Customer Reviews

The Cap: The Price of a Life

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I will skip the personal details discussed by other reviewers, and focus on matters of historical significance. With one obvious exception, Frister shows an excellent grasp of factual events. He makes the unbelievable statement that the NSZ "did not kill Germans at all" (p. 263), only killed Jews, and then repeats the Communist-propaganda canard that the Brygada Swietokrzyska (Holy Cross Brigade) had fought on the German side.

Even as late as 1941, Frister's mother didn't believe that the invading Germans intended to harm the Jews (p. 180). This adds to similar testimonies, and undercuts the argument that the massive Jewish-Soviet collaboration had been motivated by a desire to be protected from the Nazis.

Unlike those who, from their safe perches, moralize to Poles about their need to have been more willing to risk their lives on behalf of Jews, Frister does not: "And what right did I have to condemn them? Why should they risk themselves and their families for a Jewish boy they didn't know? Would I have behaved any differently? I knew the answer to that, too. I wouldn't have lifted a finger. Everyone was equally intimidated." (p. 192)

Frister writes: "Jozef Kruczek had prepared a perfect hideout for us. Beneath a bale of hay tossed with deliberate carelessness on the floor of the barn was a hidden trapdoor that descended to a cellar as big as a cottage. Before we came this had served as an abattoir. The screeching of the slaughtered pigs remained within its walls--a big help in avoiding German confiscations and getting the meat to the black market." (p. 97). Ironic to Polonophobes (e. g., Jan T. Gross), who accuse Poles of being willing to incur the German-imposed death penalty by illegally slaughtering animals, but seldom by hiding Jews, we see the same Polish secretiveness in both activities! (Besides, slaughtering an animal was a quick one-time act. Hiding a Jew was a continuous risk.)

Unlike most Holocaust materials, Frister's work presents a balanced view of Polish and Jewish misdeeds. He mentions Poles looting Jews (p. 120) as well as regular Pole-on-Pole thievery (p. 100). The Judenrat, besides collaborating with the Germans in the roundups of Jews to their deaths (e. g., p. 92, 105, 120), also stole from poor Jews (p. 120). Jewish informers played an instrumental role in the uncovering of hidden Jews (e. g., p. 105, 112, 120, 190-191). Twice Frister escaped death despite being denounced to the Germans by Jewish informers (p. 112, 190-191), the latter of whom he found to be very clever and diligent in their undercover work. How many other fugitive Jews were betrayed, not by ethnic Poles as automatically assumed, but by Jewish Gestapo agents and informers?

We were told, in the wake of the Auschwitz Carmelite convent controversy, that Jews find Christian symbols offensive because they remind them of past persecutions by Christians. Frister mentions a Jew, Henryk Leiderman, who had no problem with rosaries when it came to selling them to Polish peasants (p. 36).

Frister spent some years in postwar Poland before emigrating to Israel. He is candid about the fact that he, and other Jews, got privileged positions in the Soviet-imposed Communist regime (p. 34, 169).

Roman Frister has written a haunting memoir of his life before, during, and after the holocaust. It is a gripping story, not particularly of courage but of raw survival. Frister is not your usual hero. He just wants to live through the concentration camps. Frister's most shameful memory is stealing the cap of a sleeping prisoner after his own was stolen, condemming him to death the next day because anyone reporting to roll call without a cap was shot. Frister has no real remorse. Survival was all that mattered. He even matter of factly describes his father's death from cholera in terms of wanting his bread ration more than hoping his father dragged out his death.Frister's decriptions of camp life are vivid and chilling. he was forced to watch his mother brutally murdered by an SS officer.This is a must read for anyone who wants to explore in human terms the death camps and the follow-up treatment of its survivors. The writing flows beautifully and is impossible to put down.

I've read lots of Holocaust memoirs, and this one truly stands out. I picked this book up at a Barnes and Noble just before going to the SF airport, and I couldn't put it down. You can just feel the author's honesty when reading this. He doesn't hide anything, not even about himself. He brings up several issues not always not always found in other memoirs. There are several different plots going on, so you'll want to continue reading in order to keep up with them all.

