Customer Reviews

The Fifth Diamond

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This was a remarkable book, one you just couldn't put down. Poignant and inspirational, this book is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

This book is a remarkable true story of human survival. Even though many of the events depicted are horrific and very disturbing, there is an underlying tone of the undying human spirit and the will to live that permeates throughout the story. The book is a very fast and easy read. Once I started it, I was unable to put it down. This book should be read by everyone, students and adults alike, as a reminder of the horrible attrocities that were committed during the holocaust and the dangers of intolerance.

The account Zisblat gives of her torture at the hands of Mengele rings false. Supposedly he performed surgery without anesthesia, her eyes were injected with chemicals, she was subjected to freezing cold for days at a time, etc. And conveniently, the only firsthand witness besides the writer died one day after they were liberated. We'll just have to take the writer's word for all this--and she never mentioned any of this to anybody for fifty years. Chemicals were supposedly put in her food to sterilize her--but why would they bother to sterilize a woman they knew they were going to kill? Was she jumping in the latrine every day to sift through the excrement for her diamonds? If so, didn't anybody else notice this peculiar behavior? She's living on a starvation diet in horrible conditions and being physically abused every day, and yet her body still has the strength to resist infection from massive exposure to raw sewage? It turns out that one of Mengele's nurses was secretly a member of the Underground--has there ever been any documented case of any of Mengele's staff belonging to the Underground? The only thing this book does is to insult the memory of the millions who died or survived from the many real horrors and tragedies that took place in the 20th century. The author should be deeply ashamed of herself.

It's deeply disturbing to contemplate the motives of Mrs. Zisblatt, her publisher and marketers of _The Fifth Diamond_ to promote this ludicrous book as truth, since most honest (and intelligent) readers will question its authenticity and credulity immediately.

_Fifth Diamond_ scans more as though the author cribbed together all the cliché Holocaust legends and contrived a Grimm's Fairy tale plot of a brave little girl in a concentration camp who outwits notorious Nazis and survives repeated assaults on her life. Similar to my impressions of James Frey's notorious book, _A Million Little Piecess_about drug addiction and recovery (that was proven completely fictitious), Zisblatt's book immediately smacks of ludicrous implausibility within the first few pages. Besides the physiological, biological, and psychological improbabilities with this story are the repeated historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies.

As an avid student of history and psychology (especially of the nature of individual and mass evil), I am appalled at this absurd caricature that both demeans the true stories of actual survivors and diminishes the horror of the war with its bizarre and insane exaggeration. I have read countless books about this era, including textbooks, fiction and non-fiction (even some of those exposed as frauds but were nevertheless good stories), and maintain that _Fifth Diamond_ qualifies as neither a good story nor anything resembling the truth. This nonsense would have been more tasteful as a Vaudeville act.

It's hard to decide if I'm more stunned by this books actual existence, its alleged nomination for a Pulitzer, or by Steven Spielberg's support. That Mrs. Zisblatt is currently lecturing to gymnasiums full of school children is even more deplorable. To exploit the kind of evil that she is exploiting for her own amusement and profit is truly abhorrent. There are no words to express my profound disgust.

For 15 months she swallowed and retrieved the diamonds...assuming she was '' regular'' that means she went through over 450 bowel movements"! She says she was a '' favorite '' of Mengele yet he operated on her without anesthesia...what did he do to the inmates that weren't his favorites?

This book brought tears to my eyes, a terrific ache in my heart, and a strong will to share with others the accounts of Irene's life, and all of the wisdom and lessons she has gained over the past decades.
I grew up knowing Irene - she was my best friend's mother when I was a teenager. I was aware that she had been a Concentration Camp prisoner as a young girl; however I could never have imagined the torture, pain, hunger, dehumanization, dispair, and surprisingly, the strong sense of determination that she lived with daily. This book provided detailed accounts of what she endured before, during and after the Holocaust. I shudder trying to comprehend human beings treating innocent people with such contempt, hate and horror. I applaud Irene (Mama Z as we affectionately called her), for finding the courage, strength, need and resolve to finally be able to share her story with all of us.
The book is written in a very easy and understandable format. While some pages offer extremely disturbing accounts of life in the Concentration Camps, it is a book that MUST be read by school-age children, young adults, adults and Senior Citizens, and then discussed with others.
There is much the world has to gain as a result of reading this book - and I believe that is truly Irene's sole intention for sharing her story. She survived the unthinkable, forged a strong relationship during her imprisonment, escaped her fate with death numerous times, found her inner strength, remained faithful to her family values, found love, raised a beautiful family, and now wants the world to know how this all came to be...what a beautiful(and painful) gift she has shared with all of us!

