Family History, the Holocaust, New York Jewish Life (And Other Things That Helped Me Write My Book). And you can watch his own moving introduction to the book in this short video:
 Watch Daniel Mendelsohn introduce The Lost: high bandwidth or low bandwidth |
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