Customer Reviews

Endless Miracles

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I live in Riga, the same city Jack Ratz was born in, and the same city he was forced to flee during World War II. All the places he describes are still here, but the people who animate his book and who animated Riga are not here anymore. Even if Riga is still one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and is still getting more beautiful everyday, it nevertheless lacks the diversity it used to have. It used to be a city where Germans, Latvians, Jews, Russians, Poles, Gypsies and people of many other nationalities lived side by side, with all the advantages but also the tensions that come with such an arrangement. However during World War II, the Jewish community was destroyed, and the Baltic-Germans who had been living her for many centuries were repatriated (willingly and unwillingly) to Germany. During the Soviet occupation from 1944 to 1991, the Moscow government continued to destroy Riga's international character by flooding Riga (and all of Latvia) with Russian immigrants, deporting the local Latvian population to Siberia, or simply executing them on the spot. Now Riga is the Latvian capital, but is still more than 50% Russian. By reading Jack Ratz's book, for a brief moment, the pre-war Riga seemed to come back to life. Many corners of the city which are now completely devoid of life or character were revived through Ratz's childhood memories. It is a shame that European Jewery was destroyed by the Nazis, it is a shame that Jack Ratz and his family had to live and die in such horrible ways, and it is also a shame that many cities in Europe, like Riga, which were alive with language, culture and color until World War II are now destroyed for ever. Jack Ratz's efforts to have the memory of Latvian Jewry live on in Riga, in Latvia and around the world is commendable. By doing this he does not only pay an immense service to the Jewish community but as well to the city of Riga, which is now trying to come alive again after 50 years of destruction and oppression. Even if the Jewish population is now almost invisible in Riga, at least the monuments erected with the help of Jack Ratz to the memory of the destroyed Jewish community will testify to what this city used to be and to what it has the potential to become again.

I am the author's son. My father is but a handful of survivors of the Riga ghetto who writes about his ghastly experiences as a 15 year old in the forced labor camps of Latvia and then through 3 years of concentration camps. My father's message remains clear in that a course of "Endless Miracles" takes him and my grandfather through one hell to another. Thier faith in God allows them to see light and help other people through survival and liberation. My father becomes quite personal and writes about his arrival in the US and building a family. His legacy is that we should always remember how cruel people can be towards each other but he taught me how important it is to treat each other we respect. This the true lesson of a holocaust survivor.

I think this is one best book because it talk about the holocaust. Some people try to forget what happen and teach their kids that it never happen. I think this is one best book. I wish that this won't happen agin but happen agin in Kosovo.

Mr. Ratz has recorded his experiences at the hands of the Russian communist, then later Nazi invaders in Latvia starting in 1940. It is an inspirational story of survival under the most brutal conditions.

This is a well written story that is easliy read in one evening and well worth it.

You'll be able to look back after a bad day and think about what Mr. Ratz and others like him experienced during the holocaust, and realize that your day wasn't so bad after all.

I hold in my hand a copy of the Congressional Record Vol. 144 No.1 24 Dated September 17,1998 code S10532.(i give this information for those skeptics who don't believe that I speak the truth, GO LOOK IT UP!) Senetor Patrick Moynihan adresses President Clinton. ''Jack Ratz's memoirs is an eloquent refutation to those who would dare to trivialize, distort, or even deny the Holocaust's important lessons. His book well reflects the affirmative message that Jack Ratz shares with New York City school children during his regular visits to the city classrooms. As the survivors of the Holocaust succumb to old age there are fewer and fewer eyewitnesses to this tragedy. Jack Ratz has provided an invaluable service with his moving account of the Latvian Holocaust experience.'' The record continues to print and article from the Jewish Week dated August 14, 1998. This eternal book has become part of our NY school system, being aproved by the Board of Education; and it has become a part of our US history being emblazened onto a Congressional Reocrd. A book with such powere should be in every household and as the author says, ''it is a book you can read in a day and remember for a lifetime.''

The book was of exceptional quality. it can be read by all ages, each on their own level.

dear,Jack Rats I met you from the yeshivah shaare torah,(I brought your book from you)my name is Jonathan Smouha,well I love your book and I couldn't believe the stories that I read.When I read that book,Tears were coming down from my eyes.I loved that book. Thank You, your friend, Jonathan

P.S. I'll see you in april.In the shaare torah.

I began reading Endless Miracles on Saturday and finished it on Sunday, I could not put it down. As a teacher i intend to read excerpts from the book to my students especially on the silent witness and his master.

This book should be read by anyone who wants to know both the human capacity for survival and the meaning of creative continuity.

Jack Ratz was born in Riga, Latvia in 1927, and came to the US in 1947. He relates his experiences prior to, during and after the Holocaust. Throughout, he notes the series of amazing circumstantial accidents, which he calls "miracles," that he believes permitted his survival and that of his father and cousin - the only remaining European members of what was once their family.

After providing a bit of Latvian history, Ratz describes pre-invasion life in Riga from a child's perspective, work and death camp experiences from a teenager's point of view, and post-liberation resettling from the stance of a determined young adult. He provides the details of his daily life in the work and death camps of Riga, Lenta, Salaspils, Stutthof, and Burgraben. He tells of post-liberation in Lauenburg, Lodz, Kattowitz (now Katowice, Poland), Bratislava, Vienna, Linz, Munich, and Landsberg. Ratz's dispassionate retelling of the observations and activities of his youth reflects the numbed emotion of existing in a dream state within a nightmare on what we might now call "automatic pilot." In contrast, his post-1949 experiences are shared with a strong sense of warmth and enthusiasm that he has "miraculously" permitted himself to once again feel.

I am grateful to the author for this addition to Holocaust literature. In his clear documentation of the life of a survivor, Ratz provides valuable perspective for those of us of a later time and a different place.