Customer Reviews

The Holocaust Kingdom: A Memoir

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I have read dozens of holocaust books over the years, mostly non-fiction accounts. I must say this book, more than most, really brought home to me what it must have been like to endure the horror of living in the Warsaw Ghetto. Some of the scenes Donat describes, I literally had to put the book down, they were so tragic. Donat had access to many different streets within the Ghetto so it is almost like he is giving you a tour of the daily occurences that transpired. This book reinforces the belief that sometimes it is more honorable to die than to commit certain acts, such as some of the panic-driven people were desperate enough to commit. The killing of the children was indeed horrific. ...

I am glad he, his wife, and son survived the war, but I know it was at a great cost.

I read this book many years ago, and have regretted losing my copy. It is intense, almost overwhelming. Leon Uris used some of the same scenes in his "Mila 18", but this one is a memoir, not a novel. Pay attention to the narrator/author's name--I have remembered what happened to it for 25+ years.

Amazon Marketplace Booksellers are abusing their privilege to sell this good book, charging ridiculous auction prices. The book sells from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for $15.95, brand new!! [....] This is an excellent book, but should not cost you more than $20.

Alexander Donat recounts his experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (notably the role of the Z.Z.W.; pp. 107-108 and 143), Maidanek (including its cruel Jewish kapos; p. 193), other locations, and finally Germany not long before the time of liberation. Donat doesn't think much of German "repentance" following the Nazi defeat (p. 291).

In contrast to the one-sided attention devoted, in modern Holocaust materials, to Polish informers, blackmailers, and looters, Donat broadens this to include Jews, as in the Ghetto: "Many highly-placed occupation authorities...were officially and unofficially involved in looting. So were some Jewish criminals who tipped Germans off about the best places to plunder, or threatened Jews that they would do so in order to blackmail them." (p. 9). "Gentile Poles were among the looters, and last, but not least, was the looting done by the employees of the Ghetto undertaker, Pinkiert, who robbed the corpses of the slain. Since more than 10,000 people were killed or died during the Resettlement Operation, the undertakers' haul was rich." (p. 72)

As for the infamous Jewish police, Donat comments: "Actual power was now in the hands of the Jewish Ghetto police who roamed the streets like wild beasts, seizing men, women, and children with increasing brutality." (p. 61)

For all the talk, in the wake of the Auschwitz Carmelite Convent controversy, of the Cross being absolutely foreign, if not offensive, to Judaism, Donat and his fellow Jews have no problem juxtaposing Jewish suffering with Golgotha (p. 83, 103), Calvary (p. 152), and the Crucifixion of the Christ inside us (pp. 230-231).

In focusing on "Jewish passivity", Donat recounts the entrenched pro-German mindset of most Jews: "For generations, East European Jews had looked to Berlin as the symbol of law, order, and culture. We could not now believe that the Third Reich was a government of gangsters embarked on a program of genocide `to solve the Jewish problem in Europe'." (p. 103).

In this regard, Donat admits that the Poles had a better grasp of German intentions. He recounts how a Pole tried to buy a coat from the Jew, but the Jew insisted that he'd still need it, prompting the Pole to respond: "They're going to make soap out of you anyway. Sell the coat to me. Why should a nice coat like that go to waste?" (p. 123). Donat comments: "Such things were said neither as a taunt nor in hatred. The facts were all too evident: the Jews were too stupid to understand their situation and it was necessary to hammer it home to them. After the January [1943] resistance, however, we occasionally heard Poles say things like, `Bravo, little Yids! That's the way. Stand right up to them!' Or, `They're eating you for lunch and saving us for dinner!' Or, `As soon as those sons-of-bitches have finished you off, it'll be our turn.'" (pp. 123-124). The foregoing alone refutes the claim that the Poles generally felt "friendly neutrality" towards the Germans' extermination of the Jews. We also see that seemingly-callous Polish remarks weren't necessarily that and, in any case, Poles used comparable remarks to refer to themselves.

Interestingly, a "different" kind of German told Donat that Polish nationalist guerillas ostensibly fight Germans but actually go around killing fugitive Jews (pp. 225-226). Did these oft-repeated tales originate from German propaganda--intended in part to discourage Jewish escapes?

Donat makes the ridiculous argument (echoed more recently by Jan T. Gross) that the Poles weren't afraid of the German-imposed death penalty when it came to such things as the possession of radios, but were only afraid of the death penalty when it came to hiding Jews (p. 230). Common sense alone teaches that hiding a verboten object (radio) was much less risky than hiding a verboten human being! Furthermore the risk-taking Pole knew that, if caught, he had a good chance of being freed with a well-placed bribe for radio-possession, but not for housing a Jew.