Customer Reviews

Herschel: The Boy Who Started World War II

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

 

 

I gave this book 4 stars rather than 3 only because in spite of its exaggerations, it holds your attention and promotes a side of the story which is not totally impossible.

The narration is very good and the author is good at painting a picture of what it felt like living in Poland during that time.

Morino does draw his info from other sources, but makes the events more interesting than the others do.

Leave this book out on your desk at work and i guarantee you that the title alone will spark conversation.

This is a book I couldn't put down, and a good companion to Gerald Schwab's The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan. Together they give a well-rounded portrait of a relatively ordinary Jewish boy living in extraordinary times. While he never started WWII--Alfred Naujocks could more reasonably make that claim--Herschel Grynszpan certainly kicked off the Shoah, and deserves to be remembered for his part in what is still the most disturbing chapter in human history. Did he know what the Nazis had in mind when he assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath? His reaction to the events at the time is proof positive that he most certainly did not. But if you ignore that anomaly, then this is a very interesting, if speculative biography.