I want to say that I really loved this book. The author takes us on one of the best adventure stories of human life that I have read in quite some time. Even though the central theme is his holocost survival he does not dwell on the subject too long, or I should say just long enough. His real adventure begins when he gets out. Learning to survive in the camps gave him the ability to achieve and become successful in life.

I hope Hollywood picks this one up. I'd love to see it on the screen.

The Cap is one of the best Holocaust works I have ever read. I have studied this period in history and the Jewish history too for more than 2 decades. Not starting at the beginning, but putting the reader smack in the middle of things immediately, and then using flashbacks and forward thoughts as one would remember their own story, was a riveting core of this book.

This book would make an unforgettable movie along the lines of Schindler's List, but from a teen's Jewish perspective. That Roman wrote this in Hebrew originally is chilling too, knowing he spared not his race, and yet it was also recently translated into English for the world stage.

He did not spare his thoughts. His story is candid, raw, open, and honest, logical, and clean, and Roman remains brilliant through it, warts and all. I applaud his ingenuity at staying alive and also for the insanely funny yet terrifying way he tried to save his grandparents. I do not know if I could have ever been that strong or that logical in the face of such terror. I applaud Roman. Thank you, Roman, for sharing what must have been hard to regurgitate in such a measured, brilliant manner.

This book is a great insight into how the horrific events of the holocaust affected one man's life. Readers can better relate to just how terrible the holocaust was. The personal aspects of the book added a touching angle that reached out to readers. It also painted a picture of before and after the war too.
The book was confusing at times because of the way it jumped around from one time period to another. However, it contained interesting and shocking stories from Frister's life. the book details his youth in Silesia and then his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. It also follows his life after the end of the war when he becomes a journalist in Poland and then emigrates to Israel. The Cap really showed how the holocaust changed the author. While he was not void of emotions, he became a hardened man due to the traumatic events he lived through.While his writing style left some to be desired, the content was very detailed, informational, and intriguing.

I'll mention it, since none of the other reviewers thus far have done so, that this book is listed in its cataloging information as a NOVEL, even if it does read like a memoir (and what a memoir--full of narrow escapes, and the narrator doesn't attempt to shield himself from the moral disapproval of a reading audience that watches helplessly as he moves from woman to woman) in many instances. BUT, and I think this is important, it also reads like a picaresque novel. (Part of me wonders whether this was officially titled a novel in the wake of all of the controversy over _The Painted Bird_). This is a recent trend in Holocaust literature (the mixing of memoir and fiction) and it's not necessarily bad (although it's troublesome if you're trying to teach a history class on the Holocaust), but it should be noted.

It's one of the best books that I have read lately. It's brutally honest and vividly illustrates how far people will go in order to survive. It also serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when we let hatred and bigotry run amok.

There is no doubt that this is one of the most compelling holocaust volumes that I have come across. I am sure that of the volumes that seem to appear from time to time, each account is different and opens up a new insight into the atrocities that were part of western civilisation(?). The book is eminently readable, possibly due to a fine translation from the hebrew, which, in terms of some of the vocabulary and syntax, seems to have the American reader in mind. However,this will be one of those books that I will always keep. The style of the book with the narrative moving around in time from the war to Poland in the fifties during that uncertain period of post war communism, makes it even more " nonputdownable". Being of Polish extract, I found the references to Polish anti-semitism diifficult to come to terms with. After all it was the Poles who gave the "East European Jew" the opportunity to settle in the land. Even so, Frister was also quick to point out the cruelty meeted out by fellow Jews and his own "rape" was committed by one of his own people. Frister brings us close to the loves of his life and one could not help but feel sorry for the loss of those he had loved. You could do worse than buy this book. I commend it to anyone with a feeling towards the end of human suffering at the hands of our fellow man.

This is one of the best autobiographies ever written, and I have read many. Images from this book will stay in my mind forever, and puts all other troubles and accomplishments into prospective. Frister's eyewitness account proves that there can never be vindication enough for the victims of the Nazi regime.