Customer Reviews

One Eye Laughing, The Other Eye Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York 1938 (Dear America Series)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Julie Weiss is a 14-year-old girl who is a Jewish rich girl, life may seem good and perfect for her until...Adolf Hitler, an "anti-Jewish" leader comes and brings terror to Vienna. Julie's best friend Sophy, is sent to England being adopted, Julie's mother commits suicide, her brother Max runs away, and her father sends her to America to be adopted by her aunt who was never heard from, all Jewish things were messed up. Julie will just be satified with her life but she worries about her father in Vienna. There is a fictional epligue and historical note and pictures of the era. I recommend this to 9-12-year-olds.

After reading this book, I really learned about my heritage. Being Jewish, I understood Julie's point of view. The kids teasing her. The racism of neighbors and friends. But I never really was taught about how the Holocaust started. This book shows the true horror behind life in Austria for Jews. I love my copy and now I am keeping my own diary. I recommend it to anyone with a heart.

This is a wonderful book; don't judge it by the first few pages, though, because it doesn't start off right away. Julie Weiss is living a normal life in Vienna until it is taken over by Hitler. Jews are having their homes and workplaces destroyed, and Julie's own mother (among other people) commits suicide to avoid the Nazis. Julie is sent to America--all by herself--to live in New York with her Aunt Clara. This is a very good, very sad book about the Holocaust.

I was fortunate enough to obtain an advanced edition of this wonderful book. Barry Denenberg is a wonderful author. He brought a wonderfully human viewpoint to this tragic time in history. Twelve-year-old Julie Weiss is the daughter of a wealthy Jewish couple in 1938 Vienna. She has a comfortable life, until Hitler's army invades Austria. Her family is the target of violence, and her mother sinks into depression, eventually commiting suicide. In spite of the bleakness of the first half the book, there is hope in the second half. Julie's father, desperate for her safety, arranges for her to go to New York City to live with her aunt and uncle, but decides to stay behind and help others. She is full of loneliness and despair at first, but finds comfort in her relatives and in a career in acting. I highly reccomend this to historical fiction fans. The author did an excellant job of bringing the time period to life.

First and foremost, this is a worthy book because of its treatment of its subject matter, which is of course, the beginnings of the Holocaust in Europe. The first part of the book is fairly well done. It doesn't spare the young reader much in recounting the way Jews were treated and how it became progressively worse. It's particularly noteworthy that the book starts out with life basically "normal" for Jews. As is always the case in persecution, it comes in stages. It's extremely important that students see how this can happen to any race, religion or ethnic group in any society or group of people.

***Spoiler Alert***

That being said, the second half of the book was just very strange. First, the main character's father, a doctor, who has been the victim of abuse at the hands of the Nazi's having had just about everything taken away. His wife lost her mind and committed suicide (after apparently being gang raped, which an adult reader could pick up on, but might be confusing for a younger reader.) His son leaves for Palestine and he has the chance to go to America with his daughter. It stands to reason that if he has a brain in his head, he must know that he's doomed, yet he decides to STAY in Austria for the sake of his patients. (What patients? It's implied that they're just about all gone as the Nazi's strip him of his practice - the non-Jewish ones won't see him and the Jewish ones are disappearing.) Wouldn't a father's first responsibility be to his child? That was just strange and if the author wanted to write out the father to have the child travel to the US alone, it should have been done another way because it just did not make sense. Julie (and the reader) wonder through the entire second half of the book what has happened to him. We are told in the epilogue that he was taken two weeks after Julie arrived in America, which was pretty much predictable to everyone could except him.