I shed quite a few tears reading this beautifully written account of the horrifying years Irene suffered while under Nazi control. Praise the Gods that she survived to tell this amazing story. Amazing ... that humans can ever stoop to such barbaric and senseless levels. Unfortunately this still happens today in various regions of the Earth. Even in the USA animals are treated similarly on the Monsanto and Cargill centralized industrial food operations. (see Food Inc. ... the movie). Fascism is close at hand even now here in the USA. I was jailed in January just for speaking out against an illegal code action against some senior citizens ... on private property that belonged to the senior citizens!
Irene, thanks for educating us about these horrors. Bless You !

Much respect is due to Irene Zisblatt. The scenes of her memories that she so vividly describes are haunting. Through the eyes of an innocent child, she generously tells her personal story of hope, strength and survival in a simple, straight-forward way. As most Holocaust memoirs are, her book is an extremely difficult read because of the extraordinary suffering she and so many others endured. The Fifth Diamond is such an important and powerful book that should be read by all. A horrific true story that must told over and over again so it is not forgotten and can never happen again. Irene Zisblatt is a remarkable woman whose childhood was abruptly interrupted by the terror and torture she witnessed and experienced under Hitler's rule.

Irene Weisberg Zisblatt's memoir, The Fifth Diamond, is a mostly true story of a Holocaust survivor who was taken from her Slovakian town in spring 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she lost her family, and who was thereafter entered into Birkenau and probably experimented on by Josef Mengele. In the memoir, she was an object of eye color experiments and later of disease injecting experiments. As late as Sept., 1944, the SS Hygiene Institute laboratory at Auschwitz was reporting on urine, blood, stool, and sputum samples taken from the 14 year old girl. This is not proof positive of experiments -- she may have been in a transit group to be sent to camps in Germany -- and the Nazis were taking precautions against sending disease-ridden slaves into the German camps. Contrary to the memoir, though, if she was in a transit group in BIIC of Birkenau to be transferred, she would not have had a number or a tattoo. And Mengele would not have experimented on removal of said tattoo. Moreoever, the records from the Red Cross International Tracing Service indicate she was not thereafter taken to Neuengamme from Birkenau but to Gross Rosen and then Flossenburg, and she was liberated near Volary, not near Pilsen, in Czechoslovakia. It is also hard to believe she repeatedly ingested and then recovered her mother's four small diamonds in the Birkenau latrine, as the memoir insists. It should be emphasized though that in this writer's opinion this is not a central piece of the memoir. While this shapes the title of the memoir, the diamonds are not used to bribe or escape her fate; they represent merely continuity with what belonged to her mother. Irene is the fifth diamond, tough, sturdy, enduring. In my opinion, it is a damned shame that, after suffering in Auschwitz-Birkenau and probably at the hands of Mengele, she should now -- having told her story -- be the target of harassment by that whackball Eric Hunt, who attacked Elie Wiesel in San Francisco, and by other Holocaust deniers like James Edwards who haunt the shadows of the internet spreading their venom at the unsuspecting.... This said, the memoir takes liberties in recounting experience that should not be taken....

We got off to a rough start but ended up a winner. I ordered the book mid Jan. and in early Feb. was sent a questionaire about the service. I responded back telling them that I never received the book and that it was ordered as a Valentine gift for my 16year old son who had seen the author in his highg school. They sent out another book priority mail and I received it within 2 days. Just ion time for Valentines Day. My son has been reading it every spare minute over his presidents day break. Thanks for expediting the book.