Our Holocaust [Hardcover]

Amir Gutfreund (Author), Jessica Cohen (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Eloquently translated from the Hebrew, and written by the child of Holocaust survivors, this haunting first novel, a prizewinner in Israel, brings the history very close now. Why the panic when someone knocks at the door? Why does crazy Uncle Hirsch ask obsessively, "Only saints were gassed?" Always there is the dark humor of the old folks' grudges, miserliness, and daily lunacy. The kids are forbidden to ask about past secrets, but when they are "Old Enough," they hear the horrific memories in graphic detail. The spare accounts of unspeakable brutality, suffering, and sacrifice stay with you, and so do the big questions. The savagery of Nazi criminals is documented; why have so many never been punished? And what about the officials who were only doing their jobs? As the narrator fetches his kid from kindergarten today, he wonders about the people on the street: Who could be collaborator, informer, loyal soldier, killer, rescuer? With the arbitrariness of the survival stories, there is the inescapable truth that ordinary people made it happen. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 450 pages
• Publisher: Toby Press; 1st English Language Ed edition (March 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592641393
• ISBN-13: 978-1592641390
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #806,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A breathless read, but..., April 27, 2008

By 

Miriam Friedmann - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Holocaust (Hardcover)

Gutfreund breaks a taboo, writing a novel about the Holocaust, one that is couched in the accoutrements of veracity, such as a first person narrator bearing the same name as the author. The entire read, one toys with the question of what is real and what is made up. As it turns out - most is made up. Still, a book very hard to put down.

In a move reminding me of Vikram Seth in Two Lives, Gutfreund feels a need to distance himself from those nationalists and right-wingers who gather political points from the near annihilation of the Jewish people. Many would maintain that the nations of the world allowed the establishment of Israel because of their bad conscience regarding the Holocaust. So, if Seth spends a page or two decrying Bush and Israel and celebrating eco-politics, Gutfreund makes the more daring move to impugn all the Israelis (besides himself of course, a distinction he makes very clear, even fantasizing having his head split open in the town square for his enlightened beliefs) as being able to commit the Holocaust upon Israel's "minorities" (aka Palestinians). He views himself and those surrounding him as on some eternal brink, in an everlasting 1939, on the eve of a new Holocaust.

I question the morality of such a complete smudging of boundaries between victim and criminal (even if this conclusion is resurrected later on in the book in order to maintain that both victims and perpetrators were ordinary folk - part of a tired academic argument regarding whether Germany's path to genocide was a "Sonderweg" or "special way" or whether it was something more common). And he keeps struggling with his own conclusion throughout the book, as though his very innards rebel against believing the same. Thought-provoking, and I hope very wrong. In the words of Orwell: "There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read!, June 13, 2006

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Holocaust (Hardcover)

Israeli prize winner Amir Gutfreund debuts with an astonishing chronicle of two young children's abilities and inabilities to understand what happened "over there" in Our Holocaust.

The author takes the stage as a fictional character along with Effi, the only other child on Katznelson Street in Kiryat Haim. As members of the second-and-a-half generation to the Shoah (the Holocaust), they try to fit the pieces of the puzzle together--from the bits and pieces they are given--because they are not "Old Enough" to comprehend.

Amir is the more questioning of two, begging for stories and information. Fifty years may have passed but the Shoah's survivors are still haunted. As the children age and become "Old Enough" to learn the truth, Amir becomes obsessed with learning more. He interviews the family--everyone who survived is now a relative, not so much as by blood as shared experiences--and collects their stories.

One of the more unusual characters is Attorney Perl, not for what he remembers or what he experienced in the camps. He, too, keeps records. Not about the atrocities, but about what happened to those who committed them. What happened to the Nazis after liberation? Ask Attorney Perl. Behind the wall of his hardware store is a wall of little drawers. Amir at first believes they contain the store's inventory, but when he's finally "Old Enough," he learns that the drawers are crammed with index cards full of notations, sentences, releases, and deaths of Nazi party members.

Our Holocaust takes readers on two voyages. One is through the minds of the survivors and their children, and another is through the camps. It takes readers through the ghettos where the Nazis perform the "Aktions" and the "Selektions" of who stays, goes, and who dies on the spot.

Our Holocaust is not an easy read. It's frightening. It's horrific. It puts faces on the people in the documentaries that have aired over the years.

Armchair Interviews says: While Our Holocaust is not an easy read, it's a must-read to even begin to understand exactly what happened "over there."

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best Israeli books written in the past years, March 30, 2006

By 

D. Sivan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Our Holocaust (Hardcover)

Once you start reading it, you find yourself enchanted. Well written and not at all horrific. The subject is a difficult one, but the author makes you smile, laugh, cry, and feel human for better or worst. Amir G is one of the most promising authors in Israel! A must read book!