Part two of the book begins to spin off into a strange fairy tale pretty quickly. When Julie goes comes to the US, she doesn't struggle with the challenges of becoming an immigrant, making friends and fitting into society - no, she auditions for the part of Wendy on Broadway in Peter Pan and somehow gets the role. (??) She seems to have no language barrier to overcome, or even an accent. Would a girl with a heavy accent and absolutely zero stage or acting experience really get a main part in a BROADWAY show practically within minutes of arriving in a new country? That was just strange and was just a little too "fairy tale" for a book that deals with such a heavy subject matter. It was something that could be expected of the more sensational and less realistic adventurous nature of the American Girl series; or even a Shirley Temple movie, not a book that has just dealt with the dark and sobering events of the first part of the book.

Lastly, the book epilogue states that Julie became a star, never married but later had a child. Why put that sentence in a book for children as young as 9? It was not at all necessary as it wasn't part of the story at all, but the author seemed to just include it because......as a parent we're left to wonder why.

We homeschool and are using the Dear America series as part of our history program. However, this is definitely not one of our favorites for the reasons mentioned. The first half makes the book worth reading, so I would recommend it for that. But if you are using this book to teach, perhaps approach it with a critical eye, asking the students what they thought of the second half of the book and if it really fit with the first or was it appropriate? Perhaps the author felt that part two was the "spoonful of sugar" to help the reader swallow the bitter taste of part one. However, for us, it was not only boring and uninteresting, but seemed to diminish the reality of first half of the book.

The book One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss by Barry Deneberg was overall a pretty good book.
It was about a young Jewish girl named Julie who lived in Vienna, Austria during the Holocaust. She lived with her mother, father, and older brother in a nice apartment. After Hitler took over Austria, Julies life took a big turn. She escaped the horrors of the Holocaust and concentration camps when her father decided that she was going to go live with her aunt and uncle in New York. She had to cope with the many changes of her new life in America, and had to live without her family, who remained living in Austria. Although Julie missed her family a lot, her aunt and uncle took her in as if she were their own.
Julies Aunt Clara was an actress who performed in many Broadway productions. While helping her aunt practice her lines for the play she was in, Julie was asked by the director to also star in the play Peter Pan as Wendy Darling. Julie took the opportunity and did so well that her and her Aunt Clara were asked to play mother and daughter again in the Broadway production of Our Town.
All in all, One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss was a very interesting book and easy to follow. It is recommend for those who would like to read about a young girls thoughts and feelings during the Holocaust.

Watch out! I've read several of the Dear America books. This one has SEVERAL incidents that are not appropriate for 3-5 grade children, the age that read these books in my school.

It would, however; be fine for an older audience.

This is a really good book! You MUST read it! Its all about what happenned to a girl when Hilter and the Nazis came and turned her life around.

The beginning of the book was very sad and it mad me angry at the Natzis.But,when her family sent her to America it made me think she was a very good example to all girls.I mean,how many girls would do that? I admire all the courage this girl must have had. Even though this story is fiction, I would rate it on a scale of 1 to 100 a definate 100+.

The year is 1938 in Vienna, Austria. 13 year old Julie Weiss, a Jewish girl, has a very carefree life. Her father is a doctor, her mother is a beauty, her brother is a Zionist. Julie doesn't have to worry about a thing. But, that changes when Hitler and his Nazis come and invade Austria. Her family gets invaded, robbed, and striped of dignity.

Julie and her family gets very close to getting hurt and killed. Then, a great loss comes to the family, Julie's mother commits suicide rather than take more pain from the hands of the Nazis. In Julie's diary, she writes something like this," It seems that there is no Vienna, no Austria anymore, we are just part of Germany now. There is nothing we can do. Our country is robbed." Her best friend is sent to England for a better life and Julie is getting English lessons and wonders why.

She finds out. Her father is sending her to New York to live with her aunt and uncle. Julie's father can't go though, he is a doctor and his patients need him. When she arrives in NY she tries to be happy and make new friends, but sometimes she can't handle it. But, soon she goes from rags to riches when she becomes an actress and very successful. She also in her grown up years located her best friend and brother, but her father gets shot back in Vienna and dies.

This is a book you can't put down and will leave a little tear in your eye and maybe a pain in your heart.